About

MEET EMERGING DESIGNER, HOPE MACAULAY

"Hope Macaulay is an exciting and bold new luxury womenswear brand by an emerging Northern Irish designer. Hope creates large expressive collaged paintings and transforms them into prints, combined with detailed beadings and knit to create her garments. She also creates her own embellishments, inspired by her passion for ceramic making, using Fimo clay and various fabrics and beads combined together. Hope's graduate collection, A Surreal Rome, featured at Graduate Fashion Week, New Designers, Salon International and London Fashion Week, is not a representation of reality but a world in which you may find in your dreams, inspired by the history, myths and art of Rome. She created her own mythical beings in a hallucinatory world through large expressive paintings and distorted, collaged photographs. These have been combined into colourful busy prints, detailed beadings and chunky knits to create a powerful visual of A Surreal Rome within the garments. Hope Macaulay garments are busy, bold and colourful experiences, each telling a surreal story."

Hope is a 22 year old from Northern Ireland, who has always had a flare for art, fashion and textiles since a young age. Handmade craftsmanship has been important to Hope ever since studying A-Level Art & Design, where she developed a talent creating ceramic sculptures. After completing an Fashion Design Short Course at Central Saint Martins in 2015 and Art & Design Foundation course at the University for the Creative Arts, Epsom in 2016, Hope went onto study BA (Hons) Fashion Textiles: Print at University for the Creative Arts, Rochester, where she thrived and created her graduate collection 'A Surreal Rome' in 2018.

Inspired by a scary hallucinatory experience at the dentist when she was given 'laughing gas' as a child, Hope developed a fascination with the mind, distortion, the meaning of reality and the art of surrealism. Hope creates large expressive collaged paintings and transforms them into prints, combined with detailed beadings and knit to create her garments. Her garments are busy, bold and colourful experiences, each telling a surreal story. Hope also creates some of her own embellishments, inspired by her ceramic making past, using Fimo clay and various fabrics combined together.

Hope's internships have included Gareth Pugh and Roberta Einer, where she gained experience in the industry and strengthened her skills in pattern cutting, sewing and beading.

Hope's graduate catwalk collection has been created into a ready-to-wear collection and will be available to purchase on her online store very soon.