Fashion Narratives 2021 exhibition

The Fashions & Embodiment studio of our MA in Design: Expanded Practice are currently showing their work in progress at the Goldsmiths Textile Collection & Constance Howard Gallery, in an exhibition titled “Fashion Narratives”.

The brief of the project required students to respond to the text-only description of an object from the Goldsmiths Textile Collection with their own research and outcomes. See the chosen objects below:

Yixuan Zheng (Ray) started from a pair of 1920’s gold dancing shoes, embroidered and beaded. The response focussed on beading as a method of re-fabricating an object, to discuss the necessity of embellishment. How do we decorate our body? Is artisanship necessary for us?

Yuxuan Zhou worked with a bonnet made of Art Deco-patterned lace and continued to research hats, capturing memories, chats, feelings and thoughts around what transforms a mass-produced clothing item into “my item”.

Xinyue Wang (Shane) also chose a hat as a starting point, one made for a boy from the Hmong people of Northern Thailand. The student project further looks into garments as an unnoticed narrative, a medium for disseminating information, a connection between present and past, and the expression of emotions.

Zhi-Ying Li responded to a piece of Seminole patchwork by studying its structure and deconstructing the patchwork, figuring out coding rules which led to re-making and developing a new interpretation. The work demonstrates a possibility of how pattern as language can deliver a message.

Mia Mai Symonds’s chosen object was a Kantha, a traditional Bangladeshi quilt decorated with elephants and tigers and made from discarded, re-purposed cloth. Mia investigates the body and its relationship to worn garments, the act of dressing and the intimacy between body and cloth.

See some images of the student work below:

The Fashion Narratives 2021 exhibition is not open to the public due to COVID-19 restrictions and can be seen by appointment only until the end of July; contact textiles@gold.ac.uk for more information.