Surface & Soul
Why We’re Craving a More Connected Creative Life
Lately, I’ve found myself thinking more deeply about our relationship with cloth, craft and creativity, and how far removed many of us have become from the origins of making.
A recent visit to the Manchester Textile Society Fair brought all of these thoughts gently to the surface. Somewhere between the handwoven cloth, faded textiles and conversations around process, I found myself unexpectedly emotional. Standing in the middle of a sports hall surrounded by antique fabrics, I quietly welled up.
It wasn’t sadness exactly, but recognition. A feeling of remembering something ancient and deeply human that modern life has slowly pulled us away from.
Textiles have always been intimately connected to human existence. Long before fashion became trend-led or industrialised, cloth was rooted in survival, ritual, identity and storytelling. Fibres were gathered from the land, spun into yarn and woven slowly by hand into garments and objects that carried both function and meaning. The oldest surviving textile fragments date back over 25,000 years, reminding us that cloth has never simply been decorative. It has always held memory, labour, culture and connection within its threads.
At the fair, I listened to one seller describe how Peruvian men from Taquile Island knit extraordinarily fine woollen hats using sharpened bicycle spokes, each intricate pattern carrying cultural meaning and identity. Nearby were handwoven Amazonian textiles made from naturally occurring shades of cotton in soft rust, moss green and earthy brown. Every fibre had been hand-picked, spun and woven slowly by hand.
There was such presence within the cloth itself. You could feel the humanity in it.
Touching these textiles felt profoundly moving because they carried evidence of process, patience and care. In a world increasingly dominated by speed, automation and instant imagery, they felt almost radical in their slowness.
Ironically, much of my own work revolves around aesthetics, inspiration and visual storytelling, yet lately I’ve become increasingly aware of a quiet longing beneath the surface of the creative industries. A longing not necessarily to reject modernity, but to reconnect creativity with something more grounded and meaningful again.
In the rising tide of AI and instant design generation, I’ve noticed my own instinctive pull towards process, hand painting, atmosphere and human connection. Rather than endlessly consuming imagery online, I find myself craving tactile references, immersive experiences and collaborative creativity rooted in real life. Perhaps this is why collective creativity feels so important right now.
Over recent months, I’ve been having conversations with extraordinary women working across interiors, textiles, art and creative practice, and again and again the same themes emerge. People are yearning for slower, more meaningful ways of creating. They want to share ideas, process and inspiration rather than simply presenting polished outcomes. They want creativity to feel nourishing again rather than relentlessly productive.
There’s something deeply restorative about women gathering around books, materials, archive references, conversation and shared inspiration without pressure or performance. Watching people exchange wisdom, technical knowledge and encouragement so naturally has reminded me that creativity was never meant to exist in isolation.
In my own work, this shift has begun influencing the way I create. Rather than designing purely from screens or static references, I’ve become interested in immersive making - allowing atmosphere, landscape, music, scent and materials to actively shape the creative process itself.
This month, I’m beginning to explore what happens when motifs are created within the environments that inspired them. What changes when design becomes less about extraction and more about dialogue? When natural pigments, soot, tea, clay or rosewater become part of the process? To carve woodblock outside where i can hear birds and the rustle of leaves. A design dialogue where surfaces carry traces of place and memory rather than simply visual trend references?
This idea of Surface & Soul has quietly become my own creative philosophy. Not a rejection of industry or technology, but a recalibration of intention. A slower, more immersive approach to design rooted in atmosphere, reverence and emotional connection.
As we prepare for an upcoming creative studio day, we’ll be filling the space with gathered references from nature, archive materials, interesting objects, books and music that reflect the feeling of the collection. There’s something transformative about creating together in real life. Ideas naturally begin to overlap and influence one another. Themes emerge instinctively. The work feels more alive because the process itself is alive.
In many ways, I think this is what so many of us are truly searching for beneath the noise of modern creative culture. Not simply inspiration, but connection. Connection to materials, to process, to place, to one another and to ourselves.
Perhaps we are not simply creating surfaces and patterns after all.
Perhaps we are remembering how to belong again.
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