GLASGOW-born designer Morag Macpherson creates bold and colourful clothing and accessories under her eponymous textiles label.
She was working as a graphics artist when she signed up for several night classes in textile design and fine art screenprinting.
“I wanted to escape the office environment, be my own boss and mostly be more creative, especially with a textiles application,” she told The National.
In 2007, after leaving her full-time graphics job, she became a self-employed designer and maker after launching her own label.
Macpherson focuses on pattern creation – something which came very naturally to her given her background using software such as Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator.
She developed a particular interest in digitally printed textiles. With the help of the Glasgow School of Art’s Centre of Advanced Textiles, she was able to begin sampling and experimenting in her new field.
“Morag Macpherson is very individualistic, colourful, usually quite bold and not for the faint hearted!” she told us. “The garments are definitely artwear ... the scarves and cushions are wild bursts of colour depicting florals or geometrics and rendered from illustrations or paintings.”
Macpherson’s collections are often inspired by art history – and in particular by her passion for fine art painting. She’s also inspired by different cultures and the colourful way they dress, as well as the nature which surrounds her home in Dumfries and Galloway.
She’s taken multiple trips to New York’s International Furniture Fair, exhibiting every year from 2010 to 2014. The exposure led to rewarding commissions such as a Hyatt Union Square Hotel collaboration with famous New York interior designers Paul Vega and Vennie Lau – all 200 bedrooms are now adorned with her Spring/Summer and Autumn/Winter headboard fabrics.
She’s also exhibited on several occasions with Craft Scotland – most notably at SOFA Chicago in 2014 – and has had success in department stores such as Liberty, Le Bon Marche and ABC Carpet & Home.
So what’s next?
“I plan to continue developing my international audience whilst simultaneously being firmly rooted in my home of Galloway,” she says. “I founded an artists and makers co-operative which now has three thriving shops in the region and we continue to look for new and interesting ways to showcase and sell our work together.”
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