Crossbow lends Rachel a hand
29/09/2009
Crossbow Fashions, a specialist leather supplier in London’s East End, played an important role in helping designer Rachel Lamb make an impact at London Fashion Week in mid-September.
Ms Lamb, one of the first students to graduate from the new MA in Fashion course at Kingston University in the south-west of the city, developed a womenswear range called The Skin I Am In for her final project, and unveiled it at London Fashion Week.
Originally from Edinburgh, her inspiration for the range, which included structured leather pieces and corsetry, along with jumpsuits, dresses, tops, high-waisted trousers and shorts, was her own fair, Celtic complexion. In keeping with this, she chose pale porcelains, translucent nude tones, beiges, peach and red tones as the main colours and even went as far as commissioning a photographer at leading textile studio Forest Digital to take close-ups of her make-up free face, which she then transformed into minute squares of blush-coloured print.
With skin such a prominent focus for the collection, leather was always going to be one of the key components in the mix of materials involved, but Ms Lamb has admitted that the type of leather she wanted to work with presented particular challenges, which Crossbow helped her address. She explained: “The leather I used was almost as heavy as material used for saddlery and I needed to track down extra sturdy needles so I could piece each item together.”
She said after London Fashion Week that her aim was to work for a small, independent fashion label.
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