Dir. Mal Burkinshaw on the Centre of Diversity’s First Year
Since the Centre of Diversity launched at Edinburgh College of Art last year, we have achieved much recognition for our work, both nationally and internationally. I was fortunate enough to have a paper selected for the 2012 International Foundation of Fashion Technology Institutes (IFFTI) conference, about the educational delivery of ‘emotionally considerate design’ at ECA, which I presented in person at the Pearl Academy in Jaipur, India.
During ECA's Innovative Learning Week we were delighted to work with UCA Epsom Journalism students. The combined student group took to the streets, and to the Scottish Parliament, protesting for more diversity in fashion design and imagery. The students demonstrated a level of passion for the All Walks philosophy which far surpassed my expectations.
Our 2nd year students collaborated with the Scottish National Galleries to develop a design project which gave historical context to body and beauty diversity. They applied this knowledge to their ‘Fashion and the Muse' project, creating a contemporary collection for models representing a diverse range of body shapes, ages and beauty ideals. The project was showcased during our Edinburgh College of Art Fashion Shows at the university's Playfair Library, Edinburgh.
I am also delighted to be launching a major new academic research project. Academic researchers within the broad discipline of fashion design will work in collaboration with the National Galleries of Scotland (NGS), All Walks Beyond the Catwalk and multi-disciplinary University research programmes to inspire, educate and celebrate diverse body and beauty ideals through innovation-led design and visionary craft skills. Working closely with gallery educators, curators and historians, the project will extract vital research and inspiration from the Reformation to Revolution gallery at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery (SNPG) and the World Class Renaissance collections at the Scottish National Gallery. The Scottish National Portrait Gallery has confirmed approval for the research to be exhibited in a creative showcase, opening at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh from October 2014 – January 2015.
We have demonstrated that not only should educators be developing the creative brains of our future designers, but they should also be leading new methods of teaching students about the end contexts for their work: the diverse customer. Vitally, the students have embraced the philosophy of designing for diversity and have now started to catalyse these ideas as part of the natural creative process underpinning all of their design work.
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Mal Burkinshaw Director of the All Walks' Centre for Diversity, Edinburgh College of Art See Mal's profile on the Academic Team page. |
All Walks’ salutes designer Mark Fast at the Body Confidence Awards
Mark Fast accepts the All Walks' Fashion Visionary Award from Caryn Franklin
Image by Annabel Staff
Mark Fast, the King of Knitwear, made a rare appearance at Parliament last week to receive a well-deserved award.
The first ever Body Confidence Awards in association with Bare Minerals, presented by Jo Swinson MP, acknowledged Mark as a fashion leader for showing a range of body and beauty ideals within his London Fashion Week catwalk casting.
The All Walks Beyond the Catwalk Fashion Visionary award has landed! We are of course delighted and applaud Mark Fast as a creative genius and just as importantly, a thought leader.
His desire to create inclusive fashion messaging was something we all celebrated, back in May 2009, when Mark was amongst the first to accept the All Walks challenge to design a sample garment for a curvy model. Award winning photographer Kayt Jones recorded the iconic picture of Hayley Morley for i-D Magazine seen below, along with 7 other images featuring diverse models in dresses from designers like William Tempest and Hannah Marshall. It might have ended there, but Mark took things further.
Hayley Morley wears Mark Fast for All Walks
Image by Kayt Jones
Launching Hayley Morley, along with other similarly voluptuous models like Laura Catterall, the Special K model, on his London Fashion Week catwalk the following September, Mark made national and then global News. In fact, the resultant press tsunami took everyone by surprise.
The small All Walks HQ was inundated and after appearing three times in one day on the BBC News, Debra, Erin and I then realized the only way ‘fashion forward’ was to grow All Walks into the well connected organization it is today.
As a result of that first campaign All Walks has launched the Centre of Diversity at Edinburgh College of Art and has gone on to create many more initiatives.
And with lectures up and down the country, engaging student designers with the idea of conscious choice, emotionally considerate design and why designing for a range of body shapes is, in these difficult times, a lucrative business proposition, we know we can look forward to more high profile Body Conscious designers like Mark Fast, in years to come.
“Over the years,” say’s Mark, “I have been privileged to work with some of the most beautiful and shapely women in the world and it is true to say that even the most beautiful (by any standards) have moments of doubt and insecurities.
As a designer it is very important to deliver the technical aspects a “look” and a quality of “make,” I also want to make each wearer of my clothes feel empowered and affirmed. I want to celebrate women and make them feel good in my clothes.
" I had the most fantastic compliment the other day when a supermodel mentioned to me that she was feeling tired and a little down and just by putting on one of my FASTER range she felt energised and invigorated."
And more power to you Mister Mark Fast, for such stylish action. We know you will continue to win awards, but we hope this All Walks award has a special place on your studio shelf. We think you have heart and we think that you, like us, believe that Inclusivity and Diversity equals Body Confidence.
Read more...
Full list of the Body Confidence Award winners.
Caryn’s piece on why the awards are important for every one, for The Huffington Post.
