CCRI Seminar Series – ‘Everyday Dress and Wardrobe Habits: Learning from indigenous textile-led clothing practices’ with Dr Anna Piper (ADMRC)
HANDWOVEN JACKET – Courtesy of Anna Piper
STITCH PANEL SAMPLE COLLECTION – Courtesy of Anna Piper
DIGITAL JACKET DESIGN – Courtesy of Anna Piper
DRESS ON JACQUARD LOOM – Courtesy of Anna Piper
Please join us on Wednesday 19 April 2023 for our next CCRI-wide seminar as part of the Culture & Creativity Research Institute Seminar Series, where we will be hearing from the ADMRC‘s Dr Anna Piper.
JACKET UNDER CONSTRUCTION – Courtesy of Anna Piper
Everyday Dress and Wardrobe Habits: Learning from indigenous textile-led clothing practices
The traditional wardrobe of Guatemala’s Maya community, known locally as traje, comprises a capsule collection of simple, flexible, geometric garments, constructed from intricately woven, highly decorative, communicative textiles. In a culture of care, repair and reuse, textile decoration is intrinsic to long-term clothing use.
GATHERED FABRIC – Courtesy of Anna Piper
In contrast, contemporary Western fashion favours newness over use, fashionability over durability, complexity over economy, image over materiality; resulting in increasing consumption and waste, reducing quality and longevity of use, and a propensity to discard rather than repair and reuse. To challenge these trends, change behaviour and foster a culture of clothing longevity, greater understanding of Western clothing use is needed.
Preliminary research provides insights into the social, emotional, practical and aesthetic factors influencing everyday dress and wardrobe habits. Traje, as an archetype of integrated textile-led sustainable practice, in combination with the insights from this research, will ultimately inform designs and strategies to extend garment usage.
CCRI Seminar Series – Everyday Dress and Wardrobe Habits: Learning from indigenous textile-led clothing practices with Dr Anna Piper
Wednesday 19 April 2023, 1300-1400
Held online – If you’d like to come along please contact ! RIS Culture & Creativity RI Enquiries.
HUIPILS ON MARKET – Courtesy of Katherine Townsend
Anna Piper is a woven textile designer and Senior Lecturer in Fashion Management and Communication. Her PhD practice-led research focused on composite garment and pattern production, using hand, digital and hybrid production techniques, with an emphasis on sustainable production, consumption, and development. Her PhD Material Relationships: The textile and the garment, the maker and the machine was awarded a Vice Chancellors Funded Studentship in 2019 by Nottingham Trent University. Her post-doctoral research, supported by the Global Challenges Research Fund, encompasses the sustainable development of indigenous textile production in Guatemala and explores the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on Guatemalan artisans. This research has cultivated an interest in indigenous patterns of textile and clothing production and use; inspiring initial investigations into the ways that indigenous artisanal textile-led approaches to clothing design/construction can challenge Western garment-led fashion and provide models for sustainable fashion production and use.
About the CCRI Seminar Series
We are currently relaunching our successful seminar series, continuing the regular insights into our researchers and the research we do in the Culture & Creativity Research Institute we explored with our previous C3RI Seminar Series.
If you are interested in giving your own seminar about your research or would like to volunteer to hold a seminar session more geared towards staff development, please let us know at ! RIS Culture & Creativity RI Enquiries. You can find out about future seminars on the CCRI Impact Blog pages for 2022-2023.
It is our aim to record our research seminars and we will make recordings available shortly afterwards on the staff intranet, in order to create an archive of our speakers and seminars.
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