Fashion is about discovering what makes us feel like ourselves, switching between aspects of our identity, and the decisions we make about what to put on our bodies each day. The seasonal outputs of the fashion industry are great spaces to explore and develop our taste, but they are not fully representative of our experiences. As a hijab-wearing woman, I know the inaccessibility of the market. Other cultural sensitivities, inclusive sizing, budget, environmental values, and ethics can also create barriers to representation. I’ve always wanted to empower people, regardless of their circumstances and requirements, to be able to faithfully express themselves through fashion. Clothes are one of the few creative tools we all engage with, and everyone should be able to feel it works for them.
To inspire people to engage with fashion on their own terms, I developed two strategies centred around the pattern cutting process involved in physically making clothes. Firstly, I ran beginner-level workshops on pattern cutting skills. Over a one and half hour online workshop, participants recreated their favourite t-shirt in a new fabric. This taught them how to analyse and deconstruct clothing into its basic pattern blocks, sew a garment, and make adjustments for their personal needs and aesthetic choices. This method of learning pattern cutting was accessible and unintimidating by using what was already in participants’ wardrobes, working directly with their hands, and bypassing the need to follow intricate measurements and diagrams. Hopefully, walking away with a wearable garment also changed participants’ attitudes to the role they could play in fashion, and empowered them to have autonomy in expressing their style.
The second strand of my project involved writing a series of blog posts for the Institute of Making. The blogs followed a similar aim to the workshops: inspiring people to engage with pattern cutting in innovative and creative ways to faithfully express their style through clothes. The first blog encouraged readers to reflect on how their experience of the material world is transformed by their relationship with clothes. The second blog presented innovative pattern cutting techniques as an alternative to the traditional method of making clothes. Rich in resources, this blog gave readers the tools to experiment with clothing design in a way that better met their requirements. Finally, the third post explored the latest research incorporating new technologies into fashion design. It also challenged the reader to think about how their own discipline may be the key to furthering clothing innovation. I hope these blogs provided a balance to highly instructive pattern cutting resources, which typically suggest there are limited forms clothes can take.
I would like to thank Lord Laidlaw, the Laidlaw Foundation, the UCL Laidlaw team for making this project possible. I have always been passionate about making fashion something that is co-created and shared by everyone, especially those who are underserved by the creative industries. The Laidlaw scholarship provided me with the tools and confidence to finally put my thoughts into action. I hope this experience has kickstarted a much longer journey towards inclusive, accessible and creative clothing design.