Essay: The Politics of Fashion

This essay highlighted the main issues facing fashion education, including environment, workers conditions, media representation and the need to open up the debate and so challenge notions of what is fashionable. The essay raised the question of how can we in the fashion industry help steer a new line that emphases the inclusive potential of fashion, by involving a range of groups and sections of society in its creation and production.

Frances Corner

Research Interests

Sustainability, Fashion consumption, Health and well-being, Pedagogy, Arts and Design Education

Current Research

Professor Frances Corner has been Head of College at London College of Fashion since October 2005. She was previously Head of the Sir John Cass Department of Art, Media and Design at London Metropolitan University and has over 20 years experience within the Higher Education sector on both a national and international level.

Frances Corner believes London College of Fashion's dedication to widening participation and commitment to research and employability, combined with its links with the associated industries, make it a strong model for 21st century Higher Education. Frances aims for the College to become the global leader in fashion related education, research and consultancy and has recently pioneered the adoption of sustainable and ethical practice into the fashion education curriculum. Frances has spoken at a number of high profile and international conferences on this subject and contributes articles to a range of publications and media articles.

Her own research projects have examined issues such as lifelong learning, employability and skills as well as teaching and learning methods, whilst her professional experience includes work for a number of bodies including DCMS and NESTA supporting the creative and cultural industries.

New LCF initiatives - Better Lives

The thinking behind fashion as a discipline needs to extend and expand its influence, to counter the traditional stereotype of fashion as a light weight subject, not quite worthy of research and instead to clearly make the case and set the pace for developing areas of research that extend fashion's influence - issues that will come to play a key role in the future of the College and the wider fashion industries over the next generations.
Areas such as health, textiles, sustainability, ethical design and science, (including nanotechnology, medicine, engineering and cosmetic science) and well-being are presenting fashion with a paradox. How do we bring these issues into the mainstream whilst also meeting the fashion industries' need to be ever changing and consuming. Establishing a Research Centre, in the near future, which is concerned with these issues is therefore a key priority for the College.

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