Creative Practice
Rachel Matthews uses a combination of visual research methods and techniques in her creative practice.
Having worked as a fashion illustrator earlier in her career, Rachel continues to produce fashion visuals through drawing, collage and printmaking and works to commission with designers and brands. The Fashion Lexicon project captures her on-going investigations into fashion’s object-image-text relationships.
Rachel’s creative visual practice has also evolved to map and analyse emerging ideas in fashion and communication, an approach adapted from critical cartography. Through experimentation, she has developed this process as an innovative, non-linear form of data analysis, and uses her mappings and assemblages to document research activities and support published findings.
The Fashion Lexicon project
Rachel began the Fashion Lexicon project in 2011 having created a collection of resources and commissions that required a combination of fashion words, images and explanations. The notion of a lexicon – as an ‘inventory of terms used in a particular discipline or by an individual’ encapsulated these projects, as well as some subsequent work she has done helping designers express their vision and creating visual resources for fashion history. Fashion Lexicon has become an enduring part of Rachel’s creative practice and continues in various forms including weekly posts at @fashionlexicon on Instagram…#fashionalphabet!
Printmaking
Stepping out in Style series (2017-2019) Oxfords
Stepping out in Style series (2017-2019) Brown Brogues
Stepping out in Style series (2017-2019) Hi-Tops
Rick Owens (F/W2017) Illustrations Print collage
Junya Watanabe (F/W 2016) Illustration Stencil print
Fashion Lexicon X Envelope Group (2014) History of Fashion Resource cards
Fashion Lexicon X Envelope Group (2014) History of Fashion Resource cards
Fashion Lexicon X Little Tailleur (2015) Limited Edition prints and gift cards
Fashion Lexicon X Little Tailleur (2015) Limited Edition prints and gift cards
Collage
