Studio Notes 01
Studio Note 01 – June 2026. Exploring why originality, personalisation, and intentional creation matter more than ever.
People are tired of output that feels generic, whether it comes from algorithms or mass production. The rise in decorating Kindles, journaling, and personalising everyday objects points to a deeper pushback against sameness. This note explores why originality matters now, and why it’s really about recognition, not performance.
Why are people personalising everyday objects?
A recent Google Trends report caught my attention. Not because of any single trend, but because so many pointed in the same direction.
People are decorating Kindles. Adding charms to everyday objects. Taking up journaling. Buying crafting kits. Personalising possessions. More and more of us are searching for ways to make ordinary things feel a little more our own.
On the surface, it can look playful. A trend. A moment. Another online wave moving through our culture. But I think there is something deeper happening.
I think people are quietly pushing back against sameness.
We live in a world where so much has become frictionless, scalable, and strangely interchangeable. We can buy almost anything quickly and have it delivered tomorrow. We can scroll through endless variations of the same object, layout, slogan, aesthetic, and algorithmic suggestion. And yes, there’s convenience in that.
But there is also a kind of flattening.
At some point, when everything becomes available, the question changes.
It is no longer simply:
Can I get this?
It becomes:
Does this feel like mine? Does this fit me?
That, I think, is where the hunger for originality begins.
What’s the difference between personalisation and originality?
At first glance, many of these trends appear to be about personalisation. But I think they are really about originality.
Not originality as performance, and not originality as shouting louder than everyone else. But originality as recognition.
A quiet moment of seeing something and feeling:
Yes. That has something of me in it.
Perhaps that’s why people decorate the objects they already own.
A Kindle becomes more than a device.
A journal becomes more than paper.
A bag, a shoe, a phone case, a notebook, a jacket all become small surfaces of self-expression.
These acts may seem minor, but they say something important.
They say:
I am still here.
They say:
I do not want everything around me to feel generic.
They say:
I want the things I live with to carry some trace of my identity.
And I understand that.
Why does intention matter in a world of mass production?
As an artist, I have always been interested in what sits beneath the surface. Not just how something looks, but what it carries. What it suggests. What it remembers and what it allows someone to recognise in themselves.
That’s why I am drawn to objects with presence.
A handmade cup is not only useful because it holds tea. It carries the evidence of a hand.
A journal is not only useful because it holds words. It becomes a private landscape.
A piece of art is not only something to fill a wall. It can become a point of return. A reminder. A companion. A mirror. A witness.
So, whether it’s a journal, a decorated Kindle, a handmade cup, or a piece of wearable art, the impulse feels very similar.
We are taking objects and asking them to carry something of ourselves.
The same is true of clothing.
We often talk about clothes as fashion, but I think clothing is also language.
Before we speak, we have already entered the room carrying signals.
Colour.
Shape.
Texture.
Restraint.
Boldness.
Softness.
Edge.
What we wear can say something about who we are, or who we are becoming.
That doesn’t mean every garment needs to be profound. Sometimes a T-shirt is just a T-shirt. Sometimes comfort is enough. Sometimes practicality is the whole point.
But sometimes clothing becomes something else. It becomes a way of carrying art through the world. It becomes a small act of authorship, and sometimes it becomes a signal.
What does this have to do with wearable art?
This is one of the thoughts behind my 2026 Wearable Art Collection. Each piece begins as original artwork before it becomes clothing.
The artwork comes first. Always.
The garment is not a blank product waiting for decoration. It is a surface that has to be considered carefully because the integrity of the artwork still matters.
Colour matters.
Placement matters.
The space around the design matters.
The mood of the garment matters.
And then there is the small finishing detail: an artist-created sleeve element, made in keeping with the mood, palette, and visual language of the chosen piece. That detail is not about mass customisation. It isn’t about asking the buyer to become the designer. It is about allowing each finished garment to carry a quiet individual mark. A sign that it was not simply pulled from a shelf. A sign that it was completed with intention.
I keep returning to that phrase. Created with intention. Because perhaps that is what many of us are looking for now, even when we do not quite have the words for it.
In a world of mass production, intention feels different. In a world of algorithmic repetition, authorship feels different. In a world where so much is designed to scale, something considered, specific, and human begins to carry another kind of value.
That value is not always about luxury. It is not always about price. It is about relationship. The relationship between maker and object. Between object and owner. Between what we choose and what we feel it says about us.
This may be why originality matters. Not because everyone wants to stand apart for the sake of it, but because people want to feel less absorbed by the machinery of sameness. They want objects that hold a little more story. A little more care – more evidence that someone was present in the making.
And perhaps that is also why artist-made work continues to matter. Because art resists total flattening. It comes from somewhere particular.
A hand.
A history.
A way of seeing.
A set of choices that could not have been made in exactly the same way by anyone else.
When that art moves into wearable form, something interesting happens. The artwork leaves the wall. It enters daily life and becomes part of someone’s movement, their rhythm, their presence in the world.
That is not merchandise to me. It is a different way for the work to travel. And perhaps that is where the search for originality is leading many of us.
Not always towards more things, but towards things that feel more alive. Things that feel chosen. Things that carry identity, story, and intention.
Maybe we are not only personalising objects. Maybe we are trying to make the world feel human again. Or perhaps originality is not really about standing apart at all.
Perhaps it’s about recognising ourselves in the things we choose to keep close.
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