HOST
Katherine Soucie (BAA, BFA, MAA) is an award winning Canadian/UK designer, researcher, consultant, educator and entrepreneur who established her career by pioneering a proprietary process for transforming pre-consumer waste hosiery into new textiles and forms through her label and studio Sans Soucie. She studied Fashion Design in London and Toronto, Ontario, Canada before furthering her studies in Textiles in Vancouver. In 2002, while she was still a textile student her experimentation with waste hosiery using a zero waste approach to dyeing, printing and textile reconstruction resulted in the development of an industrial upcycling method, alternate design system and business model.
From 2003-2019, her Vancouver studio produced the signature hosiery textile which was made from manufacturing waste acquired from mills in Canada. This unique textile was transformed into bespoke clothing and accessory collections that were sold internationally to boutiques and showrooms. This led her to attract commissions and collaborations from international private clientele, film/tv productions, artists/performers (dance, musicians, etc.) and other industries. Collections were presented at London Fashion Week, New York Fashion Week, Vancouver Fashion Week, Eco Fashion Week, Montreal Fashion Week, Toronto Fashion Week, etc. Her clothing and installation work has been exhibited and commissioned by galleries and museums in Canada, USA, Hong Kong, China, Japan, Australia and the UK.
As an educator, she has taught textiles in fashion, art and design departments in Canada, USA and the UK. Her role as an educator in the field extends beyond the institution as her expertise in sustainability has contributed to programming, residencies and workshops to make sustainability education more accessible to children and adults in various communities.
She is a noted guest speaker, panelist and writer who has sat on several design competitions juries and international committees. Her role in higher education led her to be the Visiting Lecturer in Textiles at the Welch School of Art and Design at Georgia State University (Atlanta, Georgia) and contribute to the new BDes in Fashion Design (sustainable practices, craft and textiles) as Program Director of Fashion at LaSalle College Vancouver.
She is currently teaching online short courses at UAL/Central Saint Martins in Sustainable Sourcing for Fashion and Communicating Sustainability, co-teaching a Sustainability for Professionals and Brands with sustainability experts and climate activitsts Alice Wilby (Fashion Act Now) and Clare Farrell (Co-Founder of Extinction Rebelllion), holds an Associate Lecturer position in Sustainable Textiles at the University of the Creative Arts in the UK and role as MA Dissertation Supervisor in the MA Fashion Program. She is a PhD candidate at the Kingston School of Art, Kingston University London where she is focusing on upcycling systems thinking, textile waste, regenerative methods for sustainable textile and fashion research and material activism. Through this she will further expand upon her research in working with textile waste using a design system and reflective research tool she established referred to as M.E.N.D.
photo: Rennie Brown