W/C 04.03.19
9. Chasing Perfection |
Weekly Event: |
'What design practice means to me?' - a talk by Rachael Sleight
This week one of our tutors, Rachael Sleight, spoke about her design career and the journey that lead to her to start her bespoke leather handbag & accessories brand, Burnbank. After graduating she moved to London and spent time designing and developing accessories, lighting and furniture collections in house for Habitat and Conran.
Rachael spoke about her work with Stylus, an innovation research and advisory firm. She sold me on the importance of life long learning. The researching and writing of reports keeps her up to date with the latest innovations and important trends which she is able to apply in her own design practice and teaching. I think we’re similar in that she said she’d get bored if she settled and just worked on one thing. She works on a combination of design commissions, reports for Stylus, teaching at GSA and her own business. I think this variety is really beneficial to her work and results in a well-informed, well rounded designer. As she spoke her passion for materials and timeless design became clear. She left London to get out of the cycle of retail; starting to uncomfortable with unnecessary and unsustainable seasonal changes.
Her newest venture, Burnbank is the definition of long lasting design. Her newest venture, Burnbank is the definition of long lasting design. She uses leather; a material I am quite indecisive about, and surprised about a champion of sustainability using. I wrote about some of the problems with leather in this recent post. She justified her use of the material by calling it a by-product of the meat industry, which I can’t agree with. I can however get on board with the idea that she is creating life long pieces – perhaps it is more sustainable to buy one leather handbag that lasts 30 years than go through 20 pleather ones in that time. Burnbanks also use vegetable tanned leather – a "chromium-free" method, that doesn’t have the same harmful chemicals plaguing most of the fashion industry. It was amazing to hear her speak about it, showing us material samples and prototypes. Her work is beautiful, with amazing attention to detail that could only be achieved through painstaking dedication. She works with the customer throughout the design process to create incredibly thought out, bespoke pieces. Rachael is clearly a perfectionist – perhaps you have to be to create such high quality products. She shows us a laptop case she has been working on for a customer that slots perfectly inside their Burnbank handbag. To the rest of the room it looks perfect. But she is quick to point out that one side needs unpicking and re-stitching as she had tried using a sewing machine. The machine just doesn’t achieve as good a finish on both sides as hand stitching. I’m not sure any customer would notice the difference, but I have a huge amount of respect for Rachael for having such high standards. Standards so high that I’m sure she should be charging twice as much as she is for her work. Check out Burnbank's instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/burnbankleather/
|