Frances Murphy

Prior to the RCA Frances Murphy worked in the luxury fashion and textiles industry for over 15 years selling her designs to high profile stores worldwide, including Selfridges, Liberty, Harvey Nichols, Lane Crawford in Hong Kong and Colette in Paris. In the world of fashion and textiles, she understands that although being creative is key, the development of technology, manufacturing and how this can impact on the world’s natural resources, in a more positive way, must be paramount to the sustainable future of the industry.

Her work concentrates on bringing traditional textiles and technology together. Research includes experimenting with 3D printed traditional material patterns such as lace.  Questioning how 3D printing could eventually reinvent our relationship with clothing and textiles. Looking at 3D printing, as a key development towards democratic manufacturing and design and challenging traditional production methods. It could be possible that 3D printing will be the direction of how the fashion and textiles industry will operate in the future. By enabling people – and brands – to “print” clothes to order, the whole process of clothing manufacturing could be reconfigured.