Emerging Feature: Karla Laidlaw
resilience theme
hope [həʊp]
about
Built from an experiment that has resonated with audiences around the world, Karla Laidlaw creates street couture. Creating ready-to-wear clothes approached from a bespoke attitude, all of Karla’s pieces are handmade, constructed of pieces of fabric that have been altered, chopped, changed, and reworked in a ritual of experimenting until the lines are clearly distilled into pieces. Every fabric in Karla’s collections will undergo experimentation before materialising in form or fit. With collaboration as essential to Karla Laidlaw’s DNA as her reworked fabrics, capsule collections are often released with emerging artists within her revolving communities.
connect
︎
object: healing warmth
photograph by: -
about
Lockdown enabled this emerging designer to turn an experiment into a fully fledged brand now stocked internationally. Reflecting upon this, whilst keeping with the sudden pace of running her business to heightened demand, Karla revisited the core of her ethos, her brand’s undeniably energetic DIY spirit, as well as her love for making fabrics her own.
A wall hanging is composed from felted fabrics left from her most recent collection. The fabric itself is handmade by Karla, with no machines used, enabling the designer control of the outcome of her experiment. The sun motif, a logo of her brand, appears in the hanging, offering light, warmth and healing for the home created during what may be remembered as the longest winter in Melbourne. For the designer, the hanging offered a symbol of hope, a constant reminder that there are always warmer months to come.
composition
100% mixed fibres
100% mixed fibres
made from
fabric remnants
fabric remnants
< back