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The Ketchup and Custard Collection: Hidden Stories in Lace

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This collection begins with the familiar: everyday objects, family memories, nostalgic foods and small moments that feel both personal and recognisable. Centred around two narratives: The Ketchup Story and Granny’s Apple Crumble, the collection transforms ordinary references into textiles that feel playful, expressive and quietly unexpected.

The work explores a contemporary approach to lace through storytelling, drawing, surface design and material experimentation. Lace is not treated only as something delicate or decorative, but as a structure, texture and language for holding narrative. Through repeated mark-making, the drawings build into dense, rhythmic compositions that naturally begin to feel lace-like. These hand-drawn qualities are then translated through digital embroidery, print and layered sheer fabrics.

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Hidden detail is central to the collection. Motifs, fragments of text and layered imagery sit within the designs, allowing the stories to reveal themselves slowly. From a distance, the pieces appear as lace-like surfaces and embroidered textures, but on closer inspection they become more detailed, humorous and full of small moments to uncover. This sense of discovery creates a quiet interaction between the textile and the viewer, where familiar references begin to emerge through closer looking.

 

Colour plays an important role throughout the collection, with neon tones, garish combinations and traditional white lace references all drawn from the memories and associations behind the work. These colours bring together nostalgia, kitsch and playfulness, while also shifting lace into a bolder and more contemporary space.

Developed through free-standing lace, digital embroidery, print, sheer organza and tulle, the textiles are designed for a luxury fashion context. The collection considers different applications on the body, from collars, trims and patches to larger fabric panels and fuller printed surfaces, showing how personal storytelling can be translated into versatile textile outcomes for fashion.

© 2026 by POPPY MORGAN 

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