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A St. Andrews artist has wowed the runways of New York’s prestigious fashion week with her unique pieces.

Julie Colquitt (Shankley) is a textiles artist who produces large-scale graffiti art and urban inspired crocheted pieces from her home studio in St. Andrews.

A message through social media site Instagram sparked a journey that would see her pieces featured in Vogue magazine.

She said: “A fashion designer in New York, called Anthony Hendrickson, contacted me via Instagram saying he liked my textile artworks.

Julie with one of the models in her knitwear

“He enquired about whether I would be able to produce something as a body sculpture, similar to my artwork.

"And I said ‘yes, I’d be interested’.”

From there Julie said the two collaborated virtually to produce two pieces of knitwear for Hendrickson’s collection.

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She said: “We had Zoom calls and he gave me a kind of spec of what he was looking for, not mainstream, couture crochet and I just put a couple of things together and sent them over to him.

"He loved them and used them in his New York Fashion Week runway show.”

Despite saying that she didn’t know what to expect when she arrived in New York, according to Julie “it was exactly as you see on the telly”.

She added: “Everyone was really friendly, everybody was really interested in the knitwear. It was such a positive experience.

"Everyone was so nice and encouraging and pleased I was there”.

Within hours, Julie’s two outfits, described by the magazine as being standouts, were selected from the 51 pieces in Hendrickson’s collection to appear on the front page of Vogue’s fashion page.

Publicity from the show, and her use of sustainable materials, has already opened up more opportunities for Julie.

She explained: “Because all the yarns I use are all sustainable, hand-spun and they’re all bespoke made for me in India by women’s co-operatives, this woman who is in this fashion world of sustainability asked if I could produce something as soon as possible because she’s got a meeting with the United Nations climate people, to talk about fashion sustainability”.

Despite arriving home from New York on Monday and fighting jetlag, Julie says she has been “crocheting like a lunatic” to produce the garment for delivery by Wednesday.

You can find Julie’s artwork on Instagram (@juliecolquittart).

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