Rachael Blair

Rachael Blair Fashion Design,

Philosophy:

Fashion is an adventure, a story to tell, one filled with new challenges, exciting opportunities and colourful characters along the way. Most of all, it's an exploration of colours and textures, beautiful prints and patterns, and the most whimsical of memories.

Northern Ireland fashion graduate, Rachael Blair revealed a fresh and exciting collection at the University of Ulster Degree show, Belfast. Inspired by a sense of adventure when travelling, her graduate collection ‘Off the Map’ embraces the fun side of fashion with a spectacle of colour in her intricate knitwear and digitally printed pieces.

Capturing the atmosphere of travelling somewhere new, Rachael was drawn to the sights and sounds of vintage market stalls such as Portobello market, and took colour inspiration from all the whimsical objects found amongst the ‘bric-a-brac’. Feeling that her work should tell a story, the designer from Antrim was keen to incorporate the busy vibe within the very fabrication of her pieces; mixing a vibrant array of yarns to form her key knitted piece, the combination of textures and colours represent the random, eclectic nature of how we collect objects when travelling, and the designer intended to build this idea into the fabric itself. Accompanying oversized knitted pieces are more delicate silk dresses and skirts, creating a quirky, relaxed silhouette. Using a digitally engineered printing technique for a striking shirt style dress, the graduate designer developed a Collins road map of Scotland into a vintage style print, placing flowers and vintage objects around particular pattern pieces to inject personality and feminine aesthetic. A hand made, personal feel is brought to the work with finer details such as the designer’s initials meeting at the front of the dress collar, and knitting techniques that include a vast combination of hand inlay, stitch elongation, and stitch transfers in an extensive colour palette.

Since graduating, Rachael has worked in the costume department of HBO's series Game of Thrones as a Costume assistant, and is now concentrating on the development of her own label.