Profile: Louise McArthur – Only Natural Design Competitions

Louise McArthur

Central Saint Martins

Louise McArthur is a regenerative designer and fibre artist whose practice explores how natural materials can reconnect people with living landscapes. Working primarily with flax, she develops material-led processes that reveal ecological histories through handcraft, colour and time-intensive making. Rather than treating fibre as a neutral resource, her work positions it as a collaborator and witness to environmental change. Through self-developed techniques using raw and naturally dyed flax, she creates sculptural garments and material artefacts that investigate relationships between land, agriculture and culture. Louise recently completed an MA in Regenerative Design at Central Saint Martins, where her research focused on the Humberhead peatlands, and was awarded the LVMH Maison/0 Green Trail Award 2026 for her graduate project. Her practice sits between contemporary craft, material research and ecological storytelling, exploring how natural fibres can become catalysts for regenerative ways of making.

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I Am the Peatland: Conditions of Making Shaped Within an Extracted Landscape

Category: Apparel

Competitions: Fashion Competition 2026

I Am the Peatland transforms raw flax fibre into a sculptural, fur-like garment that challenges conventional expectations of one of the world's oldest textile fibres. Developed over twelve months, the work combines approximately 125 metres of hand-processed raw flax fibre, natural dyeing and more than 550 hours of making to create a single artefact. Rather than weaving flax into cloth, the project transforms raw flax fibre into a dense, fur-like surface using a self-developed knotted technique, revealing an unexpected material language that expands the expressive and structural potential of this remarkable natural fibre. Rather than treating fibre as a passive resource, the project positions flax as a collaborator, carrying traces of landscape, agriculture and ecological change. Shaped by research into the Humberhead peatlands, the garment responds to a landscape transformed by extraction while demonstrating how natural materials can embody relationships between land, culture and craft. The work asks how making with natural fibres can move beyond sustainability towards regenerative ways of thinking, where materials are understood not simply for what they become, but for the living systems they continue to represent.