Color & Trend Forecasting

Passionate about ideas, I've evolved a process to identify resonant, emerging design and lifestyle trends over years of on-the-ground research. I've logged my 10,000 hours in cataloging sub-cultures, uncovering insider knowledge, discovering unique and leading-edge creatives, seeking out wild and wonderful stimuli that can influence and inspire design initiatives and convert to brand/consumer relevance. 

Expert consultant to many leading color, trend and textile print design studios including Premiere Vision, Trend Union and Pecler. Deep experience identifying print, pattern, material and color trends and translating into design palettes, creative briefs and product stories. I especially enjoy analysis of lifestyle trends for fashion, accessories, street-style, home decor and interiors, pop-up retail, design, architecture, art, music and performance arts, experiential travel, luxury segments and curated experiences.

I’m big on stories, and storytelling, to convey ideas and experiences through words and pictures. I communicate through engaging visual frameworks, image boards and consumer insight content. 

Print, Pattern & Application

I see the world through a pattern lens. Exploring pattern through a broad spectrum of material processes can achieve very different looks - this synergy of pattern with surface texture informs much of my work. I'm drawn to the immediacy of designed patterns printed on textiles and the opportunities for creating complex color interactions and image layering. 

Trained as a traditional printed textile designer but professionally experienced with leading edge CAD and production process, I've hybridized my creative ideation to leverage both handmade and technology enabled designs. Deeply understanding the relationship between image, application and material enables a holistic view of what's possible and appropriate.  

Continually searching for unique pattern stories, I draw inspiration from a broad spectrum of sources, both historical and vintage, contemporary and futuristic. Geometric and floral, engineered and repeat pattern. My work in printed textiles has informed and provided leadership for in-house design studios for fashion brands, independent European print studios, textile trend publications and provided design direction for global textile suppliers.

Material Innovation & Design

Material design and textile innovation have been at the core of my career that has spanned footwear, apparel, accessories and artisan, from envisioning creative material design concepts, experimental development and into bulk production. My work has spanned the custom design of prints, textiles, leather, trims and hardware. 

My work spans a broad cross-section of materials: Denim innovation for Puma in partnership with Evisu, Japan. Small batch cashmere and tweeds for Paul Costelloe, Paul Smith and Woolmark. Vintage textile sourcing for Puma’s limited edition “Thrift” initiative. Custom fashion leather design and development for Noe, Cole Haan and Clarks with the most creative tanneries in Italy, Brazil and Korea. Textile design with leading French, Italian and Spanish fashion textile mills for Cole Haan and Puma. Engineered knit innovation in Japan and Korea for the Airpop smart mask. Ground breaking material process innovation for Philippe Starck and Plae sneakers pushing boundaries in molded, fused, heat treated and coated material processes.

Sneakers & Urban Sportswear

Together with Tony Bertone and Gavin Ivester, I led material design, color and trend direction to relaunch Puma in the early aughts. Our brand concept relied on a bold reframing of 'sport for fashion' that focused not on the culture of athletics, which was well covered in the market, but was instead inspired by juxtaposing iconic cultural movements together such as grass-roots movements in Jamaican reggae music, street art and experimental fashion. 

Our creative stories and designs were a melange of performance cues and street fashion influences, mixing materials and colors in unexpected ways, with signaling and dimensionalizing patterns across multiple products and categories. It was a very exciting time to be at Puma as we challenged the tactile language and visual vernacular of leading edge innovation, whether it was specialized performance equipment, frontier fashion or dynamic brand collaborations.

The sneaker industry provided a unique arena to explore a broad range of creative concepts. I subsequently drove Puma's Design Ethos into designer brand collaborations for Nuala by Christy Turlington, Philippe Starck, Alexander McQueen, Mihara Yasuhiro and the 96HR Capsule Collection which was the first cross-disciplinary collection of its kind for footwear, apparel and accessories.  

Fashion Accessories

Accessories has always been the perfect arena to combine my passion for fashion trends, materials and design. I’ve always been mad about bags!

