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TRACEY VICKERS DESIGN

Creator of great things! Oamaru, New Zealand

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World of WearableArt Finalist 2023

Maiden Of The Ferns 

 Aotearoa section

ART

Let's collaborate! Tracey offers illustrations for your products, business, project or campaigns.

UPHOLSTERY

Modern & Traditonal upholstery. Restoration projects.

MANUFACTURE

Interior/exterior furnishings. Offering quality components & fabric supply from leading fabric houses.

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Designer & Artist BDES
WOW finalist 2023, 2025 🫶
Furniture & upholstery 🪡
North Otago

Because every designer needs to match their WOW ga Because every designer needs to match their WOW garment! 

#worldofwearableart2025 #embroideryart
Here’s an insight into the process of making the # Here’s an insight into the process of making the #2 fish you see on my World of WearableArt garment Plastikos Hippocampus. 

♻️🐠🐟
Busy penguin watching 💙🐧 #littlebluepenguin #pen Busy penguin watching 💙🐧

#littlebluepenguin  #penguinscrossing #customembroidery
Today I got my hat on! ☀️🔥 Today I got my hat on! ☀️🔥
WOW these official World of WearableArt stage phot WOW these official World of WearableArt stage photos of Plastikos Hippocampus are so stunning!!!!!
Take me back!

Thank you @worldofwearableart and model @florencecater 

Plastikos Hippocampus, Tracey Vickers, New Zealand 
Photo credit: World of WearableArt Ltd

✨✨✨

#worldofwearableart
This was me being overambitious! I wasn’t going to This was me being overambitious!
I wasn’t going to share but I’d actually like you to see some of my failures.
After spending far too much time working it all out I got to this stage and realised I needed to move on without it….& it definitely wasn’t needed!!!
As much as I wanted a ballerina inspired Seahorse spinning on top of the headdress to fulfil childhood dreams there was too much movement in the spinning table making it feel unstable. My main concern was about the strength and I deconstructed the spinning table to find out how they were made….not strong at all! I mean it could have been possible but I’m no engineer and I would’ve had to fully design and make a custom spinning table so it was strong & suitable to wear. After spending far too much time on it I aborted. 
So I took the Seahorse for a little spin and then decided less is more. This headdress needs to be strong!

Woah Nelly! (fun fact dad wanted to call me Nelly maybe he should have.) 😂🤣
I wish I got every single signature of the @worldo I wish I got every single signature of the @worldofwearableart finalists!!

@teddymcritchiedesign you did better! 🤣😂
Plastikos Hippocampus Open Section @worldofwearab Plastikos Hippocampus 
Open Section
@worldofwearableart 

Close up details and a little explanation as to what was involved in processing these materials.

950 Sea Anemones 
Hand cut with scissors from over 100 milk bottles which were then individually shaped using a heat gun over wooden moulds that I turned on my wood lathe before being painted in vibrant colours.

Fish and Starfish 
Originally hand drawn before being digitised into embroidery files. A labour intensive process that involved hours of sitting in front of computer and going back and forth testing with embroidery machine to get things such as stitch lengths, tensions and colours correct.
Made of recycled soft plastics selected for colour including chip packets and hand cut into strips using scissors. I made about 50 of the fish in total & not all made the final cut.

Metallic teal blue smocked wave fabric 
A total of 16 meters of fabric was hand smocked into creating just over 8 meters of the smocked wave pattern. A time consuming process sewn over many nights which involved a lot of patience.

All components have been hand sewn onto their foundation, either the dress or fishtail with the addition of beads.

Photography by me…Tracey Vickers
Model @ruby_searle 

🌊🌊🌊

#worldofwearableart
PLASTIKOS HIPPOCAMPUS Open Section @worldofwearab PLASTIKOS HIPPOCAMPUS 
Open Section
@worldofwearableart 

Wielding her powerful cotton bud sceptre and luring fish into her colourful reef. Steadfast is her Hippocampus clinging to plastic marine debris that drifts by in the currents.
Plastikos Hippocampus is a response to the colossal garbage dump of plastic plaguing our oceans and attracting curious marine life to interact with, ingest and become entangled within.
Inspired by Justin Hofman’s hauntingly beautiful National Geographic photograph ‘Hippocampus Kuda’, depicting a tiny estuary seahorse which is dwarfed by and clinging onto a discarded cotton bud. 
“It’s a photo that I wish didn’t exist, but now that it does, I want everyone to see it,” - Justin Hofman.
She is a new deity of the sea who was born at the beginning of humanities disposable plastic era, and symbolic of historic 1950’s female fashion influences including the iconic mermaid dress and colourful rubber flower swimming caps. 
Beauty lies on the surface but she is catastrophically wicked beneath. A persona representing the forced artificial evolution of the earth’s oceans and what humans have made them become - vast ecosystems of plastics accumulated from decades of manufactured waste. A school of ‘polymer’ fish branded with iconic recycle symbols #2 and #4 reflects on the prediction that in the near future there will be more plastic than fish in the ocean. These polymer fish also represent the ‘mythical greenwashing’ deception perpetuated by manufacturers that the majority of plastic is recycled leading to an overall false sense of environmental security by consumers.
Brittle and battered by waves, sailors and fishermen have caught fragments of her plastic reef in their nets. But she herself is always changing particles, evolving and remaining as elusive, never to be fully caught. She uses the forces of nature to deliver her impact. 
She is the power of plastic trash choking up the seas.

Photography: Tracey Vickers
Model credit: @ruby_searle

Materials: 
Soft plastics, Milk bottles, Hand smocked fabric, Worbla, Beads.

#worldofwearableart
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