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Curatorial Team State of Fashion biennial 2022

Fashion Open Studio and NOT____ENOUGH collective

In close collaboration with its curator-team, consisting of Fashion Open Studio and NOT____ENOUGH collective, State of Fashion wants to find alternatives for this system, which perpetuates inequality by choosing one specific perspective and interest over many others. There are countless ways of practicing fashion that are not yet recognized in the mainstream. How do we create space for different fashion systems to co-exist? A society that cares is a society prepared for repairs,’ states the team. They invite everyone to take part in their interventions: from repairing clothing to redesigning dysfunctional systems together.

Fashion Open Studio
Now in its fifth year, Fashion Open Studio is a Fashion Revolution initiative working with designers and service creators to challenge the mainstream and champion the radicals. With an annual programme of workshops, studio visits, peer to peer exchanges and technical demonstrations, as well as bespoke mentoring, and fashion week interventions, Fashion Open Studio has created a unique ecosystem of designers around the world who are connected by the desire to challenge the entire fashion system, from organic cotton seed to repair station. Fashion Open Studio highlights innovative new ideas and solutions to the systemic challenges facing the industry in accessible ways that stimulate questions and discussion and promote new business models.

Fashion Open Studio is an initiative of Fashion Revolution. Fashion Revolution is the world’s largest fashion activism movement, formed after the Rana Plaza factory collapse in Bangladesh in 2013 which killed over 1,100 people. Fashion Revolution campaigns for a clean, safe, fair, transparent and accountable fashion industry through research, education, collaboration, mobilisation and advocating for policy change. Fashion Revolution is a global movement with country offices and voluntary teams in 90 countries. Fashion Revolution believes in a global fashion industry that conserves and restores the environment and values people over growth and profit. In order to achieve this goal, the organisation conducts research that shines a light on the fashion industry’s practices and impacts, highlights where brands and retailers are moving too slowly and incentivises and promotes transparency and accountability across the supply chain.

Team Members Fashion Open Studio

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Orsola de Castro

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Orsola de Castro: photo by Tamzin Haughton

Founder and Global Creative Director Fashion Revolution

Orsola de Castro is an internationally recognised opinion leader in sustainable fashion. Her career started as a designer with the pioneering upcycling label From Somewhere, which she launched in 1997 until 2014. Her designer collaborations include collections for Jigsaw, Speedo, and 4 best selling capsule collections for Topshop from 2012 to 2014. In 2006, she co-founded the British Fashion Council initiative Estethica at London Fashion Week, which she curated until 2014. In 2013, with Carry Somers, she founded Fashion Revolution, a global campaign with participation in over 90 countries around the world. Orsola is a regular keynote speaker and mentor, Associate Lecturer at UAL, as well as Central Saint Martins Visiting Fellow. Orsola’s first book “Loved Clothes Last” was published by Penguin Life in 2021, in Italy by Corbaccio Editore and in France by Edition Marabou.

Filippo Ricci

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Credits Selfie

Programme and Partnerships Manager Fashion Open Studio

Filippo Ricci started working life as an assistant director in theatre and then moved to the movie and broadcasting industry. Here, he worked as producer and AD several years, until he joined his wife and business partner Orsola de Castro as Managing Director for the pioneering up-cycling fashion label From Somewhere.He then went to co-found, alongside the British Fashion Council, Estethica at London Fashion Week, the first international showcasing platform devoted to showcase and support sustainable brands, and then Reclaim To Wear, a consultancy dedicated to sharing up-cycling solutions with the industry and academia. Filippo joined the Fashion Revolution team as Programme and Partnerships Manager for Fashion Open Studio.

