Margaret Akenuwa

Fashion has been my passion ever since I was a child and I remembered walking into boutiques and shops where beautiful displays of garments were exhibited for sales in order to appreciate designs and fabrics.

Ever before I registered at Southwark College for my level 3 diploma in fashion design, I worked in a boutique for 16 years in Holland where popular designer clothes like Armani, Gucci and Leathers were being sold. This experience exposed me to some skills in fashion like alterations, using of industrial machines and making of bags from animal skins.

Upon my registration at Southwark College for my level 3 diploma in fashion design, I learnt fashion various fashion units like collage, embroidery, screen print, pattern cutting, understand how visual language and visual language skills inform art and design activities,  understand visual and contextual research to inform ideas for creative activities, being able to use materials, processes and practical skills to support art and design activities, being able to use reflective and evaluative skills to inform own progress and practice, being able to explore and develop alternative solutions for theoretical and practical problems in art and design activities and being able to plan, develop and present an art and design project.

At the University for the Creative Arts, I covered in my Access program in fashion and textiles pathway units like research for art and design practice, ideas and development for art design practice, material and methods for art and design practice and reflection and evaluation for art and design practice.

Through this exposure, I had the opportunity to be inspired by the works of prominent Artists and designers like Yinka Shonibare, Duro Olowu, Viktor and Ralf, Junya  Watanabe, Alexander McQueen and Rei Kawakubo.

I learnt from the work of these designers the ability to manipulate fabrics, use colours and illustrations, ability to work in large scales and in details(i.e. their works can easily identify themes like evening gowns, casual wears, sporty outfits, wedding gowns) which shows elegance and class.

I appreciate fashion design works that shows class and quality and as such the work of designers captivate my interest beyond measure.

In my work, Organic Nature I conducted primary research  taking  pictures of holly tree and then print it in multiples before using it as a collage on the mode.

In Nature and Ankara fabric, my primary research of the holly tree was transferred to model the hat worn by the image and also to make the upper part of its garment. The rest of garment consisted of a drawing that was coloured with watercolour while the second picture was a combination of Ankara(African print) on the top and the rest of the right hand while the rest of the garment consisted of high quality cuttings stitched with cut-outs from the ankara fabric.

The Mapping project was a combination of the map of Africa, Haarlem in the Netherlands and London underground. These were the imposed on the images to create garments. Organic nature a combination of collage, drawing , colour, gladiolus  flower, dry leaves and images cut out of magazine used for collage while Nuno felting was a process using merino  wool which was combed with a brush and imposed on a wet balloon and massaged with water soap which resulted in a felted little pot.

I will be joining the BA Fashion Atelier course in the Autumn