Pauline Dujancourt

Pauline Dujancourt is a French designer based in London who has gained acclaim for her innovative and narrative approach to knitwear. A graduate of Central Saint Martins’ prestigious MA program in 2022, she was quickly recognized as a leading new talent, receiving the Global Creative Graduate Showcase award. Her inclusion in the British Fashion Council’s NEWGEN scheme further highlights her role in redefining the boundaries of contemporary hand-knitting through a sophisticated and artisanal lens.

Dujancourt is recognized for her ability to transform traditional craft into a modern means of expression, exploring themes of memory and evidence. Her work often presents garments as 'relics', suggesting a sense of history and physical passage. Her career reflects a commitment to the preservation of hand-crafted techniques while pushing them into new, avant-garde territories, positioning her as a significant voice in the London fashion scene.

Ancestral hand-knitting is transformed into a contemporary means of expression, focusing on the concept of 'dysfunctional beauty' and the idea of garments as relics or past evidence. The design language juxtaposes delicate knitted drapes with distressed tailoring and raw, 'battle scar-like' hems, creating a sense of history and physical resilience. This approach explores the tension between hyper-femininity and a sense of protective roughness, resulting in a kinetic and evocative silhouette.

Construction techniques utilize tulle, ribbon, and fine knit textures to create multi-dimensional surfaces that reference the act of making. The placement of raw edges and the manipulation of volume are engineered to suggest a sense of passage and memory, where the garment serves as a record of the body’s movements. By prioritizing the tactile and expressive potential of the hand-crafted object, the work achieves a poetic quality that emphasizes the narrative depth of the construction over conventional decorative tropes.