Fashion Practice and Critical Contexts

  • James Pegg: Course Leader Graduate Diploma Fashion Design Technology, LCF/School of Design and Technology
  • Caroline Stevenson: Lecturer in Cultural and Historical Studies, LCF/Cultural and Historical Studies

Abstract

  • Designing learning that spans, transcends or connects the disciplines
  • Challenging disciplinary boundaries
  • Exploring notions or ways of “decolonising” the curriculum

For Teaching in the Disciplines: Connections, Disconnections and Contestations we would like to present Fashion Practice and Critical Contexts: an innovative new unit we have developed for London College of Fashion’s Graduate Diploma Fashion Design Technology course that encourages new ways of thinking theoretically with practice.

Students at London College of Fashion sometimes struggle to see the connections between theory and practice and, importantly, how to use theoretical ideas to inform their practical work. This is compounded by the separation of theory and practice units on their courses and by the nature of fashion theory itself, which often requires students to take a critically distant view of their practice. Through FPCC we wanted to challenge these perceived boundaries and develop a mode of practice informed by theory and co-taught by the Post Graduate Diploma tutors and the Cultural and Historical Studies Department.

Students taking FPCC begin with a series of lectures and workshops delivered by the Cultural and Historical Studies Department that provide a critical context for thinking through fashion’s relationship to identity, gender, sustainability and contemporary art. The themes developed in these workshops form the basis for two elements, the first a written essay and secondly a collaborative presentation that are produced simultaneously. The collaborative presentation begins with the students’ exploration of creating a digital object that considers a chosen area from the lecture series. This object is then used to analyse the areas of interest using theory and critical dialogues.

FPCC aims to break down barriers between research, practice, theory and writing and to present fashion as a critical practice, capable of questioning its own disciplinary boundaries. It also aims to challenge the location of theory on fashion courses; rather than a separate entity and discipline all together, this unit demonstrates how theoretical ideas can be used to underpin studio practice.