STUDENTS from Carlisle College are hosting a pop-up exhibition to showcase their work and highlight a fashion sustainability project.
The pop-up shop, which is currently being held in The Lanes shopping centre and ahead of the final exhibition at the College of the Arts in June and July, has been designed as a place where the public can view work undertaken during the academic year.
Carlisle College students at the pop-up exhibition in The Lanes (Image: Supplied) The pop-up also allows students to showcase work created as part of a recent fashion sustainability project titled: Regeneration – ‘The Raw Cut’.
The project, which is a collaboration between the UAL level three foundation course at Carlisle College, Emma Duncan, creative director and founder of Creation Mill in Langholm, and local photographer Tim Ip, challenged students to create a ‘cutting-edge’ short film and still shots which focus on sustainability and explore concepts from films that have been shown at the Keswick film festival over the past 25 years.
This led to garments being produced that utilised factory scraps, offcuts, and selvedge raw edges, and explored films such as Bong Joon-Ho’s 2019 film Parasite.
(Image: Supplied) Wendy Oxley is a fashion and 3D tutor at Carlisle College and expressed her delight at the way her students approached the fashion sustainability project.
She said: “The students’ work ethic and considerations towards sustainability in the fashion and textiles industry have been astonishing.
“They have used felting and weaving workshops thanks to Emma Duncan and the team at Creation Mill.
“The young designers have delivered contemporary collections, and the professionalism on the day of the shoot, at the mill was outstanding – a whole team effort, collaborating with Talia and Molly on the media course, creating a fashion film, and photographer Tim Ip.
“The inner concepts of each have been thoughtful and inventive – the outcomes are phenomenal!
“Special thanks to Emma Duncan, creative director and founder, and the teams based at Creation Mill, including Drove Weavers and Elliots Shed.”
(Image: Tim Ip) Students from Carlisle College also discussed how they approached the brief that they were given.
Ella Geddes said: “For this project, we created a garment for the Keswick Film Festival using scrap materials from the fabric mill.
“The fashion industry has been a major contributor to climate change, and with the rise in fast fashion, it is more important now than ever that the industry makes an effort to be more sustainable.
“I enjoyed working with the textile mill as the variety of materials we were given to work with encouraged us to be more creative and proved that sustainability in creative fashion is possible.”
Holly Chameberlain added: “Looking at the similarities between the highly influential silent film Metropolis and the fashion industry today.
“I came across the Canaanite God Moloch, who has been used in the term ‘Moloch Trap’ as a metaphor to describe sacrificing the future for short-term gain, a process fuelled by greed and capitalism.
(Image: Tim Ip) “In the fashion industry today, garment workers are being exploited, and the environment is being destroyed all to fuel our dying need for overconsumption.
“I used unwanted, high-quality suiting samples from Reid and Taylor, utilising the scraps by felting them together to create a texturally interesting new textile, emphasising the importance of appreciating the high level of craftsmanship that goes into making clothes.”
Phoebe David said: “After visiting Langholm’s Creation Mill, participating in fantastic weaving workshops and seeing first-hand the importance of sustainability, throughout all the businesses onsite, I chose to make a garment inspired by Terence Davies’ Of Time and the City (2008) highlighting Liverpool’s changing architecture, with bridges symbolising connection and resilience.”
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