With a strong connection to her Welsh coastal roots and a passion to tell a narrative of place and community, Alice Smith’s final graduate collection explores coastal industry decline, industrial livelihoods and documents real lives within the local fishing industry. Alice utilises waste outdoor materials, making particular use of redundant sails and spinnakers. Her use of these materials are part of her connection and exploration to the narrative of place.

The collection combines abstract repetition and intricate hand drawn grid structures as well as focusing on the detailing of the sail itself as part of the drawing and print placement aesthetic. Material play is explored using techniques such as extreme quilting, layering, screen-printing and stitch whilst also incorporating a range of functional fastenings such as rope, eyelets, velcro and strapping. The final collection freely explores the concepts of assembly and disassembly, adjustability, attachment and how these functions can be embedded within the design itself.