How Designers Are Getting Inventive With Arts And Crafts Skills To Create New Fashions

How Designers Are Getting Inventive With Arts And Crafts Skills To Create New Fashions

THE line between art and fashion is often blurred, or at times non existent, with much haute couture fashion certainly describable as works of art and with a growing emphasis on handmade fashion also starting to compete with the High Street, crafty creations are also working their way into the fashion scene.One example of this is Towcester designer Lizzi Bucklow-Holt’s collection of accessories and children’s wear, BizziZizzi, featuring many ways to get creative with your look.

Among Lizzi’s crafty range are children’s clothes inspired by fictional characters, and creative clay buttons and beads, hats and crochet fascinators.I have been been crafting one thing or another since I was really little,said the 41-year-old mum to three.I was the child trying to create things out of the wrapping paper rather than looking at the presents.I have practically tried every craft over the years, teaching myself through reading books, going to workshops, YouTube...

Crafts were always my hobby, but when I turned 40, I started to reassess the priorities in my life and wanted to try and make that hobby into a business.”BizziZizzi started in April, and is now stocked in A Most Marvellous Place to Shop and sold through the website www.bizzizizzi.co.uk.It has also featured on Kirstie Allsopp’s ‘Homemade Home.

I tend to create things that are really colourful, as well as looking at the seasons coming up and things that are on trend.
I do some styles of crochet slippers and I’m going to be do an Ugg boot style in those, which is obviously picking up on a very popular trend.But I also do more classic things like a dolly shoe style.

I also take inspiration from fiction. I do A Hungry Caterpillar outfit for kids...I can’t seem to make enough of those.I am also looking at doing a Where’s Wally? and Dennis the Menace outfit.

I do a lot of baby things, which take quite a lot of time to make, but I think that make them more special.I hope the things that I make can be kept and passed on.I create buttons and beads from Polymer Clay, and although I don’t make jewelry from them, I sell them to other people who do like Fifth Element.

The buttons are unusual and a great way to jazz up an outfit or make something a bit more unusual.I hate throwing things away, so if you can add something and make something a little bit new with a small change that’s great.I made some Union Jack buttons, which have been really popular with all the events going on this year.

If you like Lizzi’s creations, there may be a chance to pick-up some of her creative skills in the future I would like to start teaching some courses about how use Polymer Clay, so that people can make some of their own things, which I’m thinking of doing in September.