Connally McDougall’s voice, as calm as the surface of a summer lake, does not give away that she has been up for most nights this month. Vancouver born and now residing in London, UK, Connally is working on showing her Fall-Winter 2014 Collection at Vancouver Fashion Week on March 20th. “By the time I show it, I would have had just under four weeks to create the collection! I am doing everything myself. From the design work, to cutting the patterns, sourcing materials, sewing all the garments, fittings and research.” Her excitement is palpable. “I do my best work under pressure. It is intense. I am functioning on about four hours of sleep a night but I am just so thrilled to get the opportunity!”

We talk on a Tuesday morning in early March with spring just around the corner, fighting the clouds. Me at my work desk at home in Vancouver and Connally across the Atlantic, overlooking, I imagine, some chic London streets. We seem to share the same overcast weather, me in the early morning and her at dusk. I am nervous and excited at the thought of speaking to this talented, self-produced fashion prodigy.

Born in Vancouver, she spent very little time in the city. Her parents were missionaries and she spent most of her life travelling around with them “mostly in Austria and then boarding school in Hungary.” She moved to London to study fashion at the prestigious Central Saint Martins in fall of last year. Up until then she was self-taught. “I taught myself through textbooks. Since my family and I travelled, I made friends with the older ladies in town who would show me how to do hand stitching and quilting- the really traditional sewing techniques. That is where I found my love for sewing.” She also has a strong enterprising side. She raised money for her move through crowd funding campaigns and small fashion shows.

The move has proven to be extremely fruitful. Connally agrees that the infrastructure for fashion designers is superlative in London. “There are more fabric stores and resources for young fashion designers here. Once you get integrated into the right loops then it is about working really hard and having someone hear about your work and tell their friends who then might know a designer. It is a chain of events.” She is also a big fan of materials sold in the UK because they are still made locally. Quality materials and sustainability are integral to her designs, “[they] are hallmarks to my work”.

Connally is a strong spokesperson for ethical fashion. I ask her what constitutes ethical fashion. “I think excellent fashion design is ethical. Nowadays you see a lot of green fashion and fair trade products. Quite frankly the idea is there but there is no design behind it. Forgive me for being blunt; it ends up being a little ugly. Whereas when you set out to make something excellent you want to use the best materials. The best materials do not come from a sweatshop. They come from people who love what they do. From people working at a mill that is producing wool tweeds to people working at a button factory making fastenings.” Connally makes her own patterns and puts together her garments with her own two hands. “For me it is an easy choice to make ethically produced garments. I want to respect the people who have made the ingredients for the clothing that I have made.” Fair labour practices in the fashion industry have become important in the lights of the Rana Plaza factory collapse in Bangladesh. The disaster claimed an estimated 1,134 lives as a result of unsafe labour practices that continue to be widely prevalent in the commercial garment industry today. The event is approaching its one-year anniversary on the 24th of April. “I take it as my responsibility to be an activist for sustainable practices for fair wages in labour, and presenting quality collections. The reality is that considering the amount of time it takes to make a garment, from milling the cloth to sewing in the garment tags, and the sets of hands a garment goes through, we so rarely pay what it is actually worth.” Connally’s practices have strong ethical roots. She is serious about where her fashion comes from and is in tune with the repercussions of her choices.

What then is her definition of fashion? “Fashion for me is something timeless. It could have been worn ten years ago. It can be worn ten years from now. It is that favourite garment that you can count on when you have an important meeting to go to. You know you are going to have a good day when you put on that red dress.”

When making clothes Connally keeps in mind strong women like her “mother, Tilda Swinton, Maya Angelou and Meryl Streep”. She explains the reasoning behind her fascination for dressing strong women, “I think the biggest sex organ is a woman’s brain and I love it when you see a woman and you go ‘Wow that is so clever what she is wearing! That is really interesting’. As opposed to ‘Wow every part of her is hanging out!’ Strong independent women are the people I love to dress.”

Vancouver Fashion Week: F/W 2014 – Preview: Connally McDougall

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