Hollie Smith

Meet the Designer Part 1: Hollie Smith

Photography and video by Stephen Tilley Video edit by Jacket Productions

Meet the Designer Part 2: How Hollie Smith is Great Full

On pursuing a career in music…

My mum said that I could sing before I could speak. I started singing solos a lot in school; started writing music when I was about11 or so, and started working professionally, doing gigs professionally, when I was about 13.

On finding musical inspiration…

I was listening to a large range of music at a young age. James Brown was my favourite when I was about five. That continued on to a lot of similar genre music. And Jimmy Hendricks, I was obsessed with when I was about 11. So there was a number of different sort of musical inspirations through the years.  

On being a creative…

I don't think you really choose to be creative. I think you sort of are. It's something you can't really get away from. It's very much a compulsion to do it. It's hard to not do it. 

On someone significant in my life….

One of my best friends for sort of 10, 12 years, Helena, taught me a lot about life. She really loved life to the fullest. When she was diagnosed with terminal breast cancer, being alongside her through to her death taught me a lot more about life and how to live, to understand death and respect moments with somebody. Whereas, [usually] you sort of don't know when anyone's going to leave, I had the luxury of being able to spend time and say goodbye and go through this whole process with her and journey with her. It made me feel a lot more grateful for the moments that I have with people I love. Acknowledging and treating those moments as if they're your last. Not letting anything go unsaid and making sure that you love to the fullest and forgive easily. Helena's 'mantra' was 'be grateful, choose happiness'. We both got 'be grateful' tattoos.

On cultivating a community…

My idea of community is being able to work with and live with people, who aren't your people, to gain an understanding how people can live together; how you can admire and learn and educate yourself about different ways of life and doing that through subtleties within different family groups or whatever it may be. I love knowing my neighbours and being able to have a dialogue with them and having them come over. They may not people that I'd normally hang out with, I enjoy getting to  know them and understanding a different point of view. I think it's important to engage in your community that's not the same as you, just to appreciate the different aspects of humanity and the different things that they can offer and teach you.

On collaborating with Great Full to support Cure Kids…

Some kids and families have had such a really, really rough go of it – be it disease, illness, disabilities. Helping where I can has always been a priority for me, and helping children is where I align my charity-based work. This project has such a great cause and I was more than happy to come on board. Cure Kids just do such an extensive amount of work through so many things with young people and there are many branches to their tree with funding research and aiding families and helping children. We need an organisation like this which is why it’s important to support them.

On the inspiration behind the Rattle & Roll artwork…

I like to create and make things – mostly music and paintings. For this project I started to think about what I enjoy seeing on kids and what they might enjoy wearing and decided I'd stick with what I knew. I could imagine kids jamming in their jams so I doodled some little cute instruments as my artwork and called it ‘Rattle and roll’.

On being grateful…

Over the last couple of years– considering how difficult lockdown’s been – I’m really incredibly grateful for my health and the ability to be able to talk to my family every day. I have space for my fur people and my person. Lockdowns have made me realise that I'm just incredibly lucky to be in the situation that I'm in, even with hardships.

Everyone's existence is relative. We all live on a different relative plane and there's no reason to judge or compare because  that ‘grass is always greener’ mentality can be harmful. Just seeing what's in front of you and acknowledging that there are things to be grateful for can help in difficult times. Maybe there's not a lot but there's still something. Sometimes you just have to look a bit harder to find it.