Meet Abby Gaskin, Redress Design Award 2019 finalist

The Lavish, multi-layered wigs worn in the 1780s by powerful French women, such as Marie Antoinette, provided the inspiration for Abby Gaskin’s modular competition collection, ‘Indigo Blues’. Zero-waste design was a driving force from the get-go, dictating silhouettes and techniques. “I explored zero-waste pattern making, eliminating odd shapes and combining them with hand-knit or woven pieces to ultimately create one zero-waste garment,” she says. One method in particular offers garments multiple second lives: up-cycled bedsheets and natural fibres are handwoven into unique textiles and used to create simple rectangles, which are then hand-linked with looped yarn. “I enjoy solving problems,” explains Abby, who studies Fashion Design at the Parsons School of Design in New York.

“Once I discovered that fashion design gives me a creative platform to do this, I knew this is what I should be doing.” In ‘Indigo Blues’, the rectangles can be taken apart and reassembled to build new shapes or functional accessories such as tote bags. “Every time I develop a collection,I discover new methods of transferring my abstract thoughts into physical realities,” says Abby. “Even the knit can be undone and re-knit to make completely new garments.” She believes the fashion industry needs more transparency. “I’d like consumers to know where their clothing is made, what it’s made of, and who made it. I’m a sustainable designer because it is my responsibility to demonstrate to - and hopefully inspire - other designers to create with the prospering of our planet in mind. There’s no time for us to reconsider why sustainable fashion is necessary. We must share and compare our work in order for life as we know it to endure.”

Featured