With a keen eye for texture and concept, Abigail Warren is currently furthering her studies during her final year at Nottingham Trent University reading Fashion Knitwear Design and Knitted Textiles.
Abigail spent her last year working in Hong Kong for the Global Knitwear Giant, Cobalt until Summer 2019, before returning back to Nottingham Trent. In addition to this experience, Abigail was recently awarded the Rouse Award from The Worshipful Company of Framework Knitters.
Abigail’s collections include methods that enable her to incorporate a sustainable element into her designs, with this particular collection doing so through the re-construction and repurposing of charity shop pieces, and embellishing with recycled materials.
Using key themes from her research, her family’s wedding photographs in particular, Abigail explored various different techniques such as collaging, layering, embellishment and knitted structures; achieving methods that give her collection a personal feel. Through the use of fabric manipulation, Abigail has been able to create a collection that explores fluid movement in an organic and unique way. She planned to use her collection as a story to show how every love story erects differently, but are all grounded on one solid motion - love.
She does this by using simple knitted fabrics, mostly pre-loved garments, to form the base of her garment, mirroring the grounding of love, before knitting and manipulating embellishment to create an organic surface, to reflect the unique process we all go through to find love. The main inspiration for this collection came from her experience as a wedding photographer, as well as her family’s wedding albums. From being exposed to multiple weddings, Abigail quickly realised that they are all embellished to the couples personal taste, but she knew at the end of the day, no matter how each wedding differs to another, each event is still celebrating the same thing - love. Therefore she wanted to illustrate and produce a collection that embodied uniqueness and grounding.