As Director of accessories I've been responsible for women’s handbags and small leather goods, men's bags, luggage, sports bags, scarves, hats, gloves, belts, eyewear and fashion footwear. I brought innovative collections and new constructions to the portfolio by being a creative problem solver, defining brand strategy, positioning and look for accessories. I excel at envisioning and communicating creative concepts, interdisciplinary collaboration, inspiring, leading and aligning people and resources around the vision. Leading the product creation process from global market research, trend direction and concept through production. Expert in defining products with broad consumer appeal, creating on-trend, yet timeless, accessories collections that differentiate through unique shape, textile and leather stories. 

In 2009 I founded “Noe”, a contemporary artisan handbag brand, collaborating with global artisans to re-contextualize traditional motifs and textile techniques including hand embroidery & stamped leather into women’s bags. Noe was distributed in international boutiques until 2014.

Artisan Craft & Ethical Fashion

Vibrant, colorful, boldly patterned, full of texture, beautiful in their imperfection, truly unique and embedded with rich cultural stories, this is why I fell in love with indigenous artisan crafts and textiles. I continue to be inspired by the potential of world crafts to influence our taste levels, aesthetic choices, and influence consumer buying habits away from fast fashion into more socially conscious and impactful products.

This journey to discover and learn everything I can about artisan crafts, and to figure out where these crafts fit in the current fashion and retail landscape, has taken me to some of the most remote regions of the world where tribal cultures are intact and indigenous crafts are still practiced unchanged from previous generations. These crafts, though very traditional by nature, have intrinsic modern appeal and enormous potential for applications in contemporary fashion and interiors. 

Creating with artisans gives me the greatest pleasure and satisfaction, it is remarkable that even without a common language, we are able to share our passion for materials. We laugh, smile, share ideas, experiment and over many years have developed lifelong friendships. I have deep respect for the artisans cultural heritage, share their passion to explore and access new markets for their work and continue to be moved by the remarkable skill in their hands as I watch before my eyes the most basic of raw materials transformed into stunning textiles, natural fiber plant weaves and hand block prints.

Artisans, though very keen to sell their products in new channels, have great difficulty doing so. I have observed time and time again, the willingness of artisans to move their work forward, but very little opportunity to break this cycle. To achieve this, the artisans have to ensure their products are relevant to a western consumer and connect with current lifestyle trends. They must then find advocates who can connect and sell their work into new retail channels, while at the same time understanding the unique business problems and opportunities of the artisan sector - a very difficult and complex problem.

This is why I founded “Partisan Creative”, to advocate on the side of the artisans through a dual mission of design partnership and providing access to premium sales channels. Partisan’s work is through direct design collaborations with global artisans to adapt traditional materials & motifs into new product applications. Current projects in India, Africa, South East Asia, Central America, South America, the Caribbean, the Middle East and Europe.

Partisan Creative’s long term mission is the creation of an immersive, direct to consumer retail platform that in parallel to selling tells the stories behind the artisans work in a gallery setting that provides visibility for the makers.

Brand/Product Strategy & Insights

For five years I was based in Shanghai. During this time I consulted with global trend agencies and fashion lifestyle brands providing Emerging Markets Consumer Insights. From my early days on development trips to China I had always been curious about the rise of the middle class consumer - how do they respond to luxury, mass premium and mass appeal brands and how will the brands need to change to attract them? Getting to study the dynamic consumer markets of Asia, up close and personal, gave me an entirely different perspective on the pace of product and trend cycles, as well as deep insight into how brands abroad need to rethink positioning, product development and campaign creative.

The consumer/trend insights stories I developed and my expertise in creative brand collaborations (primarily from my time with Puma) were a key value proposition for both international fashion brands looking to enter China and for Chinese fashion brands expanding globally.

The bulk of my work concentrated on strategic brand design and product definition/planning for fashion and home, including envisioning unique retail experiences. This was a continuation of the work I had led for Puma, Cole Hann and Clarks which helped to define their product and brand identities.

This work continued at Airpop, where I combined my expertise in product strategy, fashion lifestyle trends, consumer insights, merchandising and materials to define a new category of Air wearables.