Fit But You Know It: Workshopping Methods for Decolonising Fashion Education

In analysing our sensory and emotional responses to the experience of ‘fitting’ in practice, how do we interact with clothing as wearers? Do we ‘fit’ intuitively? What are our assumptions around bodies, garment types and fit ‘built-in’? Are there reflexive physical actions in the movement of wearers hands as they roll, fold and knot?

Art schools are ideal settings to challenge embedded industrial-colonial practices and shift epistemic power-relations. The workshop pilots pluriversal design methods for future fashion practice. Participants will come away with thoughts and stories shared around garment knowledge and the haptic skills lost when we standardise and universalise.