The Arts & Culture Journal

Now we haven’t had a fashion illustrator on the virtual pages of Fallyrag before and what better way to start than by perusing the beautiful work of Kat Devine.

Kat’s work is a fusion of graphic design and creative textile that renders her pieces both visibly arousing and tactile heaven.

Kat started with costume design at Wimbledon School of Art led by a deep interest of the human body in art. However, finding herself at the end of the first year having, ‘massacred a years worth of Vogue magazines, rearranged the pages and stuck them back down in a different order’ Kat headed West to Bristol.

“…A year behind everyone else in pattern cutting, I was all but a lost cause. To this day I believe I may be the only fashion student, probably ever, to have never made a complete garment and whom also, most of the time struggles to sew in a straight line.”

Such rarely seen honesty from an artist is a refreshing change and is imperative to a story that draws to a fairy tale end. “During one particularly horrifying incident which included a last minute salvage with a stapler, the crashing truth became obvious to all…I wasn’t a very good fashion student. But as they say, ‘Every adversity carries within it the seed of equal or greater benefit’. I had done a little illustration on the top using the sewing machine without the foot. So during the tutorial, we dismembered the article to leave a rather pleasing 2D project.”

Rather pleasing indeed. Kat’s work layers both an acute draughtsmanship with professional execution, and handling, of fabrics.

These images celebrate a rare and persistent urge to experiment - an urge that sends a message out to all artists struggling to fit into their courses and environments. Simply - don’t.