BRENDA MAYO - A LIFE OF ART IN FASHION
Hamada 1993 oil on canvas 150x148cms detail
How often do we think about our clothes? How different do we feel inside a taut formal suit – or more likely of late, a flowing garment that hardly touches our skin?
For Brenda Mayo, Art is a portable experience. She walks the line between form and sculpture – between wall hangings and clothes draped around her clients. She has developed her art through painting and into the realm of clothes. Today, she is the most imaginative of designers with a Zen like devotion to materials. Her designs are not dear – but they are unique and spring from a belief in the idea of self-expression through fabric and style.
“Slouched in jeans hand on hip, sarong or a pencil skirt restricting our stride, the Indian woman constantly draping her shoulder with the length of a sari- each gesture makes our mark, asserts our presence Clothes are fabrics transformed into shapes which we inhabit”
Brenda Mayo has an instinctual approach to dress. “Clothes are like magic a simple shape and a certain texture can transport us to other realms. This fascinates me. I make unique clothes which will delight and will remain your constant companion.”
‘Throughout my studies at the San Francisco Art Institute and at Central St Martin’s in London, I made abstract impressionist paintings. William de Kooning and Mark Rothko were my heroes. Later on in my studio I began to incorporate pieces of fabric- calico and silk”
From a Vermeer paitnting a linen bodice links art, history and fashion
Today from her studio in Cambridge,, Brenda Mayo is the most imaginative of designers with a studied devotion to materials. Her international travel has helped. Costumes and customs from Japan to Mexico infuse her outlook on the world of clothes - she practices the once unknown skill of Japanese Boro – a method of mending and changing cherished garments to produce an entirely new piece, at once the same and altered . South West France was where she lived in the remote Corbières region among high romantic castles and vast landscapes of mountain fastness for ten years. Her studio was the inception of a new approach.
“I began to incorporate pieces of fabric, calico and tulle I worked on while travelling in the Negev and the Hamada in Morocco. I was dancing with the work disrupting the distinction between me and painting”
This is where the transition to fabric design began, “I started to dismantle the paintings like a nomad moving on with his tent - and to search for a way to actually wear them ‘
Brilliantly original brocade jacket in gold
Brenda believes that as we engage with the exterior world, we can appropriate, textile fabric with its own internal invisible structure. “We recognize its potential to enhance our well-being, to complement unload or exaggerate our energy ‘
It is a far cry from zipping on the latest chain store offering – or Amazon delivery
Perfect simplicity of Brenda Mayo dress
Everything in Brenda Mayo’s exquisitely experienced life speaks of beauty and order. Clothes and design are part of that. She borrows from the past, her ruched pliable neck scarves, wonderfully named after opera houses of Britain – the modest’’Snape’’ to the extravagant ‘Glyndebourne,’ alone would set any woman up for an instant outing once the doors of cultural houses fling open once more. And on an everyday practical basis, her loosely draped beautiful wool dresses and undemanding tunics bring their own uniqueness.
Original but practical - the BM way to dress with style
Shetland Tweed for a Brenda Mayo uniquely designed jacket
It has been a long road.
Her desert paintings of New Mexico were compared to Dore’s Alpine works in their limitless scope, and her final show almost baffled critics. They formed part of her journey from colourful expressionism to a kinetic form of portable sculpture –clothes. Now it’s the allure of a shot silk bolt sourced from the silk mills of Sudbury in her native Suffolk and the joy of woven tweed from the Shetland islands. Mayo rejoices in the small details of dress and believes in in the individuality of each piece – whilst she makes use of each creation’s heritage and future as a re-purposed garment. Weaving the experience of an artist of the world into every piece, Brenda Mayo has created a world of fashion many people long to own - authentic hard wearing, its origins in the glamour of eras gone by or the sensible quality of our grandmothers’’ choices. She bings the Life Artistic to dress, probably the most creative act any of us performs every day of our lives.
At an Evening Art Show in the garden of Penny Heath
