Selected work / 04Pattern design & illustration
Future Fabrics
Exploring life today through African patterns
Future Fabrics asks how today’s African stories could be woven into cloth. For generations fabric has carried coded messages—celebrations, grief, status, and hope—without a single word spoken. This collection explores how that tradition could reflect life today, through patterns for clothing and everyday spaces.
The motivation
Cloth can carry new stories.
African textiles have always been storytelling tools—commemorating births, signalling marriages, even distinguishing the first wife from the next. Those narratives remain powerful, but they rarely speak to the realities shaping our generation. Future Fabrics set out to honour tradition while exploring subjects such as climate change, technology and urban life.
The approach
Exploring contemporary life through African textile patterns
I studied traditional fabrics from across the continent, then drew repeating patterns that could include present-day subjects without losing their roots. The swatches pair the familiar—arches, beads, braided lines—with unexpected references to circuitry, data flows, and tidal maps.
The result is an exploration of the question: What might present-day African patterns with contemporary themes look like? The project pairs images of the patterns with AI-generated images of models wearing the fabrics, showing how the designs could look as clothing.
Colour Language
A selection of colours used in the patterns.
Bringing it together
A pattern can hold a moment in time.
The collection brings contemporary subjects into a form already rich with meaning. Sexuality, physical distancing and Black pride become starting points for patterns that can move between clothing, interiors and other everyday surfaces.
The pattern images show the designs themselves. The AI-generated model images explore how those patterns could look when worn, rather than documenting manufactured garments.
- My contribution
- Pattern design, illustration and colour direction.
- Project
- Self-initiated textile exploration · 2020.