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Public Speaking Event Panel Member for MPavilion Speaker Series, ‘Food, Fashion & Farming’, 2021

“Food, Farming & Fashion” was a panel talk curated to explore the relationship between sustainability, agriculture and the textile industry.

The hour-long event was hosted by Rachel Kelly of E tu, along with Ulla Britta Westergren and featured speakers Dr Kate Sala and Kieran Christopherson, founders of Echo Floria, Courtney Holm, the founder of A.BCH and Tara Wingate, the production manager at The Social Studio. The conversations that were had at this event shed light on the lack of connection that is shared across agriculture and fashion. These two industries feed one another, yet fashion has much to learn from the progress and journey taken by the agriculture industry and its practitioners.

At this event I spoke to how we can learn from the regulations and attitudes we have towards food; its production, consumption and disposal. Through our work via @echo.floria, Kieran and I seek to encourage more discussion and collaboration across both sectors. Kieran’s work and research is heavily anchored in understanding how regenerative agricultural practices are learnt and taught to current and future farmers, whilst my own focuses on fashion futures. The similarity we both share is our interest for advancing conversation and practice of teaching and learning in our fields, through an analysis of the application of transformative teaching, learning and thinking.

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Public Speaking Event Panel Member for ‘Repurpose With Purpose’, 2020 How can Vinnies and designers work together more?  This question will be explored as part of the Repurpose With Purpose panel during the #TheSustainableLivingFestival in partnership with @rmituniversity on 19th February, 2020.

I have been invited to take part in this panel discussion to explore how a garment has two, three or four lives, and why it’s incumbent upon consumers and designers to always keep a garment’s final destination in mind.  Alongside myself the panel will include; Tamzin Rollason, RMIT PhD researcher of sustainable dressing, Lois McGruer-Fraser from fashion house @loishazel, along with Vinnies Victoria CEO Sue Cattermole, and Vinnies Retail General Manager Jeff Antcliff.

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Conference Presentation Critical Fashion Studies Conference, 2020

Last week I attended and presented findings from my PhD research for the first time since completing, at the Critical Fashion Studies Conference in Melbourne.

Thanks to the thoughtful planning that went into organising this event (@harrietterichards), I walked away feeling genuinely invigorated and excited to expand on my research. Not only that, but the kindness and support I was met with over those two days gave her the confidence to reflect critically on the experiences I have had through communicating my research. 

Isn’t it interesting that how we communicate our ideas is often influenced and shaped by the environment we find ourselves in? Ideally I had imagined that I would present my research findings in a way that best represented my work; dynamic, inclusive and simply articulated. Instead I found herself worrying about whether challenging the format for how I communicated my work would end up taking away from people’s understanding of the research itself.

What this experience made clear was how powerful it can be to finally understand that it’s OK to walk away from something a little deflated. And, it’s OK to challenge your own expectations of yourself.

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Writing  PhD Thesis ‘The New Look; Transforming Sustainable Fashion Education’ In late 2019 I submitted my PhD thesis for examination. Earlier this year, 2020, the thesis came back from examination, finally complete and ready for archival. The past 4.5 years have seen me acquire specialist knowledge, be challenged, build confidence and achieve a long-time goal. Some of these things were far easier to celebrate than others. The challenge of writing a PhD thesis was something I will not forget quickly.

Please click here to be linked to my PhD thesis, in RMIT’s research repository.

This PhD thesis examined transformative learning theory's impact for fashion education. Through a study of current learning and teaching practices employed by educators within the field of fashion education for sustainability, the research found that transformative teaching strategies can contribute to the effectiveness of students understanding of sustainable fashion. Additionally, the research illustrates how promoting the use of these learning and teaching methods will support opportunities for students to grow through critical reflection and collaboration, with an emphasis on participation and collective inquiry; strategies supported through a mutual and dynamic learning environment. 

 A number of different approaches have been taken to complete this research, these include: a literature review, a range of semi-structured interviews and online surveys, a comparative study of fashion design teaching methods, as well as the development of strategies for transformative fashion teaching practice. In addition to identifying and analysing best-practice teaching for fashion sustainability, the findings of this research are geared towards equipping students and educators alike with the tools to critically reflect upon, and work towards, ethical and responsive possibilities for transformation in their own fashion teaching and learning practices.

