"And what do you do?"

Recent and ongoing changes in the direction of my creative business have led to some pondering on how best to describe what I am, and what I do…

You know the scene, it’s a social or formal setting, with no visual references to your work and what you do. It can be a fraught question for many people! You want to convey accurately and concisely what you do, or indeed what you are, ideally without it becoming a lecture or powerpoint presentation.

Early in my career I would have answered simply ‘I’m a milliner’ (at least, once I felt confident and experienced enough to claim the title).  As my practice evolved over the years, I found myself adding caveats in order to conjure up a visual image of the hats, such as, ‘but the hats I make are for men and women and are for everyday, rather than for Ascot or weddings’. Sometimes, to try to mitigate the reductiveness of this, I would add something about my pattern-cutting, or that they were ‘special’ everyday hats..

After launching the lightshade range, for a while it became more difficult to answer… Most often I would say ‘designer-maker’ and when inevitably asked what it was that I designed and made, the answer would be a slightly random-sounding ‘hats and lightshades’. Sometimes I would add that I was exploring other mediums as well, with the rather inelegant phrase ‘taking my work more in an art direction’.

I have always been fascinated by the power-play and intersections between fine art, design and craft. Like many other designer-makers and craft practitioners, I would previously have baulked at the idea of describing myself as an artist, fine or otherwise. But I have tried on the mantle of artist, or more specifically, textile artist, and find that I like it!

So (for now at least), my answer is ‘milliner and textile artist’.