Hi, my name is Eve, and I am the Junior Designer here at Frock Tales. I am a student at Loughborough University studying Textile Design and Innovation. As part of the course, during my third year I go out on placement to gain crucial industry experience, which brought me to Frock Tales.
As long as I can remember I have always loved fashion and creating. From as young as 4, when visiting my great grandma, I would delve into her hand-woven wicker basket and create extravagant costumes from her fabric scraps, shoulder pads and metres of bias binding draped all over me. This feeling of euphoria brought to me by fabric, textiles and fashion has continued into adulthood.
I was encouraged to develop my passion into real skills when my family of 5 decided to move our life onto a canal boat, named ‘A Piece of Quiet’. At the age of 14 we downsized our life and belongings. We longed for simplicity and adventure, and without Wi-Fi we adapted to this new way of living and really invested in our skills. This for me translated to fashion and textiles. I was given my first sewing machine; a beautiful old Singer 4671 and I was hooked! Coupled with a love of charity shopping, I took to altering and tailoring all of my purchases until they were absolutely perfect for me.
When I reached 16, I made the decision to not participate in the traditional path of A-Levels, and instead was awarded an Extended Diploma in Fashion and Footwear at Leicester College, which I loved! I learned how to design, pattern cut and make my own garments. However, after researching and becoming more involved in the fashion industry, the more I learned, the more I began to resent it. I became aware of prevalent issues with sustainability, environmental impacts, ethical exploitation of under privileged and vulnerable people and excessive waste. I had a moral struggle, I loved fashion, but I hated the fashion industry.
This led me to study textile design. Still in my fashion industry fury, I had a longing to create and to learn. I felt if I could still engage not so directly with fashion, I could still create and learn through textiles. Throughout my two years of study, I have thoroughly enjoyed the course. I am able to make and experiment, all while learning my niche and style of working has been nothing short of invaluable.
When I came to the end of second year, I started to look for placement opportunities. I decided I didn’t want to be a small fish in a large corporation pond, where my skills may be overlooked, and I could easily get lost in such a busy and high-pressure environment. It was also very important for me to find a place that aligned with my morals, which was really quite difficult. But through some strange twist of fate, I met Janie, while she was working on another project, we exchanged details and arranged an interview, I got the job! When I began, we clicked and could talk for hours about sustainability and ethicality. We quickly realised that our morals aligned and that I would fit in the company very nicely!
As Junior Designer I have thoroughly enjoyed working as a team with Janie to design our new collection of ballet inspired garments. We have designed with longevity in mind, in terms of the garments being classic, that could outlive any microtrend but also attractive to the current market. This means that we sometimes had to tone down our ideas, to make them more timeless and commercial, but also adding new details to keep interest and individuality within the brand.
Our new collection was unveiled at Leicester Fashion Week, shown at Winstanley house, this was my first experience of a fashion show, and I was so proud to see our creations on the catwalk, the models looked so beautiful, and it was so great to hear feedback from guests, models and other designers.
The experience Janie has given me is vast, I now know how to source sustainable fabrics, use safe and ethical supply chains, how to grade garments and have gained technical pattern cutting skills. I am so grateful to have been given this opportunity to be junior designer and can’t wait to see what’s next for me.