At the end of November, St Pancras International will host the first installation of Dress For Our Time – a piece of digital couture, adding to the conversation about climate change.
Dress For Our Time, curated by LCF Professor Helen Storey MBE RDI will manifest in a series of chapters, and use the power of fashion to communicate some of the world’s most complex issues. Through fashion, science and wonder, chapter one of Dress For Our Time will help change the way we think and act upon climate change.
The first ever physical embodiment of the dress will be installed at St Pancras International train station on 26 November. As the gateway to Paris – the city hosting the United Nations Climate Change conference COP 21 – many of the delegates that will be passing through the station will come face to face with the world’s first digital couture dress dedicated to exploring climate change and its human impact.
Given the importance of the conference, where more than 190 nations will gather in Paris to discuss a possible new global agreement on climate change, this project will capture people’s imagination in a way that is unexpected and beautiful. With the scientific community in agreement that climate-warming trends over the past century are very likely due to human activities, Dress For Our Time asks us what we can do individually and collectively, and invites us to join a conversation that will shape our future.
“ACT LIKE WE HAVE JUST ENOUGH TIME. LIVE LIKE IT RUNS OUT TODAY” – HELEN STOREY MBE RDI
The dress will digitally display data which will show the impact of climate change on our physical world. It will show our planet as it will be if we don’t do enough. It has been developed in partnership with award winning interactive creative agency Holition, and the data has been taken from a study conducted by a team of global scientists and provided by the Met Office.
The Dress itself is made from a tent (which was no longer in useable condition) gifted to the project by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). In giving the tent a second life it gives this public art installation an unbreakable bond to humanity and represents the importance of nurturing and protecting all people and safeguarding generations to come. It is a powerful symbol of what it means to be human and the precarious nature of our existence.
Two years in the making, Dress For Our Time has bought together collaborators including Holition, Unilever, Met Office and the UNHCR – people from very different backgrounds in science, business, education, technology, humanitarian work and fashion, to explore ways of starting a public debate about this critical question.
Dress For Our Time will be on display at St Pancras International Station Concourse, 24 hours a day from 26 – 29 November. Join the #Dress4OurTime and #ClimateChange conversation on Instagram and Twitter.