Journal
Elsa Schiaparelli’s knitwear and the women who made it possible
I went to the Schiaparelli retrospective at the V&A last weekend and came home thinking not about the couture, but about the 1920s knitwear at the beginning of the show, and about how businesses actually start.
The official origin story, as with most origin stories, turns out to be simpler than the truth. When I started following the trail of who was actually involved in getting Schiaparelli’s business off the ground, I kept finding women who’d been described in a single word. Socialite. Buyer. Friend. Women who, when you look properly, turn out to have been doing something quite specific and quite important.
The biographer Anna Funder writes that whenever she comes across someone described that flatly in a historical source, she follows it, because nine times out of ten it leads to a woman who made something happen but didn’t get the credit for it. That’s exactly what I found here.
In this film I look at the years 1920 to 1929, the knitwear that launched the business, the Armenian refugee whose technique made the bow jumper possible, and the women around Schiaparelli who provided money, contacts, shelter and opportunity at the moments when she needed them most.
Marie Antoinette Style at the V&A: A Close Look at the Textiles
I went to this exhibition expecting to be mildly interested. Eighteenth-century French court life is not really my territory. Too gilded, too tragic, too far from the making practices I usually spend time with.
I came out genuinely fascinated.
Almost nothing in the exhibition is confirmed to have belonged to Marie Antoinette herself. What the V&A have done instead is gather textiles and dress from other collections that are close enough to what she would have worn, and the effect is remarkable. It stops being a relic show and becomes something full of life and extraordinary craft skill.
What I focused on
I decided to ignore shoes, fans, jewellery, and the execution galleries entirely, and spend my time with the fabrics and dress. There is a lot to look at: state dress with silver-wrapped embroidery so heavy it must have been nearly impossible to walk in; the painted warp silks she favoured for daily wear; a commission sample that makes you understand immediately why her annual dress budget topped the equivalent of £1,500,000
The film goes through the pieces in some detail.
The Gallery of photographs
I took a lot of close-up detail shots while I was there. The embroidery and fabric construction really only make sense at that scale. You can click through and browse at your leisure.
What Andy Goldsworthy’s Ferns Taught Me About Seeing
I stood there for longer than I probably should have, trying to capture what Goldsworthy had seen - the way these ferns wanted to curve, the particular shadow each frond cast, the rightness of their arrangement. This is what he does, what he’s always done: he sees what’s already there, waiting to be arranged. Not imposed on. Arranged.
And I think this is why his work matters so much to those of us who gather and make. He’s showing us that the materials themselves have wisdom. That our job isn’t to force them into shapes they don’t want to take, but to see what they’re already offering.
Inside The Studio, we’re exploring this kind of seeing through Threaded - gathering natural materials, making felt beads, learning to work with what each material offers rather than forcing it into predetermined shapes. It’s gentle, seasonal work. The kind Goldsworthy would recognize.
Rag Rugs, Remembered: Creativity, Memory, and the Quiet Legacy of Women’s Work
There’s something deeply evocative about a rag rug.
For me, they conjure childhood memories—of my gran cutting up old clothes in her Northeast home, of hands busy at the hearth as winter crept in. Every year, she’d make a new rug. Not as art, but as necessity. And yet, looking back, it was art. Quiet, domestic, fiercely resourceful art.
Rag rugs are humble. Scraps turned into something sturdy, beautiful, and useful. And lately, my fingers have been itching to make one. Partly due to the powerful exhibition I saw recently—Winifred Nicholson: Cumbrian Rag Rugs at the Tullie Museum in Carlisle—and partly because I’ve inherited my gran’s rug frame. A piece of family history, waiting to come alive again.
Tiger, worked by Janet Heap early 1960s
A Different Kind of Creativity
The exhibition explores how Winifred Nicholson—a respected artist—collaborated with rural Cumbrian women from the 1920s through the 1980s to create striking rugs. Though Nicholson provided loose design ideas, the true artistry lay in the hands of makers like Mary Buick. Her work, full of precision and pictorial nuance, told stories through stitches. Yet in art history, her name is often lost behind Nicholson’s.
