Fashion

Enter The Monastery

Published

10 years ago

January 19, 2016

Ashleigh McCulloch is a South African designer and founder of Monastery. Her fascination with the human need to reach sanctity is her impetus for creating quintessential pieces that exist in an imperfect world.

We reached out to her to find out about her journey and the inspiration behind her Monastery SS16 range.

Where did you grow up?

I grew up in Johannesburg.

How has your childhood inspired your decision to be a fashion designer?

I only learned how to sew in my first year of fashion school, but my gran was an interior designer and a very talented seamstress. She had an old Singer machine that came attached to a table that I loved to tinker with. When I was a child I was obsessed with Victorian dresses and the clothes in novels like Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights and my gran used to make me garments like that that I’d dress up with veils and lace. I was very melodramatic! I was always drawing women in long flowing dresses with heavy jewellery. But I really loved the idea of these strict garments; corsets and hoops, in hot dry landscapes, like my family’s farm. I loved the idea of a beautiful, extravagant garment looking totally out of place in this harsh outpost at the edge of an empire. Movies like The Piano and Picnic at Hanging Rock really illustrate that well with costumes.

I was inspired by a coming of age type experience, a person being cleansed of their innocence and ushered into adulthood.

What are the challenges you face in this industry?

South Africans are very hesitant to explore with their fashion choices. It’s a conservative country and it definitely reflects in people’s style. Hopefully, I’ll be able to find an audience for something more avantgarde.

What are the highlights of your career?

I think just starting this business is a highlight at this point! I decided to do it at a really challenging moment in my life and so far things are going well.

What inspired this (Monastery SS16) Particular range?

I was inspired by a coming of age type experience, a person being cleansed of their innocence and ushered into adulthood. I’m Catholic by heritage and I’m not religious but I’ve always been fascinated by the rituals of the church. I wanted to look at this as the first in a series of someone being ushered into a holy state. It’s the human need to become a better person, to constantly leave one aspect behind so as to acquire new knowledge and a greater meaning of one’s life. The pastel colours I chose were a deliberate look at naivety and youth. I’m currently working on where this concept will go next!