Meet Holly Artist & founder

Hi, I’m Holly.

I’m the artist behind every FOKE print. This is the story of how colour brought me back to myself, and why I make clothes and art for people who refuse to blend in.

Read my story ↓

Holly Clinton, founder and artist of FOKE, smiling in a colourful printed headscarf

Colour without apologyMake the everyday louderPlay without an age limitArt for real life

The colour

FOKE began with an obsession with prints, colour, shape and art that questions why everything needs to make sense. I’ve always seen the world in colour and form, finding patterns in ordinary places, unexpected combinations and possibilities where others might see rules.

The pause

But before FOKE became what it is today, I put down my drawing to help care for my sister Amber when her breast cancer returned. My family and I cared for her until she passed in 2020. During that time, the sketchbooks closed, not because I stopped being an artist, but because I was busy loving my sister to the edge of her life.

My own chapter

Cancer reshaped my own life too. BRCA2 testing revealed that I carried the gene fault, and routine screening later found 8cm of DCIS in my left breast. With my baby daughter on my hip, I chose to have a double mastectomy. I later chose to remain flat.

“Grief needed somewhere to go.”

Drawing again

After losing Amber, I picked up an iPad and began drawing again, not with a business plan, but because grief needed somewhere to go. Drawing gave my hands something to do when my head and heart were full. Slowly, the patterns came back. Those small sketches grew into the bold, confident artwork that now lives across FOKE.

Holly’s studio table with painted palettes, printed fabric, a colour wheel and an iPad showing a FOKE print in progress — The studio table. Every FOKE print starts here, by hand.

Living with intention

In the years after Amber passed, I also lost my good friend Danny, and then my stepdad Leigh, the person I was closest to in this world. Grief lives inside me now. Losing them hurts so much, and that pain drives me to live with intention, to pay attention to the time I have and to make a life that matters.

For real bodies

That experience changed how I think about bodies, clothes and visibility. I wanted to make pieces for real lives and real bodies, including bodies with scars, bodies living flat and bodies that have changed. Pieces that bring comfort without asking anyone to disappear.

How I design for every body →

Holly Clinton smiling in a colourful FOKE Hero Tee with a friend at Finders Keepers Market — Me (right) in the Hero Tee at Finders Keepers.

Why FOKE

FOKE is what happened when my life as an artist met everything I had lived through. It is colour without apology, play without an age limit and art that gives you permission to take up space.

Made thoughtfully with small-scale partners, FOKE is art for real life, and for people who still want to live boldly, even after life has changed them.

Holly x

What matters

What FOKE
stands for.

Independent & artist-led
Built by Holly Clinton in the Macedon Ranges.
Original art, always
Every print starts by hand, not from a trend forecast.
Made close, made carefully
Small-scale partners, thoughtful runs and considered materials.
For real bodies
Shapes for living in, including post-mastectomy bodies.
Colour, no permission needed
Pieces made to be seen, worn and lived with.
Five percent forward
Five per cent of proceeds funds cancer research.