Continuing with our stay active, creative and engaged content, our wonderful tutors are sharing their recommendations for you to follow, read, listen, watch and do whilst at home.
Tutor, Arianwen Shoring, teaches the Visual Merchandising Fashion short course and during these strange times has said she is finding more comfort in the act of “doing” whilst at home, “I’ve been knitting, sewing - using up my creative stash, and planting seeds.”
"I think we might be entering a different phase, in which comfort takes a centre stage, through craft doing.”
Arianwen Shoring
FOLLOW / READ
Keep up to date with fashion visual merchanting by following and reading Selvedge and Vogue.
LISTEN
For pure enjoyment - concluding the Wolf Hall trilogy, Arianwen recommends, “The Mirror and the Light”, by Hilary Mantel and read by Anton Lesser which is available to listen on BBC Sounds.
WATCH
For a fun show following talented designers from around the world competing to become the next big thing in fashion check out Next In Fashion, on Netflix. Whilst over on BBC iPlayer you can watch the amazing series, Pose, about the underground world of 1980s ball culture, set at the height of the AIDS epidemic.
DO
I teach Visual Merchandising - Fashion at Central Saint Martins but presently that feels very out of touch with the new now. My course works a lot with fashion and trend forecasting. So, I decided to think about this different phase, the now, in which comfort takes a centre stage through the craft of doing - #comfortthroughdoing.
I returned to slow craft and realized a lot of what this is linked to is mindfulness, meditation, repetition and the tactile nature of yarn and fabrics as well as the soothing aspects of colour.
As an educator and a facilitator, I love a project, and so the seed was sown. I began to research this aspect that I was feeling and not surprisingly, there is an emerging trend dealing with just this. To find out more I recommend listening to the Business of Fashion podcast about the Dutch trend forecaster Futurist, Li Edelkoort. Amongst other things, she reconfirms a longing for simpler times with less choice and a return to comfort and necessity.
“Most of us are now all working from home at a much slower pace, trying to find ways to progress in our minds … and we have not been prepared for this kind of crisis management. However, we are trained to be creative, to improvise and to rethink.” - Li Edelkoort, Selvedge Magazine, April 2020
Let’s use this time to send and share a bit of DIY homespun love around the world. Here’s what I’ve been up too…
We are all artists - create a space that lets you be your creative self and see what unfolds. Creating calm through doing.
Unfinished projects? Get them finished! Here’s some fabric I have had in my stash for a very long time being used in an adapted Merchant and Mills dress pattern.
Meditate by creating comfort. Knit one, purl one. Colour and texture help absorb day to day anxiety.
Sewing the seeds of change. I have never sewn anything from seed before, I can’t believe they are growing! This is one-week in.
Conscious walking. Feeling texture and colour through movement - frees up your creative channels.
This is me practicing what I preach - I have not baked a cake for twenty years.
And finally, take this time look and appreciate the small things! #comfortthroughdoing