'Doing' Fashion Politics: Praxical Pedagogy in London Street Markets

This paper concerns a pedagogical project I undertook with 26 students on the MA Fashion Cultures and Histories at London College of Fashion. The project engaged students with histories of fashion production and diverse cultures of migration in East London, through an exploration of street markets. My presentation offers an explanation of the markets as both performative cultural sites and spaces of economic precarity, where the structural conflicts between fashion, Capitalism and everyday agency can be traced, felt and experienced first-hand. With recourse to Lawrence Grossberg’s notion of “Praxical Pedagogy”, I argue for fashion knowledge to be mobilised beyond the walls of the classroom, and into the discursive narratives and spaces where it is produced. And for pedagogies that prioritise the assembling of intellectual resources through empiricism, rather than assuming prior theoretical knowledge.