Flora McLean
About
Flora McLean is a British fashion designer born on 2 April 1971. McLean is the daughter of performance artist and photographer Bruce McLean. Some of her first self-made designs were the hats and turbans made for her father's 1996 film, Urban Turban. Influenced by Vogue magazine and her mother's tendency to make clothes, Flora McLean began sewing and making items as young as six. As a student she studied an MA in fashion womenswear at the Royal College of Art and, in her final year, she was commissioned by Ashley Page and began designing for the Royal Ballet.
House Of Flora, McLean's own design house, was founded in 1996 when she started taking on private commissions and making millinery props for magazines, advertising and fashion shows.
McLean is notable as a designer who produces haute couture millinery for other established designers such as Givenchy, Katherine Hamnett, Caroline Cornu, Bruce Oldfield and Matthew Williamson, and her work has featured on fashion runways around the world.
The Look
Her designs are known for their graphic lines and angular references as well as inspirational use of materials and technique. McLean specialises in avant-garde headwear for haute couture designers, catwalks, fashion campaigns and personal collectors. The designs are made often from a variety of different materials not normally associated with millinery, such as PVC, Perspex, felt, leather, wood veneer, fibreglass and nylon, and are influenced by strong geometry and historical figures as well as concepts in modern art. The geometric nature of the designs and the bespoke fabrication detail of the work often leads to it being described as part fashion/part art.
Who Wears It
Paloma Faith,