Arcade East

150 performers stormed the Tower of London in a spectacular collision of music and dance in 2018. Bringing together dance styles from across London and fuelled by rousing music from The Band of the Irish Guards, contemporary a cappella vocal group The Gold Vocal Collective, rock musicians, strings and vocalists and the rebellious history of the site itself, East Wall was the Tower’s first large-scale artistic presentation since the award-winning Poppies installation.

Directed by the internationally-celebrated artist and choreographer Hofesh Shechter, East Wall invited you to discover dynamic new dance created by Becky Namgauds, Duwane Taylor, James Finnemore and Joseph Toonga, four of London’s most exciting young choreographers.

From grime to gospel, krump to contemporary, this epic production indulged senses in a tapestry of music and dance that celebrates East London’s diversity and puts its rich cultural heritage centre stage.

Fashioned from Nature explores the relationship between fashion and nature from 17th to 21st century. Commissioned by the exhibition’s curator, Edwina Ehrman, Centre for Sustainable Fashion’s Professor Dilys Williams has conceived two installations for the exhibition, Fashion Now and Fashion Futures 2030. Along with fellow CSF team member, Renee Cuoco, Director of LCF’s Fashion Space Gallery Ligaya Salazar and MA Fashion Futures students as well as four film makers, Crack Stevens, Nadira Amrani, Carlos Jiménez and Cieron Magat, the installations have been realised for public exhibition at the V&A from April 2018 until February 2019, before touring to other international locations.

Fashion Now

Every element of fashion comes from nature. Each day, we express our relationship with the natural world through what we choose to make or buy and wear. But how much do we actually know about what we are saying through the clothes that we wear? Examining five contemporary fashion items, this display follows how we relate to nature across a five-stage fashion lifecycle: design, make, acquire, wear/care, discard.

Referencing eight elements of nature relating to fashion’s lifecycle, the installations, based on familiar fashion dialogues, such as Instagram, purchase receipts, illustration and video, show that fashion’s interaction with these elements frequently reveals an unequal partnership. They go on to suggest questions we can ask ourselves and others, to help us develop a healthier relationship with nature in our fashion choices.

Fashion Futures 2030

Although we cannot accurately predict the future, we can shape it through our values and actions. It is urgent that we change our current fashion habits in order to keep within a safe operating space on earth.

Fashion Futures 2030 explores what fashion and nature might look like within four world scenarios. The scenarios are based on environmental, economic, social, cultural and technological changes taking place across the globe. They are not predictions, but stories of how the future might unfold, developed through research and with contribution from Forum for the Future. Stories from these scenarios have been developed into four short films depicting elements of how we might live, dress and value nature. Visitors to the exhibition will have the opportunity to share how they would like fashion to be designed, made, acquired, cared for and disposed of (or not) in 2030 through an interactive set of questions. Data from the exhibition over the forthcoming year will be gathered by the research team and analysed into a final account of the scenarios, revealing the choices made by visitors to the exhibition.

Radical political decisions and technological advances have been affecting people around the globe on a massive scale over the past decade. Security, both national and individual, is often deployed as a key argument to justify the use of evermore dense control systems, promising to protect citizens from crime. Frequently, these systems target the citizens themselves by tracking and analysing their actions for future reference, incentivising good behaviour. Knowing when one’s privacy is infringed is becoming more difficult as the lines blur between private companies, banks, health care providers, global players, the police and governments all having an interest in our data. This is particularly pertinent in the case of London, where there is approximately one CCTV camera for every 13 people, making it the most surveilled city in the world.

In light of this climate, we see a number of creative practitioners that use garments to highlight the problematic nature of these tendencies. Deeply politically and socially minded, their projects, collections and artefacts are responding to technology mixed with executive power, to marginalisation and decreased citizens rights. Their aim is to educate as much as to provoke.

Wearable Resistance put clothes into this critical context: as the interface between the individual’s safety and third party interest allowing for a different perspective on how we usually see fashion enacted.