Illustrating an Industry

By Madeline Czarnik

Illustration by Stella Richman

Megan’s style started as mainly linework with splashes of color and to this day many of her drawings often look as if they were created in a single stroke of the pen. She confirms that, actually, with two to three pickups of the pen in a drawing, this is mostly true.

Megan St. Clair Morgan is exactly the kind of forward-thinking fashion illustrator you’re going to want to have on your radar. Fashion illustration began in the early 1800s as the primary way to share fashion collections across countries and the world; the original Instagram for fashion. In today’s fashion scene, you’ll see a lot of “fashion illustrations” detailing beautiful models in beautiful clothes, and then you’ll see fashion illustrations, when the illustration itself is an abstraction of beauty and the clothes themselves. Megan St. Clair Morgan falls into the latter category (although she does boast a repertoire of more subjects than just fashion images).

Meeting at 4 p.m. during winter in London means that the sun is already setting. The dark black and grey buildings and repetitive nature of the streets in Hackney, where she works and lives, add to a feeling of being in an apocalyptic yet cosmopolitan maze. Megan takes me to a cool coffee shop she knows around the corner and makes note of a new store that has just recently popped up. We take a look: artisanal scented candles, anyone?

Sitting down with our hot drinks and a delicious-looking almond and pear tart, I ask her about her start into fashion illustration. “My work was questionable to say the least when I started -- I really couldn’t draw … I think I was hopeful that I’d be able to if I practised enough.” This acts as a testament to Megan’s character and humbled opinion of herself -- she landed her very first job with Swarovski doing live portraits at an event in her first year of studies at the London College of Fashion and has since illustrated for names such as Matches Fashion, JW Anderson, and Estée Lauder. Megan’s style started as mainly linework with splashes of color and to this day many of her drawings often look as if they were created in a single stroke of the pen. She confirms that, actually, with two to three pickups of the pen in a drawing, this is mostly true. Drawing live during fashion week has enabled her to hone in on the quickness that is descriptive of her art and taught her to accept mistakes happily; she says she’s “never carried a rubber in [her] life---it’s pointless; if you’re going to draw a picture; why would you rub it out?” As we put more and more emphasis on the digitization of everything that we consume, I ask Megan her thoughts about working digitally versus physically. She tells me that she wasn’t convinced digital illustration was for her for the longest time, saying that when she tried it she felt like “none of [her work] really looked like art.” However, with a recent gifting of an iPad from Apple in July of 2019 to promote a new illustrating software, Adobe Fresco, she’s been venturing into the world of digital illustration -- with reservations. “When I’m actually doing it I think that I connect [with my work], but afterward I think that I disconnect

a lot quicker.” This perspective is extremely relatable to the way we consume and react to media and how Megan thinks that illustration offers a bit of a reprieve. “There’s so much overstimulation [with imagery] and I think that’s the thing with fashion illustration. In 2012 when Instagram launched and people started posting things online, suddenly it was something different.”

When Megan isn’t drawing or travelling for fashion weeks, she leads the digital communications of the Centre for Sustainable Fashion, a research centre based at London College of Fashion. Sustainability is a key ethos in her practice as a creative, so it’s no surprise her online shop sells on-demand prints. “I don’t want my products to be wasteful, I want them to be cherished.” By using print on-demand service Printful, Megan can ensure that an illustration is only printed if it’s been ordered and that her work is produced to a good standard at a price point which is more accessible – delivered with no plastic packaging, no bullshit, and produced by the closest warehouse to the customer, in one of three different parts of the world.

However, sustainable fashion and responsible business practices are not a new thing for Megan St. Clair Morgan. She tells me about how she essentially grew up on vintage and helped to manage vintage stores since the age of 13. “Back home in Leeds that was like, a big thing when I was a teenager, I was like, I’ll come and work for you and I’ll buy all your stock! So I literally got paid every weekend, I think I got paid 30 quid, and I did a five-hour shift on a Saturday, and then I used to come back into the shop and I would spend the whole thing.” When I had interviewed her, she had recently scored a pair of Marques’Almeida shorts on Ebay for a tenner, but that hasn’t been the only thing she had scored. Days before we met, Megan signed with Lipstick of London, a London-based illustration agency; and after seven years of freelancing it’s about time for Megan. “For most people it’s so you can focus on the creative stuff; like, you don’t get into being an illustrator because you want to send invoices; you get to be an illustrator because you love drawing and it’s quite nice when someone pays you.” And pay her you should.