Julian Robert's US Pattern Cutting Tour
In October 2008 designer, professor and pattern cutting pioneer Julian Roberts is heading to the US for a month-long cutting tour. Julian Roberts is the first designer to be invited on tour by the Center of Pattern Design Technology which is a US-based organisation established by Sandra Ericson dedicated to teaching, preserving and promoting pattern cutting skills.
Having graduated from the RCA, Julian developed his own unique method of pattern cutting, 'Subtraction Cutting'. His is a hands on hands-on, fluid approach which doesn't use drawings but instead relies on a fast-paced physical manipulation of fabric. "I sometimes cut from the inside of the garment outwards," he explains "from back to front, or upside down, or my patterns sometimes represent the hollow space within the garment that the body occupies, rather than the positive space that IS the garment." There will be 12 masterclass demonstrations in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Kent Ohio, Indianapolis and New York in which Julian will start with a single piece of cloth from which he subjects to a series of procedures before transforming the cloth into a dress before the audience.
Fashion has been an obsession for Julian since he was a child. Brought up in Worthing, he left school at 16 to study womenswear and then was accepted onto the Womenswear BA course and graduated with a First Class Degree before undertaking an MA at the RCA in which he achieved a distinction. His career has been a mega monumental array of creative projects, collections, and academia and his work today includes lecturing, graphic design, website design and events management for Super Super and he's the man behind Super Super TV. His label nothing nothing started in 1999 with invitations to fictitious fashion events before showing at London Fashion Week for four seasons - the label was sold on ebay in 2002 for £1. With the launch of his next label JULIANAND he projected films on the outside of the Natural History Museum, he set up the BA Fashion course at the University of Herfordshire and has taught his pattern cutting techniques across the UK Europe and Asia.
Words: Marian Buckley
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