FAYOLA K J FRASER
For the majority of the population, thoughts about the origin of the clothing we wear every day are fleeting, an often bypassed consideration. The terminology “textiles” is a general concept, encompassing fibre-based materials, which are manufactured using methods such as knitting, weaving or crocheting.
Textiles, although not at the forefront of many people’s minds, speak to the deeply-rooted origins, intricate techniques, indigenous culture and history of a group of people. Rose Sinclair has spent the majority of her life devoting herself to the study of textiles and displaying the crafts of Black women throughout the Caribbean and the diaspora.
A child of migrants from Jamaica, Sinclair learned to sew, crochet and knit at four years old. “Textiles have been central to my life as far as I can remember,” she says, as she grew up around her mother and other older women who used cloth and its creation as a way of raising money for the community. One of her most poignant memories is her mother instilling in her the centrality of cloth and the way it could be used for gifting back, specifically explaining to her the power of the cloth, and how it should be used for service. As a member of the church’s Dorcas Society, her mother was dedicated to giving back through providing clothing for the poor. Thus, with the combination of mirroring her mother’s devotion to service, the centrality of cloth and her passion for art, Sinclair was fated to pursue the study of Textiles. From the primary school level, she studied art, and throughout secondary school, with the assistance of two art and textiles teachers, she easily fell into the field, pursuing it at a tertiary level.
Following her BSc (Hons) in Textile Design, Sinclair began her first job, a one-year placement in the textile industry. “Most people think that glamour and designing clothes is the only aspect of fashion,” she says, “but from my year exploring the industry, I learned that there’s a whole gamut of jobs.” She was able to learn about fabric and yarn, dyeing fibres, weaving and knitting, sales and marketing and all the less prominent aspects of the industry.
More so, she understood how her degree could be practically translated into a career, as she was employed by the largest textile company in the United Kingdom. According to Sinclair, textiles are the bedrock of the fashion industry, and textile companies are required to be well ahead of the trends, to create the fabric that eventually is used for clothing and put on the shelves.
After four years of work in the textile space, a downturn began in the industry, and Sinclair retrained as a schoolteacher. Teaching textiles to secondary school students, she was able to broaden and widen her existing skill set, learning to capture and maintain young people’s attention. “Working as a schoolteacher taught me to pitch in three minutes, to simplify and explain concepts in textiles, and more than anything, learn to tell captivating stories.” This storytelling would become central in her work of curating exhibitions, and telling the stories of women. Deciding to pursue her MA at Central Saint Martins in Textiles, Sinclair left secondary school teaching to work part-time with special needs students while doing her degree.
In the community in which she taught, “parents were generally distrustful of the authorities, so I spent time supporting the inclusion of all students, and helping them understand the value and power of the school system.” This experience powerfully centered Sinclair not only in the skill set of teaching but in delving into the worlds of the historically excluded and figuring out how to centre narratives of the marginalised.
“It’s all Black people here,” Sinclair says as she remembers her first words when she stepped off the plane on her first visit to Jamaica in 1990. The sentiment of feeling at home was so strong, and she quickly delved into the museums and galleries to enrich her understanding of design and craft in the region. “This experience fundamentally changed me as a designer,” she says, and felt that her eyes had been opened to an entire repository of craft (even her mother and grandmother’s craft) that was not in her textbooks. This learning and indeed, unlearning, drove her to question why black women’s craft was not discussed in the UK, not included in her books, not displayed at museums, and how she, as an academic, could remedy it.
Sinclair started to collect textiles amidst the background noise and questioning of people saying her compilation was of no use or value. Then she went a step further and turned her work of collecting black art and craft into a PhD. Sinclair used the Dorcas clubs in the UK as the lens for her study, to more widely propel the story of Black women and their creativity in the UK. Although not granted funding for her work, she was motivated by the understanding that there was intrinsic value and substance to be found in these works. One of her greatest honours was meeting Trinidadian-born textile designer Althea McNish.
Althea McNish, an acclaimed artist who had her first exhibition at 16, attributed some of her greatest inspirations to the work of Trinidadian legends Sybil Atteck and Boscoe Holder. McNish was named by Architectural Digest as one of “Five Female Designers Who Changed History” in 2018, featured in a BBC Four documentary film “Whoever Heard of a Black Artist?” and her work was displayed in an exhibition in 2022 at the William Morris Gallery by Rose Sinclair. Sinclair used this exhibition to display the legacy of Black women’s craft, and the way it is often buried unless uncovered in an archive.
Many people may dismiss the legacy of crafting, knitting and crocheting as not suitable for the modern era. But Sinclair insists that young designers are taking up the mantle. One is Jamaican Rachel Scott, whose label Diotima, which was launched in May 2021 and centered around artisanal crochet pieces, has been worn by Rihanna, Doja Cat, Gabrielle Union and Keke Palmer. “The art of textiles and crotchet has reached a whole new level of fashion,” Sinclair muses, stressing the importance of understanding the richness of the legacy of crochet in the Black community to appreciate how far it has come. According to Sinclair’s study of the Windrush generation, the Caribbean people who immigrated through the 1950s-1970s in the UK to help build Britain, approximately 225 people came with a craft background, and her exhibition ‘Dorcas Stories from the Front Room’ celebrates that legacy of Caribbean expertise in textiles that has often been buried in the UK.
Awarded the Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in December 2023 for her work of championing and making more visible the design practices of Caribbean women which have been overlooked for years, Sinclair can hardly believe it. “Those things don’t happen to a Black girl from Handsworth,” she laughs, remembering the way that she believed the award to be a hoax. Sinclair doesn’t accept this award for herself, however, she accepts it for her mother, her grandmother, and all the Black women whose work in craft has been ignored. Changing the narrative, and encouraging people to not only acknowledge black-crafted textiles, but the way that our work has value, is Sinclair’s life’s devotion. “I stand on the shoulders of my mom, my aunt and my grandmother,” she says, “and my work is to open up doors for those to come.”
Rose Sinclair MBE, MA (CSM), PGCE, BSc (Hons), CText ATI, FRSA is a Senior Lecturer in Design Education (Textiles) at Goldsmiths, University of London Department of Design.
Fayola K J Fraser is a professional in the international development arena. She has a BA in International (Middle Eastern) Studies and an MSc in International Relations & Diplomacy from the London School of Economics.