Olivia Hegarty

Biography

I am a designer, maker, researcher and educator. These facets of my design / scholarly practice converge in enquiries around the nature of knowledge. I am interested in how embodied knowledge or ways-of-knowing of a place or from lived experience, are often devalued in favour of industry standards (in the case of design) or canonical knowledge (in the case of art).

My current collaborative research project Critical Fitting looks at how design education can use decolonial thinking to generate creatively fruitful design research while conceptually challenging a ‘one-world world’. Critical Fitting is a curriculum intervention that uses sensory methods to include and revalue embodied knowledge over modern, universal ways-of-knowing.

I currently teach on the MA Womenswear course at London College of Fashion. In my post as Senior Lecturer in Creative Patterncutting I support postgrads in craft, design and 3D realisation of their practice-based research projects. Proximity to materials and hands-on experimental sampling are core methods in my teaching. I strongly promote a values-led pedagogy that encourages future-designers to explicitly consider their ethical red lines.

My design approach foregrounds the ontological and the relational – I believe that design objects don’t just represent but enact practices in their worlds. My current studio practice focuses on scagliola plasterwork where I explore knowledge-building through haptic encounters and open-ended process of making.

I studied Philosophy and History of Art and Architecture at Trinity College Dublin at BA level and a diploma course in Fashion Design in Ireland before moving to London to work in menswear design. I co-founded and co-ran a clothing label called Percival, which in its early years promoted local production and heritage textiles. I have maintained a slowly-evolving studio practice alongside freelance design work over 20 years. In 2019 I trained for a short period with a scagliolista in Florence. In 2025 I graduated with a MA in Academic Practice from University of the Arts London.

I have given talks or workshops at NABA Italy, UdK Berlin, Technical University Munich and HSBI Bielefeld Germany, Universidad de Navarra Spain, Swedish School of Textiles and SPOSAD programme in Taiwan. I have participated in conferences in Canada, Netherlands, Germany, the UK and Mexico. I have contributed to exhibitions, either in collaboration with or support of other artists in Whitechapel Gallery, National Trust Wakefield, James Taylor Gallery and in my own right at Royal College of Art London, Dún Laoghaire Festival of World Cultures, Volume Projects and Amnuden Da Gallery.