This discrepancy matters.
It reflects how society has long undervalued women’s domestic creativity. Rug-making, quilting, embroidery—seen as craft, not art. Functional, not visionary. And yet, these works were acts of deep care, resourcefulness, and yes—creative genius.
Sheep, worked by Mary Bewick to design by Winifred Nicholson 1960s
Making With What You Have
British rag rugs evolved from scarcity. No pre-planned palettes or bought-in fabrics—just old coats, worn sheets, a t-shirt you no longer needed. In the Northeast, these were called clippy mats or proggy rugs, and they followed simple geometric designs. My gran always used diamonds—drawn on old hessian sacks, filled in with whatever colours were on hand.
In contrast, American traditions turned rug making into a designed-from-scratch craft. But in the UK, it was about making do. And in that “making do,” women made beauty.
Tractor and Haycart, worked by Mrs Hall to design by Jovan Nicholson 1967
Creativity as Reclamation
Watching the exhibition’s rugs—some damaged, worn, obviously lived with—was unexpectedly moving. They hadn’t been preserved behind glass. They’d been stepped on, warmed toes, sat beside fires. They were loved, and used, and that’s part of their magic.
It reminded me that creativity doesn’t need polish. It needs space. Time. Willing hands.
And it reminded me that our making—however small or irregular—is a way of reclaiming ourselves. Especially for women whose time, historically and still, has so often been claimed by others.
What’s Next
I’ll be making my own rug soon. I don’t have long strips of wool, so it’ll be a clippy mat—shaggy, abstract, full of texture and colour. I’ll be working with what I have, like my gran did. Like so many did.
If you’ve made a rug, or remember someone who did, I’d love to hear. If you’ve been to the exhibition, let me know what stayed with you. Creativity is always richer when it’s shared.
Finding Time to Make: What Barbara Hepworth Taught Me
About 15 years ago, we rented an Airbnb in Hampstead. It was a small place—just one room, really—but with a tiny garden out front. Even for a few days in London, I need a bit of green.
It sat at the end of a narrow pedestrian path, a row of small, light-filled cottages originally built as artist studios. As we were handed the keys, the owner said, “Lots of artists lived here in the 1930s.”
Later, I looked it up. We were staying in Number 7. It turned out to be the former home of Barbara Hepworth. Not just any artist—but one of the few internationally recognised women artists of her generation. A quiet kind of extraordinary.
Her life in that cottage was intense. She had a young son, an unconventional relationship, and then unexpectedly gave birth to triplets. Four children under five. A partner drifting between two homes. A coal-hole-turned-sculpture studio. It’s no surprise she fell into postnatal depression.
But her friends helped. The babies were cared for. She recovered. And her work continued. What struck me most was not just that she kept working—but how she worked.
She didn’t speak of domestic life as something that competed with creativity. For her, they were interwoven. Interdependent. And she believed that being creative every single day—no matter how small—was essential.
A sketch before bed. Arranging pebbles on the windowsill. Picking flowers from the garden.
It didn’t need to be grand. Or finished. Or public. It just needed to happen.
That changed how I thought about creativity. I’d always believed it only counted if it could be shared, exhibited, or sold. But what if it’s simply a thread that runs through the day?
Now I always have something small and steady on the go. At the moment, it’s a needlepoint cushion stitched with naturally dyed threads from The Studio. Each square takes about five minutes. Sometimes I do one. Sometimes three. But I keep the thread moving.
This rhythm—the quiet persistence of daily making—is what I want to share. Not a system. Not a productivity hack. Just space to remember what creativity feels like, even in the middle of life.
On Thursday 12 June at 11am (UK time), I’m hosting a free one-hour masterclass called About Time. It’s for anyone who wants to return to their creative self—gently, without pressure.
There will be a replay for all who register.
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