Theatre of dreams

Leeds-based designer Bo Carter has turned her fantasy world into high fashion reality. She talks to Stephanie Smith about her life and inspiration.
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‘Paper dolls. This is what I blame for my obsession,” says Bo Carter.

As a child growing up in Poland, Bo says she would spend countless hours dressing paper dolls in her own paper clothes designs – “Making sure my favourite doll, Beata, had the prettiest dress of all. I was lost in my own fantasy world.

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“There were always clothes in my world, although not many, as growing up in a communist and post-communist country gives you little else but empty shelves. However, there always was paper, scissors and my paper dolls.”

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As she grew up, she left her paper fantasy world behind, and indeed left Poland behind (she grew up near Poznan). At 21, she moved to Leeds to be with the man who would become her husband. She applied to Leeds Metropolitan University and trained as an accountant, then worked within the NHS.

But Bo is living proof that fantasy worlds can be revisited and that dreams can be revived. She is proof, too, of how fast fashion moves.

Now 33 and living in Morley, she has become a national award-winning 
fashion designer with her own boutique, building for herself a fine reputation 
for the ethical nature as well as the quirkiness and quality of her designs, 
her clothes characterised by playfulness, brave structure and unusual use of 
fabric.

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Bo’s new career began in 2010 with Leeds Fashion Week, which ran a competition to find new designers for its annual catwalk show. Bo, still working as an accountant, entered some drawings, almost on a whim. “I didn’t think anything of it, and I got through, so I thought I’d better learn how to make clothes.

“I couldn’t go back to accountancy after that – I loved it. I got myself a cheap sewing machine.”

The first item she made to send down the catwalk was a black and yellow jacket – an instant hit. “That was the jacket that made it really, and it’s thanks to that jacket that I will carry on and get recognised.”

In December 2010, she took her 
first collection to Virginia Fashion Week in USA which led to showcases in Malta, Iceland, Baltimore, Bangalore and around the UK. She opened her own shop in County Arcade, off Briggate in Leeds, last year.

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Now she has a new collection, the photographs of which were shot in Berlin and are featured here.

“I had a pretty rough end of last year,” Bo says, explaining that she split up with her husband then. “I designed the collection but I didn’t know how and where I wanted to shoot it.”

Then she met Steve Gabbett, a photographer, and now also Bo’s boyfriend, who, Bo says, “in a half joking way said, ‘they’re very David Bowie and we should shoot them in Berlin’. We just went and booked tickets and we did it.”

Using models from a German agency, the images were shot in the centre of the once divided city. “I always liked playing with different fabrics. It’s quirkiness, different colours and trying to make very structured pieces. I suppose they were influenced by David Bowie as I was listening to a lot of him at the time and I didn’t realise that was behind it.”

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Bo does not use leather or real fur and last year was recognised in awards by the charity The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) Foundation, which named her Most Talented New Designer and described her as “part of a bright new wave of fashion talent who are shunning animal skins in their work”, praising her “beautiful, original (and completely vegan) clothes”.

Now working on a new collection and planning more overseas shoots, and a show in Dubai, Bo Carter has turned her paper fantasy world into a real and wonderful world of fashion, fabric and design.

“My wardrobe is full of stories,” she says. “Each item of clothing has a tale to tell… mainly in my head. And I love each item in a different way. Is it wrong for a person to want to wear each item a specific number of times so the item in question doesn’t feel unloved?”

Twitter: @yorkshirefashQ

Visit www.bocarter.co.uk. Designs can be made to order.