The comparative study within this research demonstrated how integrating transformative learning theory and its associated teaching strategies with more common and traditional practices of fashion education, developed an environment that enabled student designers to critically reflect on sustainable methods for fashion design practice. This research seeks to ground this theoretical and practical ambition in the realities of fashion education practices and the systems of tertiary higher education institutions, while unpacking the possibilities that lie in the adaption of the theory to fashion teaching practice, in preparation for a transformation of current realities.

Image Credit: Kate Sala, at Kolding Design School, Denmark.

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Conference Attendance Redress Design Award, University of South Australia, 2018

Hosted by the University of South Australia (UniSA), the Redress Design Award Fashion Academy was a day focussed on discussing and workshopping how designers, researchers and educators can work to reduce clothing and textile waste through addressing the ‘disposable’ throwaway culture endemic among todays consumers. I was invited, along with emerging and established designers, educators and students from across Australia, to spend the day at the University of South Australia working on ideas and techniques to combat the mountain of material waste that ends up in landfill.  

Dr Gwilt, an Adjunct Senior Research Fellow in UniSA’s School of Arts, Architecture and Design and organiser of the event, presented alongside Dr Alice Payne (Senior Lecturer in Fashion at QUT), Tim Cooper (Prof of Sustainable Design and Consumption at Nottingham Trent University), Zalton Csaki (Founder of fashion label Citizen Wolf) and Jennifer Whitty (Senior Lecturer in Fashion Design at Massey University). It was a wonderful day, and a pleasure to be invited on behalf of RMIT.

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Conference Presentation / Writing Global Fashion Conference, 2016

I was accepted by Stockholm’s Global Fashion Conference to present my PhD research in October (2016). I presented on my research into how learning and teaching strategies were currently being employed by a select number of leading global fashion education institutions in their delivery of sustainable fashion education (Kolding Design School, London College of Fashion, California Collage of the Arts, Massey University).

This research paper was well received, and provided a really unique opportunity for me to meet many of the interview participants who dedicated their time and knowledge to enhancing my PhD project findings for critical fashion pedagogy.

Please click here to be redirected to the paper presented at this conference.

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Education Projects Honest By X RMIT, 2016

Over the past year I had the pleasure of working with Bruno Pieters again, but this time from Australia. We worked together via correspondence on a studio for RMIT's third year students along with s!x designer and lecturer, Peter Boyd. This studio explored new fashion practices that work with the natural cycle of growth, and against notions of mass marketing and fast fashion.

Bruno Pieters kindly curated arranged and published an editorial of some of the pieces from these students at Honest by's studio in Antwerp.Here is some of the work from students who took part in that studio. For the full editorial visit www.honestby.com

I am so excited and so proud of this collaboration. Thank you Bruno Pieters for giving the students an incredible platform through which to express themselves on such a scale, and thank you on behalf of everyone involved for the invaluable insight you bought to our studio. Industry and University partnership is an important and intrinsic element to emerging designer experience.

Each students work is credited above. All images taken by Bruno Pieters, in Antwerp. Full details regarding collaboration have been published on Honest by. Website.

The full Editorial curated by Bruno Pieters has been published in an accompanying post. The Interview between Bruno Pieters and FFDS Winner, RMIT student Jessica Sansum, has been including below.

