Wednesday 7 August 2013

Rachelle Francis : Fashion embroidery designer

Meet Rachelle. Someone who pushes the boundaries of embroidery into fabric manipulation and embellishment for the fashion industry. And it’s all done by hand. 


I know Rachelle through my stepsister-in-law, who was excited for us to meet as we’re both into hand embroidery. She also just happens to be a genuinely nice person. Based in London, UK, Rachelle creates “exclusive and directional embroideries, garment details and fashion concepts for the couture and designer market”, showing that there’s a whole lot more to hand embroidery than stem stitch. 


You won’t find a lot of pictures of her work online, unfortunately, because she has to keep her ideas all rather hush hush and exclusive to make her living selling them to the fashion houses of the world. But her client list is long and impressive: Chanel, Louis Vuitton, Marc Jacobs, Miu Miu, Calvin Klein, Donna Karan… the list goes on.




If you live in London or somewhere nearby though, keep tabs on Rachelle. She recently hosted two workshops at Fringe@Studio108 – for handsewn fabric flowers and a luxury smocked cushion – showing how to do a little of what she does. And hopefully there’ll be more in the future. It's innovative stuff.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

What stunning and unusual work.

Kelly Fletcher said...

It sure is, lots of creativity there!