The Studio Sessions with Caroline Dickinson
On slow making, preloved shirts, and the power of wearing something no one else has
Caroline Dickinson spent a decade designing prints for high street brands. She was good at it. She was also watching, up close, the relentless churn of fast fashion: new collections rolling over old ones before anyone had time to love them, nothing treasured, everything disposable. Eventually she decided to do something different.
She now works from a studio in South London, screen printing onto preloved menswear shirts sourced one by one. Each one is different. Each one is one of a kind. The dye paste behaves differently on every fabric, the seams and collars and cuffs leave their own marks in the print, and the imperfections of a previously loved garment become part of the work rather than a problem to solve. This year she launched the Rita Short, cutting panels from shirts too flawed for the main collection and piecing them into something new.
We are stocking Caroline’s shirts at Fodder this autumn and as a custodian of a printed silk shirt from an earlier collection of Carolines, I could not be more pleased about it.
F | Tell us a bit about how you came to be making one of a kind hand printed shirts. Where did it all begin and what drew you to working with what already exists rather than starting from new cloth?
CD | Before I started this brand I worked as a commercial print designer for high street brands. It really opened my eyes to the throwaway culture of the fast fashion industry, not just from a consumerism angle but also from a working print design point of view. Nothing seemed to get treasured. It was always onto the next new thing a month or so later. After a decade I felt like I needed to do something that wasn’t adding to the waste but trying to utilise it instead.
By using preloved shirts it naturally occurs that everything is one of a kind, as it’s rare to be able to source a whole batch of exactly the same shirts. I’ve also always loved buying one-off vintage pieces. That feeling when you find the perfect piece, and the knowledge that you aren’t going to see thousands of people in exactly the same thing, is something really special and I think quite rare now. I wanted to be able to create collections that capture that sort of feeling, garments that feel really special.
F | Screen printing onto a garment that already has a life, a history, a previous owner, feels quite different to printing onto blank cloth. Does that matter to you, and does it change how you approach the print?
CD | It’s entirely different to printing onto flat cloth. It’s actually much harder and more challenging to print over an existing garment, especially with a dye paste, which is what I mostly use. You have to deal with the seams, buttons, collars, cuffs and natural folds in the shirt once it’s pinned down. But equally all of these add their own mark and detailing within the printing, which makes each shirt a lot more interesting and tactile than if I had just printed onto flat fabric. It gives each shirt personality, which I love.
F | Does this way of working introduce particular creative constraints you hadn’t anticipated, or does it open things up?
CD | I learnt very quickly that not all shirts will take the dye paste in the same way. I always use 100% cotton but they’ll always react differently. Normally with screen printing you would take a section of the fabric you’re going to be printing with and do a test so you know what the outcome will be. As each shirt is one of a kind I can’t be chopping off sections of fabric. I just have to go for it and see what happens. It’s slightly stressful when I’ve got a deadline like a pop-up, but it’s just one of those things that’s part of the process of using preloved shirts. Even years on, things still happen whilst I’m printing and I won’t fully understand why or how.
F | Your ethos has always been slow and mindful, less but better. Where does that come from, and has it ever been hard to hold onto?
CD | It’s definitely come from all the years working in fast fashion and pushing back against that overconsumption. It’s also come from my mum. From a very young age she instilled into me the idea that it’s better to buy one thing that’s great and you love, rather than waste money on lots of below average pieces that you don’t really love and don’t want to wear.
F | Every preloved shirt comes with its own quirks, a worn cuff, a faint mark, a button that doesn’t quite match. How do you navigate those imperfections and has that led you to rethink how you cut and work with the fabric?
CD | I have an imperfection scale of what I feel like is acceptable or not within a shirt. I try and source the highest grade of pieces but of course they’ve been worn before, so marks, stained collars and cuffs are all part of the process. But equally no one wants to wear a shirt with a stained collar. Every shirt I source always gets used no matter what, but the types of imperfections will determine how it gets used. As the collections have grown I have started creating newer shapes and altering shirts to work around these imperfections so they don’t just become seconds or samples. It makes things a lot more interesting and playful.
F | This year you launched the Rita Short, using panels of fabric from across the shirts to create something entirely new. What prompted that and what did it open up for the collection?
CD | I love creating shirt collections but I wanted to offer customers something more, a garment they could mix and match with their shirts. I love a shorts and shirt combo and if I lived somewhere warm I think I’d wear that most days. I also want to grow and expand the brand, and creating shorts seemed like a natural next step toward where I want it to go.
The Rita Shorts also utilise the shirts that, due to too many flaws, would never be able to be used for any of the shirt collections. It just opens up another avenue of how to utilise discarded shirts. As I’m sourcing, if the cotton feels nice and the main flat areas of fabric are in good condition, it goes into the pile for shorts. I’ve already started collecting slowly for next summer.
F | You work from a studio in South London travelling from your North London home each day. How much does the city feed into the work, or do you find yourself looking elsewhere for that?
CD | Even though I’m a Londoner born and bred, I’m very much a coastal being. I love nothing more than a swim in the sea and to be on the beach. It’s not really intended but I think this just naturally comes out in the shirts, with the colours that I choose and the shapes that I print. Even choosing to expand into shorts first, rather than trousers.
F | Can you tell us a little about the collection you have put together for Fodder? Is there a shirt you’re most attached to, or that surprised you?
CD | I’ve created a collection that has a mix of all the shirt styles I create, so customers can get a real idea of the different shapes and styles that make up my collections. There is a cropped and collarless blue and brown printed shirt that is my favourite at the moment. Any darker blue and brown combination feels like my ultimate colour combination right now, but it still feels timeless, which is incredibly important.
F | The shirts sit somewhere between wearable art and everyday clothing. Do you think about who is going to wear them when you’re making them?
CD | My first thought is always, would I wear this? Because if I don’t want to wear it I can’t expect other people to. I also think over the years, and doing lots of in-person pop-ups, I’ve learnt more about my customer and the people who buy my shirts, what they look for and enjoy wearing.
F | What’s the best thing anyone has ever said to you about one of your pieces?
CD | I got a message from a customer who had bought a shirt from me at a pop-up. She had worn it to a networking event and said it was like the best networking hack ever, as it was a great conversation starter. People were coming up to her to ask about and compliment her shirt.
As someone who hates being in a room full of people I don’t know, I love that her shirt had this power for her and also brought her joy.
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A shirt that starts a conversation. A pair of shorts cut from fabric that would otherwise have nowhere to go. A practice built on the conviction that one beautiful thing is worth infinitely more than ten forgettable ones. Caroline’s work is quiet yet bold in the best possible way, and we are very glad it has found a home at Fodder this autumn.
