Claire de Waard is a Hand Embroidery Designer who thrives on reinterpreting traditional textile and craft techniques for a contemporary context. A positive and confident use of colour alongside non-textile materials are at the core of her designs to produce embellished surfaces for the luxury fashion market.

Her work is driven by the understanding of the construction of stitches and craft techniques. Led by colour, fabrics, threads, beads and other materials are assembled into a serie of collages to inform her designs, and each element responds to the other suggesting a mood for the embroidery. Contrast in surfaces is key to the building of her designs, and Claire particularly enjoys bringing in a range of surfaces such as cement, plastics, or natural surfaces - wood veneer or straw for instance - often choosing to create her own embellishments from them. These enable her to create a millefeuille of contrasting hues and material qualities.

Claire is especially inspired by whitework and lace making methods which provide patterns to be translated into contemporary samples. These play on the notion of positive and negative space, offering surface to be further embellished and areas where the skin plays an integral part in the aesthetic experience. Further inspiration comes from tassel making, stitch combinations and straw embroidery.

Claire graduated from a BA (Hons) in Hand Embroidery at the Royal School of Needlework in 2017 with First-class honours, where she was awarded Top Student and Best Technical Stitch for two consecutive years. She also received a bursary from The Knights of the Round Table in 2015 and 2016 as well as a sponsorship from Madeira Threads in 2016. Claire has worked on commissioned pieces for Nicholas Oakwell Couture, HBO for Game of Thrones and Burberry x Makers House. Finally, she has also freelanced for various fashion designers, including Yang Li, Chalayan, Jasper Conran and Alexander McQueen.