Radical Fashion Exercises: A Workbook of Modes and Methods

Book Synopsis: Over 100 tried and tested exercises to expand how we look at fashion, how we are part of its system and how we can practice fashion otherwise—for students of all ages and teachers of all disciplines. This copious collection of bottom-up activities, prompts and workshops designed by contributors from all around the globe explores fashion in an expanded context. Designers, curators, artists, educators, fashion practitioners, DIY home sewers, students, and other creatives responded to the book’s open call with contributions that challenge how to practice fashion and reflect on its systems, politics, and economics. The exercises collected in this book embrace interdisciplinarity, experimentation, and aesthetics, and widen fashion’s horizons as a medium for expression, embodiment, and sociality. They are gathered under the following themes: Imagining and Dreaming; Going Outside; Using the Body; Working Together; Reading and Writing; Making, Finding, Tracing; Re-viewing Images; Digging Deep; and Sourcing and Re-sourcing. Radical Fashion Exercises assembles methods for learning and practicing fashion in meaningful, radical, and responsible ways. The book is an inspiring tool for design students, designers, writers, and practitioners of diverse disciplines to challenge fashion as a commodity and polluting structure in these times of uncertainty and upheaval. Contributors include: Aïcha Abbadi, Federico Antonini, Claudia Arana, Anja Aronowsky Cronberg, Stéphanie Baechler, Linnea Bågander, Laura Banfield, Anouk Beckers, Mary-Lou, Heeten Bhagat, Dinu Bodiciu, Silvia Bombardini, Chet Julius Bugter, Francesca Capone, Rachael Cassar, Dal Chodha, Lidya Chrisfens, Remie Cibis, Marieke Coppens, Lenn Cox, Eleonora De Chiara, Ashish Dhaka, Paola Di Trocchio, Andrea Eckersley, Aimilia Efthymiou, Chinouk Filique de Miranda, Nicholas Gardner, Abigail Glaum-Lathbury, Julie Gork, Kasia Zofia Gorniak, Marjanne van Helvert, Ruby Hoette, Lou Hubbard, Marie Hugsted, Sanne Karssenberg, Noorin Khamisani, Sonika Soni Khar, Jessie Kiely, Seohee Kim, Anika Kozlowski, Valerie Lange, Ulrik Martin Larsen, Maaike Lauwaert, Alice Lewis, Matthew Linde, Saul Marcadent, Marco Marino, Georgia McCorkill, Kate Meakin, Gabriele Monti, Claire Myers, Udochi Nwogu, Sanem Odabasi, Naoko Ogawa, Oluwasola Kehinde Olowo-Ake, Amanda Cumming & Kate Reynolds, Marco Pecorari, Anabel Poh, Eloise Rapp, Liam Revell, Harriette Richards, Nicole K. Rivas, Todd Robinson, Mikhail Rojkov, Shanzhai Lyric, Saša Štucin, Sihle Sogaula, Shanna Soh, Vidmina Stasiulyte, Johanna Tagada Hoffbeck, Sang Thai, Anne Karine Thorbjørnsen, Amy Twigger Holroyd, Jeppe Ugelvig, Alessandra Vaccari, Aurélie Van de Peer, Adele Varcoe, Femke de Vries, Ferdinand Waas, Beata Wilczek, Lillian Wilkie, Annie Wu, and Patricia Wu Wu.