My wife, Linda Row, who has died aged 64 of acute pancreatitis, was a clothes and textile designer. We met in 1976 on the art foundation course at St Martin’s School of Art. I left for Chelsea School of Art but she stayed on to study fashion and design alongside singer Sade Adu, milliner Stephen Jones, and academic and cultural commentator Iain R Webb. From St Martin’s, Linda, known to friends as Loulou, immersed herself in the 80s underground music scene, making waves with her millinery company, with Steve Dash, Black Habit (1985-87).
After the birth of our son, Louis, in 1991, and daughter, Eve, in 1995, and living in south London, Linda founded Clothworks (1997), one of the first ethical and sustainable clothes-making labels in the UK. In 2002, we moved to a converted chapel in Bradford on Avon, Wiltshire, where Linda started up Boutique Ethique (2006), which extended her ethical approach to the fashion business by using offcuts for interlinings, biodegradable fastenings and textiles coloured without the need for toxic chemicals.
She became a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (2011-14) and, following an MA in textiles at Bath Spa University in 2012, founded the Seam Collective with fellow students Desiree Jeans, Tabitha Stewart and Penny Wheeler. After working alone in her studio for many years and bringing up a family, she found that collaborative working was much more successful and rewarding in achieving sustainable results. In Seam she found a group of like-minded and exceptionally talented individuals who valued sharing ideas and friendship. The collective secured Arts Council funding for its mission to create fabrics with colouring drawn from plants. Most recently, she set up Foraged Colour to show that sustainable textiles can be made from farmed yarn, natural dyes and with minimal waste.
Linda harboured a longtime interest in appraising the effect of non-ionising radiation from mobile phones and wifi on human health, and, in 2014, she embarked on a PhD at Manchester Fashion Institute, at Manchester Metropolitan University, to look at how smart textiles could be developed to neutralise such radiation for the electro-sensitive population. She was awarded her doctorate just before her death.
Linda was born in Bushey, Hertfordshire, to Dora (nee Aves), a weaver, and Ronald Care, who had a printing business, and she went to school in Hemel Hempstead. Her maternal grandfather, Owen Aves, co-founded the Institute of Optometry (London Refraction hospital) in 1922 in south London.
In 2021, we moved to Stroud, Gloucestershire, to a cottage with four acres of garden including a wildflower meadow, which enabled Linda to carry on her experiments with dye plants and growing her new favourite crop, flax. She will be greatly missed by all who knew her and understood her passion for life and art.
Linda is survived by me, Louis and Eve, her brother, Tony, and her two sisters, Jenny and Sue.
