Behind the seams: Fashion and Textile Courses with Curriculum Leader Isatu Taylor

We caught up with Isatu Taylor, Curriculum Leader at CCC’s Holloway Campus to talk techniques and trends during this year’s London Fashion Week.

Isatu Taylor is Curriculum Leader in Fashion at Capital City College (CCC)’s Holloway campus. She oversees the department and also  teaches the Level 3 Foundation Diploma (UAL) – Fashion/Textiles Pathway. We spoke to Isatu about her fashion background, CCC’s current courses and her thoughts on this year’s London Fashion Week.

How did you get into fashion?

I’m originally from Jamaica and, from the age of around eight, I used to crochet swimming costumes to sell to the tourists. My godmother paid me for them, I’m sure she paid badly, but when you’re eight and you’re getting any kind of income you think, “Yes, I’m onto something here.”

When I left university, I did a placement in New York just behind Times Square working for a textile mill. They sold fabric to almost everybody in the fashion and textile district and that was my first real insight into the fashion industry. My main job was to prepare and deliver swatches and I started to get excited by the different kinds of materials. I’d also get a sneak peek into the studios and see the garments coming off the rail and I thought it was incredible. That’s where it started really. 

I then worked for another textile company that represented a number of textile mills in India and China before moving into home furnishings, making fabrics for interiors. I was working on interior design products for Cath Kidston and Ralph Lauren. I left that and started to do my own swatches before I moved into teaching.

What do you like most about teaching?

For me, teaching is a little bit like planting – you’re planting and hoping, and you’re trusting that if you throw the right stuff in the soil, it’ll come out. There’s normally a point when a student suddenly gets it and it all makes sense. You don’t always see when the shift happens, but it’s there. I call it “the before and after”. In those moments, I feel like I’m skipping because the magic’s happened. My students sometimes say, “You’re doing that thing again. You’re doing the dancing thing when you get excited.” 

Sometimes we have students for whom life is complicated, and life doesn’t always pause to allow you to do the things you need to do. It’s a privileged position when you can support a learner through those things and see them flourish at the end. There are moments when I see young people going to great lengths just to progress. I remember those moments and they fuel me to support other young people facing challenges, whether it’s a lack of motivation or a lack of ideas, or something else. 

Do students need to have specific skills to enrol on your courses?

I think we’re becoming more open-minded in terms of how we enrol and what’s required for students to come and do our courses. One of the unfortunate things we’ve seen is a real trend in the amount of young people who no longer have access to creative subjects at schools. A lot of young people are being expected to choose at 14 between, for example, music and textiles, and if they’ve chosen music, it’s harder to find their way back. We’re trying to take a more lateral view and offer more flexibility in response to that, and we’re offering portfolio workshops and setting summer projects. 

What are some of the key skills that students might learn on your course?

One of the things we’ve held onto on our Foundation pathways and on many of our Level 2 and Level 3 courses is the importance of the fundamentals. We take the view that you become innovators and ground-breakers once you know the rules. This means that we get students to learn key construction skills and really explore the formal elements. We get them to understand how colour works, how to pull concepts and ideas from even the humblest of starting points.

We encourage our students to play. Play is a big part of being creative and really important for enjoying the design journey, because sometimes it can be difficult. We remind students to look around at their everyday lived experience to pull ideas from their environment. It’s about how you keep generating ideas as a designer, and what tools you can use to be able to constantly reinvent yourself – because you’ll have spent years imagining what your first collection is going to look like, but what about your 12th collection? 

What recent projects have your students worked on?

Earlier this month, during our first in-person session together on the Level 3 Foundation Diploma (UAL) – Fashion/Textiles Pathway, I told the students that we had the opportunity to take part in the Camden as a Catwalk Project with a runway show on 21 September. In an incredibly short time frame, we managed to create a series of outfits for the show. We had lots of teachable moments along the way around how we collaborate, how we communicate and how we make things work with limited experience. I’m hoping that the students got a real sense of achievement out of it.

We’ve already had a conversation about the fact that they’ve achieved this in a matter of days, so what will they achieve moving forward? It’s that distance, that journey that we really hold on to during the course. I’m not so interested in your starting point. I’m interested in the progress you make on your journey, because that’s when the magic happens.

What techniques can students learn with you?

We teach a lot of traditional techniques. My background is in woven textiles, so I do lean towards constructed textiles such as knitting and macrame. There’s a natural element of theatre in those techniques, and they complement flat pattern cutting and construction, giving it an interesting kink or an irregularity. For students who aren’t natural pattern cutters, they can lean into the properties of yarn and other materials by having an understanding of how those materials behave. 

Sometimes there’s the tendency to focus on the designers and not the package that comes with the industry. There are a whole host of jobs that are needed to create the collection. Someone might not be a natural fashion designer, but maybe they’re more of a garment technologist or a surface pattern designer or a lace maker. The course allows them to explore all of those disciplines that sit under the umbrella of fashion and textiles. 

What trends have caught your eye this season?

I do keep an eye on the trends, and I like the luxury faux fur that still seems to be a key element with lots of browns (they say brown is still the new black). I like that sense of luxury with a feeling of opulence – I call it “quiet opulence”.

Trends such as lace and faux fur remind me of the 90s where there was a quiet simplicity, and things were more lasting – and that seems to be a current focus. It might be a reflection of where we are as societies, where we’re wanting to make things that feel more timeless. I think designers are wanting to play a greater role in terms of creating things that are more sustainable, things that are versatile and can be easily paired up with other items.

There’s a sense of classic garments and silhouettes that are beautifully draped or tailored, which can be dressed up or down with other looks so they’re much more versatile. There’s an awareness that we need things that are not going to just end up in landfill, and that coincides with a massive shift in companies selling second-hand things online.

What do you like about London Fashion Week?

I like London Fashion Week because you tend to see more groundbreaking designs and it feels more original – and I like the surprise. If you look at other Fashion Weeks where designers are more established, we know what we’re going to get in most cases, because there’s a signature style.

Whose collection are you looking forward to seeing?

This year I’m keen to see Mark Fast’s collection. He does really interesting knits and woven pieces. But then I’m always on the lookout for a new name – I quite like it when there’s a designer that I’ve never heard of.

What advice would you give to people thinking about studying fashion?

If you’re someone who wants to study fashion, the team we have at CCC is possibly the most nurturing team you will ever encounter. I often think “I wish I studied here”. The teachers really care, and they really instil a culture of care into the students. For those thinking about a future in design, I think you have to live it, breathe it, sleep it, and you have to put the hours in to make it work. It’s not an easy industry, but it’s rewarding and it’s one that you can do well in but you have to be prepared to put the work in.

If you’re fashion forward and keen to hone your creative skills, take a look at our Art, Design and Fashion Courses.

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