COLLECTION 021

Logbook
Sunday, 22 September 2024

I can’t be sure of the date, but the birds have started to fly South and at night there’s a single silver star making its way across the sky. Fomalhaut. I remember being surprised last year when she was joined by a second bright pinprick. Saturn. You can tell them apart because only stars twinkle.

I look down at my sleeve. It’s a map and a menu. Grey Spotted Amanita, Tawny Grisette, Jelly Ears. Not the name of my childhood cats, but a guide to the fungi I can safely forage. What was it Plath wrote about mushrooms? We shall by morning / Inherit the earth / Our foot’s in the door. I wear trousers in an arctic blue check. “Buffalo Plaid” it’s often called. A tartan that travelled from Scotland to Montana in the 1800s, ending up tied around the waists of teenagers shaking their long-hair to loud guitars.

I painted my clothes with moss green and umber. An inky camouflage making me part of the landscape. I tend the fire, tie tight knots and knot together a daisy chain. This must be what they mean when they talk about fine jewellery.

TOOGOOD

THIS IS THE STORY OF TWO GOOD TOOGOODS

Sisters Faye and Erica Toogood were raised amid the furrowed fields of the English countryside. Their grandmother was a tailor who, during the War, made underwear out of parachutes. Faye would go foraging in the woods in her wellingtons, collecting sticks and stones and broken bones then endlessly rearranging them on the mantelpiece in her room.

This self-confessed tinker has gone on to become one of the most recognisable figures in the design and art industry, whose work can be found in permanent collections around the world.

Imbued with the spirit of her grandmother, and having inherited her long maker’s hands, Erica was obsessed with shapes and drapes from an early age. At the age of eight she jumped on a Singer sewing machine and made herself a top out of an old windsock. She has worked with a number of London fashion designers as a pattern-cutter, created costumes for theatrical productions, and carried out countless bespoke commissions for private clients.

Toogood is instilled with the unmistakable spirit of both sisters: Faye’s preoccupation with materiality and Erica’s audacious shape-making. One a tinker, the other a tailor.

They approach their work obliquely, collaborating with architects, product designers and painters to create clothes and objects that are both practical and sculptural.