Iona Crawford interview: Home spun

Published on Sunday 14 June 2009 19:41

NEXT Sunday, the great and the good of Scottish fashion will gather at Stirling Castle for the fourth annual Scottish Fashion Awards. Celebrating the best that Scotland's fashion industry has to offer, many of the nominees who hail from Scotland – including Christopher Kane, Graeme Black and Louise Gray – will be there, having travelled up from London, since most Scottish fashion graduates make a beeline for the capital as soon as they get their hands on their diploma.

Not so Iona Crawford: she will make the short trip to the awards from her studio on her parents' farm, just outside Stirling. Nominated in the Young Designer of the Year category, the 23-year-old is feeling rather smug that, for once, she's the one who's just a quick taxi ride home from a major fashion event. "Everyone's crashing at mine," she says gleefully. "It will be a bit of a novelty to go to something like this and know that my own bed is just a few miles away."

After graduating with first-class honours from Edinburgh College of Art in 2007, Crawford chose not to follow the rest of her classmates to the Big Smoke, but instead returned to her parents' farm and set up her studio in an outbuilding once used to bruise barley. Petite, with a shock of short, white-blonde hair, today she is wearing one of her own designs – an angular little black dress, which, she confesses, is causing her to overheat on what is the hottest day of the year so far.

"My inspiration is here in Scotland, my garment manufacturers are based here and that's important to me, keeping it all quite Scottish," she says from behind a pair of enormous sunglasses. "Japan is a big market for me and they've got a real appreciation for heritage and quality of finish, so working from Scotland is almost a selling point for me."

Crawford's high-end womenswear is conceptual yet always wearable. She fits many of her toiles on her own body and likes to design for realistic, womanly curves. At the centre of each collection is a statement showpiece – in the case of the current collection, a dramatic evening dress with a laser-cut back inspired by seaweed – and her pieces tend to be dark, heavily tailored and architectural. Her sculptural jackets, dresses and blouses are refreshingly grown-up, and are inspired by the colours found in Scotland's rural landscapes.

Many Scottish fashion designers simply find that it's too difficult to stay here because so many of the industry's resources, from suppliers to pattern cutters, are in London. But while Crawford travels down to London occasionally and can see a future in which her label goes international, she has found that almost all of her practical needs are met north of the border. Leaving Scotland would mean leaving behind her source of inspiration.

"What I aim to do is to challenge traditional outlooks," she says. "Yes, I use Scottish fabric, I'm based in Scotland and I like to shoot outdoors in a traditional Scottish setting, but the garments themselves are quite conceptual. It would be easy to just look at the setting and the fabrics and think, 'Oh, it's Scottish,' but what I'm trying to do is alter the way Scottish fashion is looked at. If it doesn't look 'Scottish' that's good, because that's the way it should be – rather than tweeds and kilts and haggis and Arran jumpers. But then within those things there is inspiration, too. I always include an element of hand knitting in each collection, for example." While she's determined to always have Scotland as her base, Crawford is becoming increasingly frustrated at the lack of support she receives in her home country, compared to her peers who have moved to London.

"Young designers need encouragement and business support, but financial support is crucial," she says. "I've been put through the mill a few times by the Scottish Arts Council; there's just nowhere in their remit for fashion. Alex Salmond is trying to promote international export, but the Scottish Arts Council is only interested in crafts makers.

"I'm an artist as much as anybody else – and I'm going to stamp my feet as much as possible, especially since I am Scottish and I am based here, and I want to really take my label and present it on an international platform and take Scotland with me when I do that."

Having grown up in Stirling (for which she has recently been made an ambassador) and travelled the country extensively in childhood as part of a Gaelic choir, Crawford knows Scotland better than most people her age, finding inspiration everywhere from the Western Isles to the cities. She photographs her collections in rural Scottish settings and uses traditional Scottish fabrics and techniques with a contemporary twist; her pieces feature eccentric details in laser-cut leather, cashmere and merino wool.

Described by Vogue as "one to watch", Crawford was sponsored by the Scottish cashmere company Johnstons of Elgin in her final year of college and has enjoyed a strong relationship with the company ever since. "I suddenly had thousands of pounds worth of cashmere to work with for my final collection, so that completely upped my game," she says. "The quality, the finishings, the pattern cutting, everything had to be immaculate because with a fabric like that you don't want to make any mistakes."

"We have watched Iona's career develop and flourish with great interest; it has been a pleasure and a privilege to help her with sponsorship and business advice," says James Dracup, the managing director of Johnstons of Elgin. "We're proud to have been able to support her in the early stages of her career. Scotland has a tradition and history and heritage in producing talented, independent designers and we believe it is essential that manufacturers and designers work in harmony for the benefit of Scottish industry."

Crawford's designs are currently stocked at Start, a high-end boutique in London's fashionable Shoreditch neighbourhood owned by Brix Smith-Start, a co-presenter on Gok's Fashion Fix, as well as Concrete Wardrobe and Totty Rocks in Edinburgh, Kirsten Stewart Designs in Kirkwall and online at www.velvetboutique.co.uk. She shows her collections twice a year at Japan Fashion Week in Tokyo, where her traditional fabrics and contemporary techniques are well received.

For next season she will collaborate with the Japanese artist Yukako Sakakura, and hopes to find time in her schedule to travel to Japan for a holiday, since she's fallen in love with their culture – and their similarities to the Scots. "I find Japan such an inspirational country and I think there are some really interesting parallels between the Scots and the Japanese," Crawford says. "Both are very humble, modest, great fun and love to laugh."

While she's beginning to look further afield for design inspiration, Crawford insists it will always be Scotland that really gets her creative juices flowing. "I think that I need a lot of peace to be able to work, which I get here," she says. "Even just driving around Scotland for business meetings, it's so inspiring to see the seasons change. Scotland's islands, its history… I take a lot of my inspiration from photographers who've focused on life in Scotland in the 1950s. You can research all these things from London, of course, but it's a lot easier to engage with and relate to them when you're here."

For now, she's looking forward to next week's awards, and having everyone back to her place for a change. "Yes, it'll definitely be a party back at mine," she laughs. "It's going to be a great night."