Kristen Claire Ristow, Spirit (2016)

Social Fabric aims to help build South Africa's textile industry through development of an innovation pipeline. We profile Kristen Claire Ristow, a South African fashion designer who works with mohair in innovative ways. Kristen explains that the most valuable aspect of mohair to her personal design aesthetic is the vast variety of yarns available. “I love texture and hence based my range on texture. Mohair offers an array of varied thickness of threads, fluff and mixes such as the ADORE from African Express range (20% kid Mohair and 80% Merino Wool) which I absolutely adored using. I feel as though texture is something people can see, but also feel, which in my opinion connects people to my work as they can’t simple walk past and look, but they have to walk past, stop and touch. Which I like, because I feel design isn’t purely about visuals – it’s about connection and through texture I feel I achieve this.”