Cuts, Shreds, Remains and Scraps: Challenging the Authority of Language in Critical Fashion Knowledge

This presentation concerns the location of theory within fashion design education. At London College of Fashion where I lead the teaching of Fashion Theory, students undertake theoretical modules alongside their design classes, which are led and taught separately by the Cultural and Historical Studies Department. This can often create a false spatial and disciplinary divide between practice and theory. Furthermore, it often means that the teaching of theory becomes associated with hierarchical ideas of worthiness and power, weighed down with a perceived ‘academic voice’ (Wilson, 2016). In my presentation, I will discuss a workshop that I have developed that aims to break down these hierarchies by, quite literally, cutting up theory into fragments and reconfiguring it into experimental, visual ‘essays’. The workshop engages students in a practice-based methodologies, using language as a material (Goldsmith, 2011) to construct visual and poetic outcomes, and theory as scraps of ideas to think with - rather than a distant and separate academic field.

Goldsmith, K. (2011) Uncreative Writing. New York: Columbia University Press

Wilson, S. (2016) (2016) Where Theory Belongs. Four Ways to Experience a Seminar in Contemporary Art. Tate Research Centre Working Papers.