Is This Real Life?

Holly Tudor is an illustrator and designer based in Manchester, and the face behind Is This Real Life?; an independent clothing brand with an aim to create wearable pieces of art inspired by existentialism and modern living.

Whilst she has always loved drawing and illustration, Holly gained a degree in Metalwork and Jewellery design from Sheffield Hallam, wanting to try something “a bit more hands on”. She describes; “Whilst I loved the making aspect of working with metal, after I finished uni I quickly realised my attention span was a little short for the process and ultimately decided that it wasn’t for me”. Despite this, Holly always held on to the passion to create and start her own business, dabbling with different types of illustration and art throughout the years, but struggling to find out exactly what was her passion. However, when the pandemic hit, and she suddenly found herself on furlough, Holly had time to create again and decided to teach herself screen printing, and quickly became absolutely obsessed with the process.

“I’ve always been quite a slow artist – meaning I often struggle to create things quickly or post regularly and I never know when inspiration is going to hit me. I felt like screen-printing really allowed me to feel like I was being creative and making again even when I’m in creative lulls or not coming up with new designs.” 

The biggest part of Is This Real Life? is T-shirts, which Holly sells alongside prints, bags, and hoodies. She tells us; “I think there’s something really interesting and beautiful in pairing illustrations which are light hearted but also have these philosophical and existential elements which most people can relate to with something so commonplace and universal as a T-shirt. I also love that it creates an affordable piece of artwork that people can keep with them and literally wear on their backs.”

Inspiration for her designs often strikes Holly in the form of “some random late night existentialist words” which she quickly gets down on paper ready to create an illustration around. She often sketches out the compositions roughly first in a sketchbook, then draws everything out in procreate to get that hand drawn feeling, converting it into a vector to finish editing it in Illustrator, and finally transferring the design to silkscreen.

“It’s always been super important to me to be hands on in almost every element of the business,” says Holly. Thus, she hand prints all of the products in very small batches, only restocking when they’re low and only keeping around 10 designs on at a time so as not create unwanted stock, keeping the designs fresh and exciting.

Having started at home in the corner of her living room, Holly now has a studio space in Wellington Studios, allowing her to continue to grow her business. She has also recently started taking on freelance design work including merchandise design for brands and musicians.

Looking to the future, Holly will be working on some bigger, longer time scale passion projects alongside the T-shirt printing, and designing and printing her own fabric which she will turn into hand made pieces of clothing, accessories, and homeware. She concludes; “It’s been amazing to see how much the brand has grown in just over a year so I’m excited to see where I can take it in the next one!” 

@itrl.studio
www.itrlstudio.com

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