Hannah is one to watch

Major fashion brands are keeping a close watch on University of Brighton graduate Hannah Croft.

Hannah is fast developing a reputation as a “material futurist”, creating unusual and unique concepts including one new fabric which has crystals “growing” in it.

She has exhibited in Italy’s fashion capital Milan and will be showing at the Surface Design Show in February. She has also worked on projects in movies including Paddington 2 and is giving talks at Lineapelle Show in London and New York in early 2019.

Hannah’s career journey started after graduating with a Textiles with Business Studies BA(Hons) from the University of Brighton in 2008 and later with an MA distinction in textile design innovation from Nottingham Trent.

She first worked in London but found she couldn’t fully exploit her creativity and so moved to her home city of Leicester and opened her own design and fabric studio MUUNA.

Specialising in woven and embroidered fabric, Hannah received funding to buy specialist equipment from the Sir Thomas White Loan Charity which supports start-ups in and around Leicester.

The equipment included a loom and digital software which “allows me to create a technical design file to accompany a physical fabric swatch which clients can use to reproduce my designs for production. This helps speed up development of my work”.

Hannah’s designs are now marketed through an agent, allowing her to concentrate on experimentation and research. Her unique materials are being showcased in material libraries globally including the USA and she counts the likes of Givenchy and Disney among past clients.

Hannah said: “It has been an exciting year for me and I’m proud of everything I have achieved so far.”

Hannah looked back at her time in Brighton: “Brighton is a really special place, there is nowhere else like it and studying there for four years was a pivotal point in my life.

“I feel the course was such a good foundation – I got the opportunity to intern in New York and London whilst on my industrial placement year. These experiences whilst both very different gave me invaluable experience and insight into the industry.

“There are many lessons I learned at Brighton that I’m still coming back too and of course it’s where I was taught to weave, a skill I probably would never have learned had I not done the course as at the time there were so few textiles courses in the country that offered this as a specialism. I was a real novice at weaving back then and struggled technically but years later I got the opportunity to try it again and it fell into place.

“Without my time at Brighton, this wouldn’t have happened.”