Tamsin Blanchard

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Photo by Cengi Sen

Special Projects Curator Fashion Open Studio

Tamsin Blanchard is a fashion journalist and editor with more than 20 years experience working for media such as the Independent, the Observer and the Telegraph Magazine. She has written several books including ‘Fashion & Graphics’ (Laurence King) and ‘Green is the New Black – How to Change the World with Style’ (Hodder & Stoughton). She contributes to the Guardian, Vogue, 10 and The Gentlewoman, and is editor of independent magazine Hole & Corner. Her interest in sustainability and social responsibility in the fashion industry has developed over her career and has become integral to her work as a journalist and a campaigner. She joined the Fashion Revolution team in 2015, and is a member of the Senior Management Team. Since 2017, she has been the curator of Fashion Open Studio.

Niamh Tuft

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photo by Luca Sceranková

Global Network Manager Fashion Revolution

Niamh Tuft has a background in fashion history and curation. She worked in fashion programming for the British Council for seven years. Here, she led the International Fashion Showcase – a project which showcases and supports emerging designers from over 70 countries during London Fashion Week – and created strategic programmes such as Fashion DNA, which aims to support fashion ecosystems across the world to develop business support and creative opportunities for local designers. Her work encompassed architecture, design and fashion and intersected with disciplines across arts and culture. Prior to joining the British Council, Niamh worked with the Centre for Sustainable Fashion as a freelance curator, with the National Trust as a Young Curator and across a variety of cultural exhibitions and arts projects.

NOT____ENOUGH Collective

NOT_____ENOUGH collective consists of Andrea Chehade Barroux, Mari Cortez and Marina Sasseron de Oliveira Cabral, three South American women currently living in the Netherlands. In 2019, they came together by the experience of being perceived not Latina enough as well as not European enough, while studying in the Netherlands. These unsettling feelings made them critically reflect and take action as a collective. Through their work, they want to transform the dynamics of oppressor and oppressed, imposed by remaining colonial power. From a personal to a systemic sphere, they collectively exercise non-colonial practices. Their aim is to face the challenge of constituting a plural world together and to promote change within fashion, design and education.

Team Members NOT_____ENOUGH collective

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Andrea Chehade Barroux

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Photo by María Gil Mendoza

Co-founder and member NOT____ENOUGH Collective

Andrea Chehade Barroux is a designer, artist, researcher, educator and activist from Chile with Palestinian and French roots. Her interdisciplinary practice is based on the observation of sociopolitical phenomena, from which through embodied practices she questions the power structures and the production of knowledge by using fashion as a medium. Her interest in fashion lies in its intrinsic connection to both the individual and the social body. She has an educational background in Fashion Design (Chili) and in fashion strategy (The Netherlands). Currently, she is immersing herself as an insider and outsider to research the importance of collective practices, solidarity and hope, as alternatives to resist neoliberal models.

Mari Cortez

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Photo by Samuele Nobili

Co-founder and member NOT____ENOUGH Collective

Mari Cortez is a Brazilian designer, researcher and critical practitioner that has been based in the Netherlands since 2018. She researches fashion as a social phenomenon and explores togetherness through design. By experiencing a different context when moving to Europe, she realized that power structures formed in colonial times remain nowadays and play an important role in society. They frame how people and cultures are treated and explain how social inequality is formed. Cortez aims to exercise a horizontal and open dialogue about these complex topics, aiming to dissolve the process of otherness and bring people together. She has a BA in Design (Brazil) and an MA in Fashion Strategies (The Netherlands).

Marina Sasseron de Oliveira Cabral

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Photo by María Gil Mendoza

Co-founder and member NOT____ENOUGH Collective

Marina Sasseron de Oliveira Cabral is a Brazilian creative that has been working in the fashion field for nineteen years. As a designer, researcher and critical practitioner in fashion, her multidisciplinary approach explores the micro-political aspects of materiality, as well as the performativity of clothes and materials in different socio-cultural arrangements. She has a BA in Fashion Design (Brazil) and an MA in Fashion Strategy (The Netherlands). She is currently interested in the potential of participatory practices as tools for unlearning oppressive embodied knowledge.

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Curatorial Team State of Fashion biennial 2022