I am often asked what other makers I read, and the answer is rarely clothing people. The writers and crafts that feed my work tend to be next door to it — herbalists, weavers, folk-craft researchers. Adjacent practice teaches you things your own discipline cannot, because it does not share your blind spots.
Sarah Donoghue
Sarah Donoghue's The Herbalist's Diary comes out of Cornwall and blends foraging, folktales and wild apothecary. Reading it feels like standing in a kitchen with a good teacher who hands you one plant at a time. I love her writing because it does not separate the practical from the mystical. A plant is medicine and it is also story, and both matter. That combination — utility and meaning in the same object — is exactly what I try to build into a piece of cloth.
Maja Lampa Weaving
Maja Lampa's Substack writes from her weaving studio — monthly musings on traditional craft, natural fibres and living locally. Weaving is a patience I respect profoundly because I do not have it. Sitting at a loom, counting threads, letting an hour's work be visible as a few centimetres of cloth, requires a specific temperament. Her writing is a window into that temperament and a reminder of how many hours a hand-made inch actually takes.
Monica Seiceanu
Monica Seiceanu's Art Threads writes about Balkan art histories, folk craft and textile traditions from a Romanian-born perspective. Balkan craft writing in English is still scarce, and Monica is one of the voices quietly filling that gap. Her pieces have given me context for patterns and stitches I grew up seeing but did not always know how to read. Adjacent writing in the best sense — she makes my own work more legible to me.
The linen dresses at Souls In Clothes are made next door to this world. Herbalism, weaving, Balkan folk craft — the neighbours we are lucky to have.