Brooke Roberts: Knitting Brains Into Fashion

Brooke Roberts: Knitting Brains Into Fashion
|

At first glance, it's just a pretty pattern. Swirls and curves follow the sway of the female form. But when London knitwear designer Brooke Roberts explains what you're looking at, the slice of skull becomes apparent - the curve of the cranium, the dip of the eye socket the hips covering hips.

Led by science, and inspired by her work in London hospitals, Roberts work uses medical scans to inspire design that speaks to the cerebral.

She spoke to The Huffington Post whilst on a tour of Scotland's knitting mills where she is researching new knitting technologies: "I'm in the research phase of my new collection, and being in Scotland, I'm interested in the knitting and woven fabric technology here. I'm investigating Gore-tex, and how that can combine with knit, and the gore-tex seam sealing techniques used. There are also finishings applied to Gore-tex that could potentially be used on knitted fabrics."

Her form-fitted body con dresses are not out of place on a celeb starlet, but the tech that goes into them is astonishing compared to the common conception of the fashion design industry.

Pretty purple dresses are woven with steel and porcelain fibres, the result of complex machine programming that the designer does herself. Graphic black and white pieces are not random geometry, but are data from brain scans

Her next work will delve further into the world of medical knitwear, blending industrial techniques with high style.

"There is also a factory here knitting stents and valves for surgical purposes. This is a huge area of interest and I hope to gain an understanding of the technology and techniques used in order to inspire my work," she tells us.

Roberts ties to the medical come from her every day work. "My area of speciality is cardiac angiography, so I x-ray the blood vessels around the heart, and when a critical narrowing is found, it is treated under x-ray guidance with stents, like these. I'd like to understand the technology behind knitted stents and see how it could influence my knitwear techniques."

You could, next winter, be wearing a stent both in and out. But we won't tell if you don't.