Designer and maker Morganna Murphy hoards, gathers and curates memories and materials to create effervescent collections of everything from wearable comforting creatures to truly desirable clothing. Only recently graduated from NCAD and snapped up by the hotbed of young creative talent, Atelier 27, we pop in to find out what Morganna is making next.
What do you make?
I’m always making, so it can be anything. I started with accessories, necklaces and bracelets and things, which was good because I didn’t have a lot of patience, so I could make something and say ‘that’s big enough to be a necklace’! I studied Textile Art & Artefact at NCAD so for my degree I got slightly bigger with my pieces and decided to make bags. I liked that it was a thing to behold and look at as opposed to jewellery you wear, but I really always wanted to get into making clothing.
After college I needed a little break so I just worked and saved. I bought a few meters of fabric here and there, and after Christmas I decided to start making a fashion collection for SS15. I have so much random stuff at home, when I go home my mum gets me to watch hoarders programmes, she worried I’m turning into a hoarder, it’s that bad! I have this big cupboard filled with materials and I started to pull out my favourite bits and colours, and started to arrange them into combinations that I liked. So what I was going for was classic simple silhouettes but with intense detail, I specialised in embroidery in college and I really like being able to see all of the hours that go into things.
I solve through making, I don’t really draw things out all the time, although for my AW15 collection that’s coming up I did draw a recurring motif for me that’s a kind of splodgey slimy shape that runs over the body in lots of different materials. I have things in my head that I want to see in real life, I want to get as good as I can possibly get at making things, I want it to look intense and really laboured.
It sounds cool! Tell us about your AW15 collection?
Well the first piece, what I call the ‘Slime Dress’, was largely to do with a childhood memory. There’s this river in Dundalk that’s a really narrow, really stagnant strip of water, and I was in town with my mum and I just remember walking by and there was this man who had obviously fallen into the river. He was shlomping along and he had algae all over him, dripping off his arms and trailing all over the place, and he just looked like a slime man! The slime dress is a more glamorous version of that.
How did you begin to stock at Atelier 27?
This was while I was still at NCAD, around the middle of third year. It started when I made a collection of accessories called Environments, which was about creating the environment I wanted to be in, through words and little figures. So I brought them in to Atelier 27 and luckily Ruth [Ní Loinsigh] liked them. It’s been really great here, like I had this piece that was a giant gold knitted medallion and I liked seeing people pick it up and try it on and smile. It’s a reaction I get a lot and it’s really nice to see people smile when they look at my work.
You do show quite a large breadth of skills – is there one process you like most?
I feel like I have most of the textile processes down, apart from crochet! I like things that are comforting, so I do a lot of rolled, padded, soft chain. Like for my slime dress there’s chunky leather layered over mesh, next to sequins all in greens. I like to combine materials and things together – fishing tubing makes really great stuff, and straws make great beads. There’s a lot of embroidery, knitting, crochet, coiling, basket-weaving, and putting together of stuff. That’s how they evolve, I don’t like there to be any boundaries with materials. I’m always gathering, and sometimes that might only be a small amount of something, but I do like to play with limited things, and to find out what I can make out of the limits of what I have.
Morganna Murphy is stocked at Atelier 27, Drury Street, Dublin 2, for more see morganna-m.wix.com/morganna-murphy
Words: Honor Fitzsimons
Photos: Alex Sheridan
