Creative Process - Morag Seaton

There seems to be no agreed set of stages in the creative process that artists or designers go through to create their work. Some talk of listening to their hunches, researching around the subject, letting their ideas develop and very importantly, knowing when they are done. Others mention that the creative process is constant problem solving. I have spoken to two artists about their own creative processes and I have noticed some commonalities to my emerging style of creative process.

Morag Seaton is a Scottish garment designer, illustrator and writer specialising in abstract tailoring, functional detail and environmental solutions for fashion design. She is also my niece.

Morag graduated from Glasgow School of Art in 2018 with a first class degree. She has also had success in a series of awards which point to her as someone to watch in the future – four first prize awards within the college in 2018 for sustainability, dissertation, design and writing, and runner up in Vivienne Westwood’s Sustainable and Ethical Award 2018. She was also shortlisted for the Scottish Craft Award 2019 at the Dundee V&A. I also attribute Morag as the person who suggested I go to college and study art!

Morag has a comprehensive website detailing her projects which I have examined. On her website there is a link to an article by GS of A Sustainability entitled Morag Seaton – Fashion Design. There it talks of Morag’s collection of clothes called “Memories of Dress”. Morag has conducted a series of interviews with people about their most valued clothes. These interviews have been illustrated and made into a book called “Garment Stories”. Each piece in the “Memories of Dress” collection is developed from these stories and takes on key elements of comfort, security, identity and childhood memory. The aesthetic draws from hand-me-downs, abstract artwork and 1960’s interiors. She has added functional accessories. This has resulted in a design that considers wearability, function and desirability. She has also considered the emotional durability of the garment as well as physical durability. If we have an emotional connection to our clothes we are less likely to replace them impulsively, breaking the cycle of the constant consumption and disposal of clothing.

 
the constant consumption and disposal of clothing.

Morag’s driving force has been the need to care for the environment. The waste developed by the fashion industry is well documented and Morag seeks to find solutions to this. She has used pattern cutting techniques that have reduced waste, she sources reject materials and uses low impact fibres. She also uses sewing techniques which encourage durability.

Morag is also designing bags which utilise offcuts, post production waste and fabrics with low environmental impact. Each piece is inspired by a person and/or a snippet of a conversation about our most loved clothes.

Morag currently works as a designer for Petit Pli, a company which creates clothing that grows with the child (9 months to 4 years) from recycled water bottles. It was founded to address the wasteful nature of fashion and has drawn inspiration from aerospace engineering.
I interviewed Morag over Facetime to explore further her creative process. We focussed on her Memories of Dress collection and Garment Stories.

Morag was given free rein for this project (with the exception that she had to make a collection of clothes) however there were things that she knew she wanted to incorporate into the project. She wanted it to be something personal as she said she didn’t see the point of making something if it didn’t mean something. By it being personal it allowed her collection to have a story. The other key element she wanted to incorporate was her wish for her project to address the huge issues of waste in the fashion industry. Morag is also interested in anthropological issues in particular people’s relationship to their clothes.

Morag started by looking at old family photos. She made drawings from these photos but she knew she didn’t have enough to inspire a collection. She was inspired by a book by Professor Kate Fletcher – “Craft of Use” which looks at why we keep things and why we value things more than others. She started to interview family and friends and talked to them about their clothes and the value they put in their clothes. By this stage she knew she was heading in the right direction.

When asked about her influences of abstract art and 1960s interiors she talked of being hugely influenced by Joan Miro particularly after she went to his museum in Barcelona. She loves his abstract images – the colour and the shapes - so much they impacted her final results. Her love of 1960’s interiors is largely based on the furniture fabric and she uses a lot of heavy wools in her clothes, but she was inspired by the amazing images of how artists at that time visualised the future.

 
I asked about her decision making around colour and we discussed the red outfit in particular. The red was inspired by one of her granny’s outfits she wore to a granddaughter’s wedding. Her granny spoke with so much enthusiasm about the colour. However Morag needed to also find the fabric for her outfits – one of the reds she found in a waste bin in a factory.

Regarding the shape of the red outfit Morag said she was inspired by Miro, Bonnie Cashin (an American Designer 1907-2000) and Bernat Klein (a Serbian textile designer based in the Borders b.1922 d.2014). The red outfit kept on developing and it went through 10-12 different changes until it settled into its final outfit. She wanted it to be a show piece and the way she knew it was done was when she put the model in it for the first time and she just “felt something”, she just knew it was there. She said the outfit was also technically correct and finished.

 
I asked about her decision to not make her outfits more ornate and complex. She talked of being very tired of fashion not being wearable as it is too fussy and frivolous. She wanted to create something that people could wear and was comfortable. She also said that making “simpler” or more minimalist things is in fact harder and she wanted a challenge.

I asked her about her decision not to patch offcuts to make the outfit as that would be easier to source the fabrics. She said some of her accessories were made with things like old shirts however she said she didn’t want her clothes to look upcycled/patched together – she wanted to show that clothes could look like luxury items however be better for the environment.

 
I asked about her fabric selection. She uses a lot of Scottish linen and got lots of offfcuts at the Kirkcaldy factory. Linen uses a lot less water in its production than cotton. She has a preference for natural fibres as in her interviews people talked about e.g. their old wool coats and favourite silk dresses – these items were considered to be more valuable to them and their coats were used for years.

I went on to ask about her bags and asked specifically about a yellow bag she had made. She said that bag was inspired by her friend Alice who had all these yellow accessories and whose mother had a yellow coat.

I asked about the ability of clothes to grow with the person (required if the garments are to last a long time and women’s tendency to grow bigger with age and child birth). She made some allowances for this e.g. the navy coat has an adjustable belt and there are large seams in areas particularly around the bottom so they could be self altered. However she spoke of being more conscious of this as an issue after she started working for Petit Pli.

Morag evaluated her collection throughout the portfolio process and she started to pin point then what she could have done differently. However the focus was for her more what she would do next, rather than having any regret with hindsight.

Morag started her creative process with a blank sheet and to that she added certain fundamentals that she wanted to incorporate – something personal and sustainable and she recognised the principles she wanted to keep to – reduce fashion waste. She recognised what she liked and what influences her design – abstracts and 1960’s interiors. She researched around her developing ideas. She just started drawing (family photos) to further develop her ideas. Her project developed into two separate strands –the book and the clothes, however they were linked to create the whole. When she felt she had enough to enter the production phase she sourced her material and worked on her designs – however accepted that these designs evolved over time. She constantly reviewed her pieces until she felt that they were done. She evaluated her progress all the way through but she did this more though eyes that would think how to do things differently next time –she accepted and enjoyed the learning curve of the project.

There are certain things that I identify with in Morag’s thinking. Her need to work on projects that are personal to her, whether that be connected to relationships or beliefs, is similar to my needs. Her principles of reducing waste and seeing beauty and use in things people have discarded is important to me. I am less defined in knowing what influences me and what I like – I like lots of things however as my experience grows I am more aware of what I don’t like. I also don’t adopt the “if only I had done that…” attitude – I like being more pragmatic and positive. Although I sometimes think I have a short attention span I accept processes take time and they need to be worked through in a systematic manner, trouble shooting and questioning all the way. I am getting better at judging when I should stop however my instinct regarding this is not as strong as Morag’s who could just feel it.

The most important lesson I have learned from Morag is to work on things that you are highly motivated about.

 I attended the final year fashion shoe in 2018 where Morag's collection was shown.