Meet Cressida Jamieson
It feels important to meet this January, more than any before it, with optimism – and designer Cressida Jamieson has helped us do just that
nhs frontline workers, an illustrated flower field, Grazia readers, Sienna Miller… in a mask. If you’d asked us a year ago to predict what 2020’s Grazia covers would look like, we would have got it astonishingly wrong. In a year in which the ‘unprecedented’ (groan) became utterly quotidian, as a magazine we had to adapt. Fast.
When it came to producing this issue – our last of 2020 and first of 2021 – we wanted to create a cover that celebrated the optimism we so badly need as a life raft.
We wanted to commission something special for the cover – and embroiderer and designer Cressida Jamieson was the perfect fit. Cressida’s story will resonate with many of you; she’s a working mum – to two boys, the youngest of whom was born this August – who has pivoted career, from fashion PR to floristry to her thriving embroidery business (she has collaborated with the likes of Matches and Yolke; her Rixo capsule is out now).
Cressida’s delicate, botanical embroideries have become an Instagram sensation, yet her work remains homespun and intimate. This year, many of us have reconnected with the quiet joy of creativity; Cressida is the poster girl for this new mood. ‘People have had more time on their hands, which has enabled them to explore and ignite new (and some old!) passions,’ she says. ‘I’ve found embroidery an incredibly therapeutic endeavour in 2020, and so hopefully others have found similar comfort and reward from their own pursuits.’
And as for the heart? Well, just as with those moments of buoyant optimism and anything-is-possible anticipation at the beginning of a new relationship, we’re taking our own tentative steps into something new, uncharted and – fingers crossed – better. As Cressida puts it, ‘It’s a message of hope: looking forward and putting difficult times behind us. Feeling excited again.’ cressidajamieson.com