Dress For Our Time

Dress For Our TIme uses the power of fashion to communicate some of the world's most complex issues, notably climate change and the mass displacement of people.

The dress is created from a decommissioned UNHCR (United Nations High Commission for Refugees) refugee tent that once housed a displaced Syrian family at Za'atari Camp in Jordan, and was gifted to the project by UNHCR. In giving the tent a second life, it endows this public art installation with an unbreakable bond to humanity and represents the importance of nurturing and protecting all people and safeguarding generations to come.

It is a symbol of what it means to be human and the precarious nature of our existence.

The dress has digitally displayed scientific data, which showed us the impact of climate change on our physical world, broadened the dialogue around migration, highlighting the millions of displaced people and the paths they take in search of a better life.

Dress for Our Time is a collaboration between: UNHCR, MET Office, Unilever, Tap A Street, Holition, Centre for Sustainable Fashion at London College of Fashion.

To date the dress has been shown at UK venues and internationally, including St Pancras International train station, UN Geneva, Science Museum London, Glastonbury Music Festival, The Peace Talks in London and Dubai International Humanitarian Aid & Development Conference.

The first ever physical embodiment of the dress was installed at St Pancras International train station in November 2015. As the gateway to Paris - the city hosting the United Nations Climate Change conference COP 21 - many of the delegates passing through the station came face to face with the dress.

Digitally displaying data which detailed the impact of climate change on our physical world, showing our planet as it will be if we don’t do enough. Developed in partnership with award winning interactive creative agency Holition, with data taken from a study conducted by a team of global scientists and provided by the Met Office.

The dress was exhibited at the Science Museum London, here it digitally displayed the very latest UNHCR data - representing the movement of 8 million refugees around the world - created into an animation that is projected onto the dress. The data and the dress worked together to highlight the number and location of displaced people around the globe, humanising the numbers by using a point of light for every one hundred human lives

Activity:
December 2015 - St Pancras International Station London
11,204 visitors (actual), 136,600 visits (digital)
Social media reach to over 289,800 users
Press coverage with 180 million unique page views

February 2016 – UN Geneva – ‘Transforming lives’ TEDX event involving multiple international partners. TEDx Place Des Nations Event: 1,000 people in the audience, 21 viewing parties worldwide, 3,000+ people watching live.
Instagram reach: over 731,000 users – an increase of around 600,000 since November; 1 million users and trending at event; 7,000 likes for the film.

Glastonbury (24 June 2016)
The dress appeared at Glastonbury Festival worn by Malian singer-songwriter Rokia Traoré.
Instagram, 311 likes per post, Twitter, 7840 impressions

Science Museum ‘Our Lives In Data’ (17th August to 4th September.)
Attendees, 59,218
Twitter reach 36,354; Instagram likes, 515; CSF Facebook reach 7022

London Peace Talks hosted the dress with the theme 'Building Bridges,' which moved through London City Hall's nine stories mid way through the talks. Attendees, 200
Twitter reach, 2,000, Instagram likes and tags, 500

Venice Biennale – May 2019 – Together with UNHCR Italy the dress slowly walked Venice, as performance and was then exhibited within the biennale: https://www.arts.ac.uk/colleges/london-college-of-fashion/stories/dress-for-our-time-venice-biennale

Brent Library – June 7 – August 28th 2019 -The Dress was exhibited as part of a programme, Journey to Justice https://journeytojustice.org.uk/ engaging local communities to consider social cohesion and campaigning. A supporting podcast was recorded here: https://anchor.fm/journey-to-justice/episodes/Episode-14-Professor-Helen-Storey-and-Tania-Aubeelack-e1bnbc9 and here: https://jtojhumanrights.org.uk/local-stories/local-stories-posts/helen-storeys-dress-for-our-time/

The London Climate March – September 2019 – the dress took part in the protest for climate justice around Westminster together with Extinction Rebellion and many others.

Carnival of Crisis parade – November 2021: https://www.vogue.com/article/london-fashion-art-students-climate-justice-parade-carnival-of-crisis

“Fitting In” exhibition @ Z33be Gallery Belgium – Nov 2022 – March 2023 (already submitted as an individual output): https://www.z33.be/en/programma/fitting-in/

• Author
• https://vimeo.com/122309266
• http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/about-us...
• http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/ed-sheph...
• https://www.arts.ac.uk/colleges/london-c...
• https://www.vogue.com/article/london-fas...
• https://anchor.fm/journey-to-justice/epi...
• https://anchor.fm/journey-to-justice/epi...
• https://www.z33.be/en/programma/fitting-...