L’Óreal Creative Award Winner Sarah McCormack on how designing is the perfect place to store her emotional baggage.
Perfect: How would you define fashion?
Sarah McCormack: I see fashion as a mirror reflection of the world around us, it is, on one level, an individual visual signifier that expresses a desire to fit in and vice versa. It feels like a fairly prescriptive description but I consider it just a material embodiment of how you wish to define yourself in the world. I feel as we become more sentient and evolved mentally, we become more alien to the limits of the human body. I like the idea of decorating and modifying accordingly, editing the external shell that you don’t really get to choose, and the clothing you wear is one way of doing that.
Perfect: What lead you to realise that fashion design was your career path?
Sarah McCormack: Rather than a career path it feels like a very natural progression for me. I think very simply I was obsessed with the idea of transformation for all number of reasons, not just of myself but of the surrounding world. I always liked to zoom in, be so focused on something tiny that my eyes couldn’t fall out into the periphery. This is something that has manifested into the kind of hyper detailed work I make, it’s closing off and zooming in like a microscope. Going into and forming other worlds. The idea of making something new feels like an exciting form of problem solving, like some form of alchemy. And I just so happen to love clothes and bodies and so I want to make clothes for people, but so easily could apply the way of working to dressing a chair or a tree.
Perfect: What are you biggest sources of inspiration when designing?
Sarah McCormack: I think maybe I am way too emotional and need a healthy place to put all this baggage. Perhaps lame to admit that but I can never really answer this kind of question as I just don’t have any formula or proper approach to inspiration. It’s quite spontaneous and fuelled from the inside. Like a massive stew filled with thoughts and experiences that don’t really have words or names to relate to yet. I am always feeling very existential and maladapted to modernity in many ways and so continually find myself trying to grapple with it, or trying to work with this feeling. Mainly, I feel like this unevolved ape person in a super adapted digital world. I also feel it gives me some sort of kick to nosedive into stupidly arcane ideas that might appear to make no sense, like Fibronacci style things applied to fabric. There is no feeling quite like the nonsensical, an elastic brain feeling that dodges logical construct.
Perfect: How would you define your personal approach to constructing a garment?
Sarah McCormack: A series of trial and error, layering, adding and subtracting. The kind of hand sewn pieces I make are constructed on mannequins, are usually completely hand sewn except for lining and small details that I use machine for. I like to build up and work ontop of base constructions. It’s probably more similar to sculpting and painting in terms of the layering and adding, as opposed to any traditional pattern cutting techniques associated with clothing construction. The one off pieces are very time consuming, and it’s not a sustainable way of living! Harking back to my feeling of being inadapted, I feel as though the organic approach to creating clothing might not be destined for a business oriented universe.
Perfect: What is the most valuable lesson you have learnt since completing your Fashion Design Masters?
Sarah McCormack: Working solo on commission based work, I’ve learnt so many lessons this year. After every job there I find myself standing (or lying) there, burnt out, saying ‘this won’t happen next time’. I guess the main things I’ve learnt is to carve an end point or make schedules so I don’t get lost in perfectionism and whimsy, Realise my own worth, Say NO to (some) things, actually rest or you will have a breakdown. Also I now know that commission and replication isn’t for me and that I want to be working on new stuff on my own terms. But that has financial limitations and so I will drift along until I can afford to go without!!
Perfect: With successes like joint winner of the L’Oréal Professionnel Creative Award and being a Sarabande Foundation scholar, how has this positioned you towards your future?
Sarah McCormack: I guess there is some sort of validation in winning an award, it can give you confidence to keep going without all the insecurity and doubt that often plagues and masks progress. It can be so daunting putting work out into the world that once felt so personal, and there is some sense of accomplishment in knowing it has been positively recognised or that it resonates with others. Sarabande has been such a huge support, they paid for my MA as well as contributing towards my living costs while I was studying. They also provide a lot of support/a studio space at some point. It definitely helps to have financial backing and expertise when you are floating along in a very uncertain way with limited funds to evocate ideas/exist. I think scholarships are crucial in dismantling elitist hierarchies in art education, and allowing for an uprise of sorts. Otherwise it remains extremely tepid which is just so visible in art schools, especially in London…
