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Ami Lowman: Introduction

25th November 2015
Posted by: Ami Lowman
Category: Making Space

Hello Hello,

Well I’m Ami and I’ve been at Making Space since (nearly) the very beginning.

I joined the team back in August 2007, three months after we had our official royal opening, as a part-time intern helping out with the creative programming… Over the last 8 years (wow….where’d that go) my role and relationship with Making Space has changed an evolved as the organisation has. I have been in charge of one of our two big HLF projects, been a studio tenant and now am in charge of programming workshops/events and all the marketing (with help from our awesome team obviously)

I have only ever worked part time at Making Space and that allows me to also work as a freelance artist…

For those that don’t know me with my ‘other’ hat on, I also run my own creative brand called Mia Mai. I officially launched the business in Feb 2007 seven months after graduating from Portsmouth Uni with a first in Fashion and Textiles Enterprise.

I thought for my first blog post for our snazzy new website I’d share with you all a little about what I do when I’m not sat in the Making Space office….

Mia Mai, is my personal brand, based on my name it has, like me, changed over the years, I tend to dabble in what ever has caught my attention at that particular time, but on the whole: fashion, illustration, jewellery, creative workshops and bespoke services….. oh and lingerie, I recently started designing and making lingerie!

I run Mia Mai from a home studio in Southsea, at the moment my biggest focuses are lingerie, illustration and freelance teaching.

The fascination with lingerie began at Uni as a major influence of my FMP. I then kind of forgot about it till 2012 when I was encouraged to create a lingerie collection for the first ever Southsea Fashion Week, a hugely successful event that I co-organised.

For the collection I dabbled with a bit of customised shop brought stuff and also attempted my own pieces. The ‘dressing room’ collection was all vintage inspired and had a hint of burlesque about it. Rave reviews and bespoke requests followed and I thought… Hmmm I might be on to something here….

Fast-forward a couple of years and my second collection, which was heavily influenced by Indian and ethic fabrics/colours/detailing, was being created for the South Coast Fashion Week in Bournemouth. This second collection, which was photographed by London based photographer Maximilian Hetherington continued to catch the eye of the lingerie magpies out there and I was asked to be a part of the designer market for Brighton Fashion Week in 2014. Since then I have begun to have some proper training in the art of lingerie and learn how to do things properly. I attended an amazing professional lingerie master-class at Craft Central earlier this year and in 2016 plan to embark on some more private 121 tuition with the amazing June Allnutt.

I’m excited to see where this next chapter leads in my personal creative career. I’m currently working on a collection of Bridal lingerie which I hope to debut in 2016. I’ll share some pics so you can have a hint of what I do. You’ll have to visit my website to see finished photos and shots from recent shoots (trust me you wont be disappointed! (you can of course also have a nose around everything else that I do too!)