Fit But You Know It: Workshopping Methods for Decolonising Fashion Practice
Fit But You Know It: Workshopping Methods for Decolonising Fashion Practice
Submitter: Olivia Hegarty, University of the Arts, London, o.hegarty@arts.ac.uk
Abstract:
In this hands-on workshop we'll address the challenge of decolonising art school education by exploring a core concept in industrially-produced clothing: fit. The standardisation and simplification of fit is critical to fashion's ability to sell, ship and scale products globally. Enlightenment values of universalism underpinning global trade also see to the erasure of our tacit understanding of how to fit fabric to our own bodies. Industrially-produced clothing has fit ‘built-in’ using pattern-cutting techniques of darts and seam shaping. By contrast, pre-industrial or contemporary examples of non-western garments, such as West African wrapper dresses, rely on fitting techniques deployed by wearers’ hands when wrapping, knotting, or rolling. Art schools and universities are ideal settings to challenge deeply embedded industrial-colonial practices and shift epistemic power relations. Here, we aim to reconfigure understandings of fit to allow for pluriversal design approaches by future fashion practitioners. In this session participants will experiment with everyday materials, and their hands and bodies. In foregrounding experimental methods, we allow for diverse perspectives including the valuable contributions that designers, makers and creative thinkers can make to any academic discourse concerned with progressive social change. The workshop is open to all, prior fashion or design knowledge is not required.
Areas of STS Scholarship: University-Society relations, Method and Practice, Decolonial and Postcolonial STS
Authors/Participants: Olivia Hegarty, University of the Arts, London
Cian O'Donovan, University College London
Luke Stevens, University of the Arts, London