Earlier this year Honest By’s creative director and founder Bruno Pieters partnered with one of the top 10 fashion schools in the world, the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. The result was a unique workshop about the exploration of new fashion practices that work with the natural cycle of growth, and against notions of mass marketing. We selected and photographed the work of 6 RMIT students who participated in the workshop. They recycled and reused vintage clothing and second hand materials and turned them into intriguing new silhouettes. One of them, Jess Sansum, became a FFDS winner! Discover her work and the work of her fellow students in the following editorial by Bruno Pieters. Read Bruno Pieters' interview with Jess Sansum here below. BP. What was the concept behind the pieces you created? JS. I was exploring the possibility of a there being a production formula for the design and making process of garments, that when implemented, would act to guarantee object longevity and holistically address preconceived systems of value. BP. What do you love about recycling? JS. I never know what I am going to find and that is beyond exciting for me! I also get a lot of my inspiration from the investigation and deconstruction of fully realised forms, whether it be shapes on and off the body, construction methods, standardised archetypes and garment codes or even what can be discovered and manipulated through the analysis of the branding and the identity of the form. I also find this approach to be unique and rewarding, as it enables an intimate and personal interaction with the found objects. Everyone is tailored by their own experiences and thus each individual will respond differently, which is a beautifully poetic expression in itself. BP. Will you use recycling in your future collections? JS. Yes! I have even been doing a lot of recycling in my current honours project. I just find that it has become such a significant element of my making process, as well as so strongly resonating with my philosophies and research interests, that I don’t see myself using other materiality’s any time soon. It is also a great way for me to avoid drawing, which I cannot stand! BP. What do you love about fashion? JS. I am fascinated that fashion constantly changes, whilst remaining essentially the same, in so far as there are globally recognised, standardised ideals of what a pair of jeans is, for example, that break all barriers of classification. I feel that fashion can therefore be utilised as an extremely powerful platform for the communication and dissemination of ideas. Especially with the internet, fashion is globally familiar and accessible and I love that. BP. What is your opinion on the fashion industry today? JS. I think it is a bit of a mess in that it hasn’t quite figured out how to deal with the influx of new digital technologies just yet. Fashion thrives on the speed of change which in theory, is ideal for the digital environment of the internet, however in practice it has increased the pressure on designer’s, especially at the high end, to increase their output, keeping up with the demand for the constantly new. We can see results of this through the introduction of the fast fashion business model and the precariousness and instability of the head designers at high end fashion houses. There has also been a rebellion, from brands and designers, toward the fashion schedule as season-less collections and off schedule releases of work are beginning to more strongly emerge. I guess you can look at the evolution of art practices and the prevalence of the digital artist as reference and how fashion, particularly high end, cannot yet be manipulated into a similar framework that caters for this increased desirability for transparency, authenticity and constant output. There is also the concern of the mental effects associated with this hyper-production of work due to the inability to account for the cognitive labour involved, which arguably, is what increases the value of the objects, created through the emotional and personal elements of the design process. BP. How green are you in your own life? JS. The more educated I become, the more green my lifestyle and philosophies become, which I hope would be true for everyone. I was also brought up on the idea of quality over quantity and have found this strongly relates to the emotions we attach to our possessions, which is a huge factor when it comes to waste and sustainability. It makes people less likely to haphazardly discard things, transcending the overarching desire for newness. BP. What are you working on right now? JS. Right now I am working on my honours project and thesis, which is still rather unrefined at this stage, however I have identified a transition in the consumption of identity. I believe that the ways in which we used to consume the identity of technology into our own identities has now transitioned to the point that technology is now consuming our identities and psyche, which not only acts to explain the increased desirability for newness but also the effects of cognitive labour mentioned earlier and idea that we are so wholeheartedly immersed in modern technologies that they have become an extension of the self. Other areas I am researching involve adaptations of liquid modernity, to incorporate the self, as the digital age sees individuals constantly re-inventing their identities. The mental effects of this identity flux is another concern of my research and also its relation to cognitive labour, indifference and fatigue. So far I have dedicated to exploring these concepts under the discipline of film, utilising obsolete and non-recyclable analogue film technology, such as VHS tape and VCR’s, as the materiality and inspiration for the physical outcomes. BP. Thank you for this interview and congratulations on winning a FFDS! JS. Thank you!!! This opportunity and engagement has been invaluable toward the progression of my concepts, philosophies and practice. Thank you Kate Sala, all the students and everyone from the RMIT for inviting me to take part in this project. It was a true honour and pleasure to work with all of you. Bruno Pieters

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Public Speaking Event Human Rights Arts & Film Festival, 2016 

Earlier this month I was invited to take part in a panel discussion accompanying the screening of Andrew Morgan’s The True Cost film at ACMI. Thank you to the Human Rights Arts & Film Festival for inviting me along, and for organising such a brilliant event. It was a significant and powerful event for many reasons.

Special thank you to Sigrid McCarthy from Ethical Clothing Australia, sharing the stage with you for the first time was a magical moment.

Images of the panel include guests (L-R) Gordon Renouf (Good on You App), Kate Sala, Sigrid McCarthy (Ethical Clothing Australia) and moderator Nick Mckenzie (Fairfax Media, Four Corners).

Image credits: Emily Wong Human Rights Arts & Film Festival

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Fashion Projects VANDALS Magazine Feature Contd.

I worked with photographer Elise Toïdé on this editorial printed for Vandals Magazine at Hotel Chopin in Paris.

Vandals is currently on sale at OFR bookstore, and also in store at Colette - both situated in Paris. Arriving soon in the United States in store at Opening Ceremony.

Left Model Alice Moireau in Limi Feu Dress. Right Model Adeline Jouan in Stylists Skirt, holding Christophe Lemaire Jacket. Photography Elise Toide. Fashion Direction Kate Sala — at Hotel Chopin - Grands Boulevards Paris.

