Sue Roberts

Textile Design
Sue Roberts has a successful track record of over 20 years in the fashion textile and home interiors retail and design markets. She trained in Textile and Surface Pattern Design, specialising in embroidery at Cleveland College of Art and Design. On graduating in 1994 she established her design studio producing exclusive designs for the international fashion and interior clients.

Trend and Forecasting
In 1998 Sue moved to London where she was spotted by Marks and Spencer and hired to research fabric trends contributing into the influential Central Design Think Tank. While there she worked with the European yarn mills establishing the design direction for yarn and fabric where she worked two years ahead of the season.

Retail and Brand Development
Sue’s expert skills in colour and trend analysis and her instinctive eye for detail were soon spotted by House of Fraser and in 2004 she joined the Home design team to work with Sue Mac on Linea Home. She subsequently took over Sue’s role where she later became Design Director. Sue went on to create a formidable array of brilliant House Brands including — Pied a Terre Home, Casa Couture, Living by Christiane Lemieux, Kenneth Cole Home, Biba, Dickens and Jones, Gray and Willow, Junipa and Shabby Chic. Her instinctive eye for detail and design and ability to translate these into commercially viable retail propositions has made her a much sought after creative strength.

Sue’s career at House of Fraser took her around the world where she fine tuned her sourcing skills in both soft and hard goods and established longstanding relationships with an international portfolio of manufacturers and agents. She excelled as a creative director and built and developed a highly motivated design team from scratch and instilled into them her unique design sensibility.

Sue absolutely thrived on the challenge of translating global trends and traditions into design-led products whilst constantly exploring methods to excite and educate the consumer on an ever evolving journey. Season after season she bought fresh creative nuances to each of the in-house brands and worked with the visual department, press and marketing teams to ensure that the DNA of each brand was taken right through to an exceptional standard of lifestyle presentation.

Sue Mac

Textile Design
Sue Mac has over 33 years of experience in the creative industries. In 1985, with a textile degree from Farnham and two portfolios of designs to sell she headed for New York and subsequently acted as a successful agent and designer of fashion and interiors textiles for both the USA and European markets for a number of years. Recognising a desire to work on a bigger scale an opportunity to work in interior decoration arose and Sue was able to explore her love of colour, textiles, pattern and product styling in residential and commercial environments in the UK and Europe.

Trend and Forecasting
In 1992 her textile designs attracted the attention of Nigel French International, a global trend and forecasting agency, where, she immediately found herself on a plane to Japan with ten large suitcases jammed with presentation boards and barely time to fling a spare pair of knickers and a toothbrush in her hand bag. While at Nigel French she ran the interiors division, spearheading the creative content of the interior trend forecast publications and product licensing programmes and in-between consulting on home trends with a roster of Japanese, UK and USA clients. Sue joined USA forecasting agency Stylesight in 2010 and photographed her way through European Home Interiors and Lifestyle trade shows creating directional reports on the latest trends.

Retail and Brand Development
In 1997 Sue joined Harrods as Head of Home Development where she provided an in-house trend service and drove the creative direction of the store’s own label home and gift collection, working with the buyers in each category to source and develop product. In 1999 Sue moved to House of Fraser and as Head of Design devoted herself to creating the in-house boutique brand Linea Home. It became a benchmark in the Home Interiors industry. The first phase of a bed, bath and accessory collection was launched into 33 stores in 2000 and in 18 months became a £5million+ a year home lifestyle brand. Linea Home Dining collection launched in 2004, followed by Linea Home Furniture in 2005. Arriving at Debenhams in 2006, Sue sought to drive more aspirational core product by introducing new suppliers to the existing base and by briefing external creative work from the likes of Collier Campbell and First Eleven Design Studios. Sue also took the creative reigns of the in house brands – Jasper Conran, John Rocha, Betty Jackson, Julian MacDonald and Jane Packer, refocusing the DNA of each and directing their evolution.

Manufacturing
In 1994, as Head of Design of UK manufacturer Bairdwear, Sue guided the design team to develop bespoke bed linen collections for Marks and Spencer and Debenhams. Whilst there she established relationships with the following brands – Sanderson and Collier Campbell in the UK and in the USA, Raymond Waites. Sue’s extensive experience of developing both hard and soft good manufacturing has been honed through years of travel to India, Japan and much of the Far East as well as extensively in Europe – France, Italy, Portugal, Poland and Lithuania.

Freelance
Sue’s freelance roles include brand repositioning, brand creation and development and trends. She has worked with the likes of Christy, Harrods, Lizard Orchid, Josephine Home, Miller Sacher, Sophie Conran, VV Rouleaux, Clarissa Hulse, White Stuff and Debenhams.