Event Title: Disrupted Pattern Cutting Series — with Hellavagirl

Step inside the world of Hellavagirl — where couture meets chaos and creativity leads the cut.

The Disrupted Pattern Cutting Series is a hands-on workshop experience led by Helen Woollams, Creative Director of the award-winning label Hellavagirl, fresh from the London Fashion Week runway.

This isn’t traditional pattern cutting — it’s pattern cutting reimagined.
Across this immersive series, you’ll explore how to break, bend, and rebuild conventional techniques into bold, sculptural forms. You’ll learn to think in 3D, experiment with volume, and understand the artistry behind shaping the body through fabric.

💥 Perfect for:
– Fashion students and emerging designers
– Creatives seeking a new approach to garment construction
– Anyone ready to challenge the rules and discover their own cutting language

🖤 What to expect:
– Live demonstrations and guided cutting techniques
– Exploration of form, silhouette, and volume through experimentation
– Insight into Hellavagirl’s creative couture process
– A supportive, high-energy studio environment that celebrates fearless making

🎓 Led by: Helen Woollams, Creative Director of Hellavagirl — known for her disruptive couture showcased at London Fashion Week.

Her enduring philosophy:
“Cut fearlessly. Create without apology. Design to Ɔisrupt.”

📍 Location: WATERBORN WORKS
📅 Dates: Starting 01 November 2025
🎟️ Tickets: Limited spaces available — early booking recommended

MORE ABOUT THE HOST;

About Helen Woollams

Creative Director, Designer, and Founder of HELLAVAGIRL — Designed to Ɔisrupt.

Helen Woollams is a British fashion designer, Creative Director, and founder of the avant-garde couture label HELLAVAGIRL. Known for her dark romantic aesthetic and fearless experimentation, Helen’s work merges heritage craftsmanship with rebellion — sculptural silhouettes, theatrical structure, and a signature “savage couture” edge that defines her creative vision.

Helen began her fashion journey at just 16 years old, interning for Katherine Hamnett, where her instinct for design, cut, and authenticity first caught the industry’s attention. She went on to study at the University of the Arts London, across both Central Saint Martins (CSM) and London College of Fashion (LCF), developing a design philosophy that balances technical mastery with pure creative disruption.

She went on to work with leading creatives including Louis de Gamma, Helen David (English Eccentrics), and Frost French, before later being headhunted to work with Giles Deacon and Alexander McQueen, where her sculptural vision, pattern innovation, and storytelling through form flourished.

Helen founded HELLAVAGIRL to channel her uncompromising approach to design — bold, feminine, and unapologetically theatrical. Her collections have been showcased at London Fashion Week, Paris Fashion Week, and international exhibitions, featured in British Vogue, Vogue Italia, FabUK, and British Thoughts Magazine, and worn by musicians, performers, and red-carpet disruptors worldwide.

Crowned Britain’s Top Designer 2016, Helen has also appeared on BBC’s The Apprentice and continues to champion new talent through mentorship and opportunity. Her HELLAVAGIRL Education Series and in-house studio placements provide young designers, pattern cutters, and stylists with real-world experience in couture craftsmanship and creative collaboration — empowering the next generation to be fearless and disruptive in their own practice.

In 2025, Helen made her celebrated return to London Fashion Week under the Oxford Fashion Lab Bursary, presenting her comeback collection The Discovery of Mr Nobody — a visceral statement of artistry, identity, and resilience that reaffirmed her position as one of Britain’s most daring creative forces.

Info: WEEK 1 — Cutting is Choreography Discover the rhythm of fabric in motion. This first session redefines cutting as a form of choreography — draping, twisting, and sculpting directly on the stand. Helen guides you through exploring bias, grain, and silhouette to understand the body as a moving line, not a static form. Learn to balance control and chaos while creating a sculptural toile that embodies kinetic energy. Through guided demonstration, hands-on exploration, and peer critique, you’ll experience pattern cutting as performance and design as movement — the foundation for a fearless approach to form.

Info: Learn to design through absence. This week explores subtractive pattern cutting — a radical process where shape is born from removal. Through folding, mapping, and controlled cutting, you’ll uncover how negative space creates new silhouettes and expressive structure. Expect guided demos, body mapping exercises, and experimentation with voids and layers. Helen’s couture-level insight helps you use instinct and intention equally to find balance in chaos. Leave with calico studies that show how elimination, not addition, defines modern design.

Info: Every pattern starts with order — until it’s disrupted. Week 3 examines the hidden systems within traditional pattern cutting and teaches you to dismantle them with purpose. Using classic bodice and skirt blocks, you’ll explore symmetry, repetition, and distortion through dart manipulation, seam migration, and hybrid construction. Expect a mix of demonstration, guided studio work, and critique. By the end, you’ll transform convention into innovation, creating experimental patterns that challenge predictability and celebrate precision as rebellion.

Info: From sculpture to surface — this session bridges artistry and wearability. Learn to translate your 3-D draped experiments into flat, functional patterns without losing energy or intent. Helen demonstrates techniques to flatten complex shapes, control seam flow, and mark balance points with couture precision. You’ll produce partial prototypes and discover how to join irregular forms through advanced slash-and-spread methods. This week turns chaos into clarity — the art of making the abstract wearable and alive.

Info: Your final act of disruption. This closing session brings together your experimental process into a finished creative garment or sculptural form. Complete, photograph, and present your final piece in a studio showcase and critique led by Helen. Learn professional finishing and couture detailing techniques while refining your portfolio documentation. This is your opportunity to consolidate skills, receive feedback, and celebrate fearless design. Leave with a finished piece, a certificate of completion, and a renewed sense of creative identity — Designed to Ɔisrupt.

Info: Disruptive Pattern Cutting with Helen Woollams


Step inside the world of couture rebellion with HELLAVAGIRL’s Creative Director, Helen Woollams. Over five fearless weeks, you’ll learn to cut, drape, subtract and sculpt fabric into form — transforming chaos into couture. From Week 1’s “Cutting is Choreography” to the climactic “Final Cut,” this hands-on journey explores control, movement, deconstruction and reconstruction through the lens of high fashion. Expect stand-based experimentation, creative pattern work, and portfolio-ready outcomes that challenge every rule you’ve ever been taught. Designed for emerging designers and fearless makers, this course fuses heritage technique with modern disruption — because true creativity starts where the pattern breaks.

Also check out other Arts events in Leighton Buzzard, Fashion Shows in Leighton Buzzard, Workshops in Leighton Buzzard.