About Me - the designer - Debi Lysaght
I have been designing and making wedding dresses since I was a teenager, from starting in theatre costume design at my local saturday morning drama school - having 2 brothers I think my mother thought this would 'girly' me up. My first play for costume design and making - aged 13 - was Chaucer's 'Canterbury Tales' for a cast of approx 60 young people in various roles and a budget of £60.00!
My love of medieval literature, heroic tales, costume & art has stayed with me and includes anything LOTR, the Pre-Raphalites, Camelot or loosly connected to the Arthurian legands and fantasy films such as 'Legend', 'Stardust' & Braveheart.
My love of creating developed into sewing when I was a little girl, making costumes and clothing for my dolls from cast off clothes (including one of my mum's 'New Look' dresses - why she let me cut that up I do not know!) and so I lost myself for hours of happy play in my fantasy world of their adventures and the reinactment of stories from some of the books I was reading at the time! I made my own clothes from 11 years onwards. I had a wonderful 'old-fashioned' needlework teacher - Mrs Sheldrake - who drilled into me the importance of technique and whom I didn't really appreciate til many years later. By a year later I had started to experiment with commercial patterns and began to work on my own variations and designs, as well as experimenting with medieval authentic cutting techniques! Not that I let Mrs Sheldrake know that . . .
After gaining GCSE's in 'Needlework' and 'Art' at school, I went on to do a '1 Year Foundation Course in Art & Design' eventually doing a degree in Textile Design at Huddersfield Polytechnic. I founded 'Gotihk Designs' in 1998 when we were living in Leeds - moving to Pontefract, West Yorkshire a couple of years later with my husband and 2 and a half dogs - 2 border terrier crosses and one miniture dashound (the half).
This website is dedicated to the memory of my brother - Mark Haigh-Hutchinson (read more about Mark here) - who died from pancreatic cancer on 15 January 2008. My younger brother by 13 months, Mark was a very talented computer games programmer, extremely respected in his field, involved in visual imaging techniques including 'real-time cameras' - he tried to explain the technical bits of this to me many times! He was always encouraging me and I miss him a lot.
Debi
Email debilysaght@yahoo.co.uk or telephone me on 07906 719326 (if I am with a bride or working on a dress I may not be able to answer the phone - leave me a message and I will phone you back)