UP-AND-COMING Glasgow-based womenswear label Hayley McSporran creates conceptual, sculptural yet wearable pieces.
Home-grown rising star and founder of her self-entitled label, Hayley McSporran studied fashion design courses at both Cardonald College and Grays School of Art in Aberdeen where she graduated with a first-class honours degree.
Proceeding to study a Masters in fashion and textiles at Glasgow School of Art, she was selected for the Donald Dewar Award, designed to fund young artists who lack the financial means to support their goals. In McSporran’s case, the funding allowed her to continue to study her Masters.
“The self-directed nature of the course has been integral to me developing myself creatively and technically as a designer and gave me the opportunity to explore and refine my own design process while strengthening my pattern cutting and sewing skills,” she said.
McSporran also won the John Mather Rising Star Award which allowed her to continue studying, buy fabrics and funded an unpaid internship in Holland.
Despite her love for her internship, she decided to come back to Glasgow to pursue a career in fashion design.
The Scottish designer relishes the challenge of unorthodox approaches to garment design through experimenting with complex, Japanese pattern cutting.
This method allows McSporran to produce unconventional and interesting pieces whilst continuing to retail a soft and feminine silhouette. She drapes material in order to create conceptual silhouettes with a primary focus on the garment cut and detail.
The label’s collections consist of silhouettes which are inspired by the offset forms and abstract details in British artists Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore’s sculpture.
McSporran is also interested in avant-garde fashion, art and underground music, all of which heavily influence her practice and brand.
The label offers beautifully contrasting pieces which range from soft draped silk and jersey dresses to surface-textured lamifixed wool outerwear pieces. The garments seek to merge fashion and art in order to create interesting structure and silhouette.
“I really enjoy experimenting with shape, cut and manipulation of the silhouette by seeing how certain fabrics and cuts react with the body. In my work I subvert traditional fabrics, garment features and functionalities out of their original contexts and displace them into interesting design features.”
Although new to the Scottish fashion scene, the label has already created a capsule collection which is stocked in The Scottish Design Exchange in Leith. McSporran was also awarded the New Womenswear Talent Award by Scotland Re:Designed in November.
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