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LCF Global X Faith and Fashion: PC Williams in conversation with Reina Lewis

Left - right, LCF’s Professor Reina Lewis talks to PC Williams, stylist and creative consultant at Faith and Fashion in conversation, November 2022.
  • Written byLondon College of Fashion
  • Published date 06 December 2022
Left - right, LCF’s Professor Reina Lewis talks to PC Williams, stylist and creative consultant at Faith and Fashion in conversation, November 2022.
Left - right, LCF’s Professor Reina Lewis talks to PC Williams, stylist and creative consultant at Faith and Fashion in conversation, November 2022.

On 17 November, LCF Global co-hosted Faith and Fashion with Professor Reina Lewis who was in-conversation with PC Williams to explore the creative process behind PC’s BAFTA award-winning designs for We Are Lady Parts. This stand-out TV series (C4/Peacock) tracked a group of young Muslim Londoners as they formed a women's punk band. Written by Nida Manzoor, the show is funny, touching, and gripping - rebutting stereotypical depictions of Muslim women on screen and showing the diversity of Muslim life in the city.

LCF’s Professor Reina Lewis talks to PC Williams, stylist and creative consultant at Faith and Fashion in conversation, November 2022.
LCF’s Professor Reina Lewis talks to PC Williams, stylist and creative consultant at Faith and Fashion in conversation, November 2022.

PC Williams graduated from Central Saint Martins, UAL (CSM), and works across narrative moving image, advertising, fashion, and music. Her credits include The Baby (HBO/Sky) and Dreamland (Sky). Teaching for several years at CSM, PC continues to contribute to art and design projects within community to create spaces for young people of diverse backgrounds in the creative industries.

After reflecting on the development of the We Are Lady Parts character’s costumes, and how PC made sure to bring Muslim women onto her design team to work alongside the actors, Reina asked  PC about the delicacies of staging religious fashion for the screen and if she felt specific anxieties or/and faced particularly high expectations.

I didn't have any worries, I didn't feel any expectations to represent, I'm representing the life that I know, I can't get it wrong. I am replicating what I see day in day out, in Dalston, in Hackney, in Shoreditch, in Bethnal Green and Stepney Green. I find it so mind boggling when people are like, “Guys, you need this show” and it's like, ground-breaking. It's just a reflection of what already exists. What's telling is that many people don't see that. There's an assumption, actually, when you see someone who's got her hair wrapped in her African print headscarf, that it's just like a style choice, as opposed to being a religious style choice.

— PC Williams
PC Williams shared her character sketch and costume design boards from We Are Lady Parts.
PC Williams shared her character sketch and costume design boards from We Are Lady Parts.

Reina and PC also explored how best to foster diversity in the creative professions. How things have changed across the span of PC's career, thinking about where she is now as a successful person of colour. What sort of opportunities and pressures appear in this industry?

In my team, it’s important that I’m at least 50/50 in terms of culture identity... and part of the responsibility as a head of a department is to train the next generations of heads of departments, to get people in who might not necessarily have access to the space that I'm in, and to teach them to do what it is I’m doing. You need to be introducing people at different levels.

— PC Williams

LCF Global X Faith & Fashion: PC Williams in conversation with Reina Lewis

London College of Fashion

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