Katherine Roberts-Wood: Curious Perceptions

Repetition was the basis of Katherine Roberts-Wood’s graduate collection, which explores whether there is “some natural instinctive evolutionary reason to be attracted to recurring forms.” Roberts-Wood has produced visually complex structures, built up from recurring structures that occupy a space between the conceptual and the wearable. “I aim to balance complexity with a simple rule such as repetition,” she says. “To create an aesthetic that engages the wearer or viewer, with a focus on creating texture through structure in a way that is intriguing, curious and plays with senses and perceptions.”
Experimenting with bonded fabrics to obtain the stiffness, flexibility and structural properties needed for her vision, the designer says that choice of texture was vital throughout. Roberts-Wood studied medicine before entering fashion and there are strong elements of science and nature in her work. “The natural and the mathematical or scientific are rather inextricably linked,” she says. “With growth structures and fractals, an apparently natural and organic form is governed by precise mathematic rules. There’s something really interesting about a single structure being assembled and repeated to create something fantastical and unexpected.”