Mar 8

Mar 8 DESIGNER MILLIE SANDERS

Art, Creative People, Culture, Fashion and Design, Interviews

KNITTER AT CENTRAL SAINT MARTINS

We are very excited to present today’s interview with Millie Sanders (1999) a textile designer from Yorkshire who is currently completing a BA in Textile Design at Central Saint Martins. Specialised in knitted textiles, she works mainly on industrial sampling machines to develop fabrics which can be applied to fashion, furniture and footwear. In 2019 she was announced as a winner of the Conscious Design collaboration hosted by Swarovski x CSM for my project 'Construction Rebellion' where she designed a textile collection using 100% construction waste. Last year she interned at Kenzo Paris, working with the knitwear team throughout the creation of the AW20 show and currently is in London working to develop her final graduate collection, with support from the Clothworkers' Foundation.

Your greatest inspirations or influences?

Inspiration can come from anywhere. I collect visuals mainly through drawing, photography and collage. Drawing has been something I have always enjoyed, it makes you look really hard at something which you might otherwise glance over, I really think drawing regularly helps me to notice interesting features in the surroundings of day to day life.

Sustainability is an overriding theme which influences every design choice in every project, purely out of necessity. I find the limitations which often arise when making conscious design decisions can actually make a project more fun.

Tell us a bit about your creative process and things you are looking forward to

I always look for colour combinations and textures which I find unusual or satisfying. Thinking carefully about which texture each colour might have also helps me when choosing yarns. Usually I start with random and broad ideas which I then narrow down as I develop a project. I am really looking forward to diving into designing my graduate collection, experimenting with different materials and processes.

How has this year changed your creativity or how you see the art industry changing moving forward?

Following the digitisation of almost everything during the pandemic, material objects are becoming increasingly redundant. I think this will repurpose our physical possessions, textiles will become more important in providing tactile and sensory experiences for us than for their functionality and fast fashion outcomes. Hopefully this will also slow down consumption of material products and lead to a more sustainable future for the textile industry.