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Press Intent Journal Profile

Here is a snap shot from Intent Journal’s profile on me, and my work as Creative Director of s-inc. Working with the team from Intent Journal was such a pleasure, and a wonderful opportunity to surround ourselves with like-minded souls. A great day all round at the beautiful Abbotsford Convent in Melbourne. Picture by the talented Claire Summers. Interview in Intent Journal by Sigrid McCarthy. Link to full interview here

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Fashion Projects SOME/THINGS Magazine editorial at the Romanian Embassy in Paris.

Editorial Credits; Fashion Direction Kate Sala Photography Elise Toide Model Nora Renaud

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Fashion Projects Fashion production, business and communication consulting, 2014 I have been consulting for HEW over the last couple of months, advising on production processes, sustainable business systems and fashion communication methods. Above is an image from HEW SS14/15 Menswear Debut Collection 'Orlando' launching this Thursday 23rd October.

This week will see the launch of Melbourne based label HEW. Come on down and check out the exhibition style launch this Thursday 23rd October, pre-orders will be taken on the night so be sure to get in early. Doors open at 6pm, 524 Flinders Street.

For more information on the label visit www.hewclothing.com

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Public Speaking Event BSessions ‘Shaping the Future of Fashion’, 2014 This week I will be heading up to Sydney this afternoon to talk at the BSessions event "Shaping the Future of Fashion". Thanks to the team at Clean Cut and New Romantic for inviting me. 

This event set forth to open discussion amongst Australian fashion industry professionals on the production of clothing with ethical and sustainable principles in mind. - Clean Cut Fashion

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Public Speaking Event Design For Tomorrow - Leaders of the Pack, 2014 I will be joining the Leaders of the Pack Panel at Design For Tomorrow in Melbourne, Australia.

Book your tickets now here More Info from Kangan’s site below: “A panel of leading industry spokespeople will present insider knowledge on what it takes to shape a pioneering textiles business. This will be presented to an audience of Australia’s big fashion and textiles brands as well as next generation leaders.   A representative from a multinational brand will talk about its sustainability journey, taking the audience behind the label to understand how pioneering sustainability initiatives were implemented, including technical collaborations with fibre and fabric manufacturers. A supply chain certification specialist will provide insight into gaining sustainability accreditation and will discuss textile chemicals. Leaders of the Pack: industry insights from global sustainability champions, is an event run as part of the “Design for Tomorrow” sustainability series. Developed specifically for our local textile and fashion sector, this series brings the knowledge of global best practice industry to our doorstep. Tailored to meet the needs and requirements of the Australian textiles and fashion industry, these are events for industry by industry. Leaders of the Pack brings together international speakers and a Q&A panel of local leaders. It will be streamed live from the Textile and Fashion Hub on June 24 and opportunities will be available to put questions to speakers before and during the event.” Guest speakers Christian Dreszig: Global Head of Marketing for environmental certification organisation Bluesign. Stu Bowen: Ambassador of 1% For The Planet and Marketing Manager of Patagonia Australia. Kate Sala: Creative Consultant and immediate past Chief Operating Officer at Bruno Pieters’ Honest By, the Belgium-based luxury fashion house and world’s first transparent company. Graham Dickinson: With over 25 years of direct involvement in the textile industry Graham is a practising occupational hygiene and environmental consultant.

Time: 4:30pm – 6:30pm Date: 24th June 2014 Cost: $20

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Today is Fashion Revolution Day. Today is the day to stand up for workers rights. Today is the day to remember that the choices we make can help change the lives of others in this world. Today I wore Honest by Bruno Pieters #insideout to promote awareness about the importance of understanding where our clothes are made and in what conditions. Today I wore Honest by Bruno Pieters #madeinbelgium Join the revolution, ask shop assistants where the clothes you want to purchase are made. It is as simple as that. Ask, and be aware.

Watch this beautiful short film 'Handprint', by Mary Nighy and Livia Firth about the origin of our clothes. Photograph by Bruno Pieters for Honest by.

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Fashion Projects NASTY Magazine Feature

I worked with photographer Elise Toïdé on this editorial at Hotel Chopin in Paris. 

Art Direction Kate Sala & Elise Toide. Photographed by Elise Toide. Styled by Kate Sala. Model Alice Moireau. Thank you Hotel Chopin, Paris. http://www.nastymagazine.com/digital/fashion/5028/alice