16/04/2023
WITH WHAT WE HAVE LEFT exhibition launch, Wednesday 26 April, 5-7pm.
With What We Have Left is an exhibition which brings together fashion, film, and immersive sound to explore the future of fashion and how we will continue to sustain the very clothes we wear.
The debate around fashion and sustainability is entering a new phase. In response to fashion industry challenges, specifically those around fast fashion, students from BA Fashion Design at the University of Gloucestershire have explored diverse solutions in the design and construction/ reconstruction of sustainable and ethical clothing. This work includes bespoke shirt making, zero waste pattern cutting and extending the useful life of garments by giving them new purpose. The exhibition also includes a new high-quality, innovative and directional Menswear collection of tailored outerwear, showing a growing sophistication in reimagined clothing.
The clothes feature in two new films by Fiona Curran, combining documentary and experimental forms. Featuring the work of the designers, Redesigning the Future speaks to fashion and sustainability in a near future of reformed and reimagined clothing, and examines how the clothes are made and what their making means, creatively and in terms of production. The New Puritans explores the old values of clothing and decadence through the performance of a “face off” between these two worlds. An extended “catwalk” was filmed over a single day along the Honeybourne Line, a disused railway line in Cheltenham, and the soundscape was mixed, and reimagined, in immersive audio. It offers a dystopian reading of which side might win such a confrontation as two tribes, The New Puritans and the Old Decadents, flex their fashion muscles and go head-to-head.
Fiona Curran is a film maker, sound artist and poet. Her visual work explores poetic portraiture, notions of sonic translation and emotional essence. Her films have been shown nationally and internationally. Her next book of poetry, Clothes Horse, is a collection of works speaking directly to clothing, fashion, and memory. https://vimeo.com/fionacurran
Margaret McDonough is a fashion lecturer and former designer/design manager within the fashion industry. Having witnessed the rise of fast fashion and its impact on many aspects of our lives, she focusses her teaching on exploring alternative design approaches that offer creative solutions to the problems of how we will make, use, and consume fashion in the future.
