About Me

Hello, I’m Susan Holloway, a designer, educator, author and maker based in Harrogate, Yorkshire.

Fashion and design have been part of my life for as long as I can remember. I trained in Fashion & Textiles in Manchester and went on to run my own fashion business before moving into higher education, where I spent more than twenty years teaching and leading fashion programmes. Along the way, I completed an MBA while at Leeds College of Art, bringing together the creative and commercial sides of my experience.

Most recently, I was part of the founding team at JCA | London Fashion Academy, where I was Director of Teaching and Learning.

I’m also the author of The Fundamentals of Fashion Management, now in its third edition, and I still work within higher education from time to time as an external assessor and examiner.

These days, though, you’re most likely to find me in my home studio making Whispered Porcelain, which I started in 2025 after buying my first kiln when I retired from teaching.

I really wanted to get ‘creative again’ and I love working with porcelain because it never becomes completely predictable. I draw, cut, shape and assemble everything by hand, and I particularly love that every single piece is different. Some pieces share a common aesthetic, the same botanical marks, monochrome palette or family of forms, but no two ever turn out quite the same.

My fashion background is still very much there. I find myself thinking about line, proportion, composition and how a piece sits and moves when it’s worn. Increasingly, I’m also exploring the relationship between porcelain and silver, and allowing the work to become a little more sculptural and experimental.

Holloway + Dillon is where all those different threads come together — drawing, design, material, making and a lifelong curiosity about what happens when you start with an idea and see where it takes you.