Susie Orbach’s Guardian Feature on the Body Confidence Awards.
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Post by Caryn Franklin
Images individually attributed
Editor Charlotte Gush
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Caryn Franklin Co-Founder Former fashion editor and co-editor of i-D Magazine for 6 years in the early eighties, Caryn Franklin has been a fashion commentator for 29 years. She presented the BBC’s Clothes Show for 12 years and BBC’s Style Challenge for 3 years as well as producing and presenting numerous documentaries for ITV on designers including Vivienne Westwood, Philip Treacy and Matthew Williamson. Working in education throughout her career as external assessor and lecturer in colleges like Central St Martins, London College of fashion and Royal College of Art, she is also an ardent fashion activist and has co-chaired the award winning Fashion Targets Breast Cancer for 15 years and proposed the London College of Fashion Centre of Sustainability and is its ambassador. Follow Caryn on Twitter: @Caryn_franklin |
Students’ Marching Mannequins bring the All Walks’ message to Edinburgh
When fashion students at Edinburgh College of Art were faced with a ‘flatpack’ mannequin and a group of Fashion Journalists from UCA Epsom, as part of the University of Edinburgh’s “Innovative Learning Week”, it’s safe to say we felt slightly dubious about what lay ahead. Despite this, Course Director of Fashion at ECA, Mal Burkinshaw, reassured students that there was method, at least some, to his madness.
Students working to construct the pattern for their mannequins
The project brief was to promote the “All Walks Beyond The Catwalk” campaign using the self-assemble model of a 1950s cardboard mannequin, an object that symbolised the ‘make-do-and-mend’ era, when amateur dressmaking was at its most prominent. Our task was to assemble the mannequin and then use it as a ‘blank canvas’ to create an inspired “All Walks” campaign message of diversity within the fashion industry. Little did we know these would later be pushed into the public eye, literally, on the streets of Edinburgh.
Students working on their Renaissance inspired mannequin, which sought to highlight society’s changing opinion of beauty and the body
Not only did this project offer us a chance to creatively convey the important messages of the “All Walks” campaign - celebrating diversity in ethnicity, age, shape and size, and the need to communicate these to the public - but, by constructing the mannequins, it allowed us to manipulate body sizes - a hands on way for us, as fashion students, to really explore and understand the contours of the body and how much bodies can differ.
Realising that, in emotionally considerate design, we should always refer back to the insight that the human body is unique by nature, we were more fired up than ever to project our belief to the public that we don’t have to be constrained by one prescribed image of ‘beauty.’
The march begins!
Now, it could just have been that the ‘march’ through the streets of Edinburgh offered us a chance to take part in a student demonstration, but I know it meant far more than that to both ECA and UCA Epsom students. We all chose to be a part of the project because we passionately believe that the “All Walks” campaign is so relevant to today’s diverse society and that the public should hear about it and know that people within the industry are really striving to change the images produced by the world of fashion for the better.
Outside the Scottish Parliament
Outside The Scotsman, campaigning to get All Walks into the local press
Shocked at the Harvey Nichols windows, showcasing extremely skinny models, crying and disheveled – is this a positive image of fashion?
Our march took us to Princes Street, the main shopping high street in Edinburgh to educate the consumer directly
After marching around Edinburgh for two and a half hours, from the Scottish Parliament to Primark on Princes Street, handing out flyers and chanting loudly, a sore throat was a small price to pay for what I saw as an extremely worthwhile day of education and of broadcasting our important message.
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Words by Heather Dooley, Fashion Student at Edinburgh College of Art
Images courtesy of Mal Burkinshaw, Dir. 'All Walks Centre for Diversity,' ECA
Editor Charlotte Gush, on Twitter @CavaCharlotte
Caryn Franklin visits Edinburgh’s “ALL WALKS” diverse design show
As colleges gear up to show their latest collections at Graduate Fashion Week, we at All Walks can reveal that diversity is firmly on the agenda.Students at Edinburgh College of Art have been working with All Walks on a project that replaces inanimate tailor's dummies with real and opinionated women, who give the students crucial feedback about their designs.
After all, training on a lifeless dummy and a model who is paid to stay silent (both presenting only one body type, and without movement) is not a rounded training, we say!
The fact is that all women, apart from the odd catwalk model, have ordinary bodies and design students must understand the needs of ordinary women if they are to make a lucrative business; and as these great designs show, creativity is not compromised. Emotionally considerate design is possible, and working on a model with a realistic body shape is a necessity.
Why? Well, as Mal Burkinshaw - course leader at Edinburgh College of Art, who has created this project with us - says, it has made a huge impact on the learning of the students.
Mortwenna Darwel, one of the students, agrees, "I gained a much better understanding of the relationship between real women and fashion."
Jennifer Alexander adds: "I feel I've learned a lot from fittings and communicating with my All Walks muse. From this project onwards, I will take into consideration who I design for and how my garment will make the person feel."
We'd like to thank all of the tutors at Edinburgh who have worked hard to embrace diversity by introducing a range of bodies and ages into the training, in order to help students understand the true meaning of emotionally considerate design and practice.
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Post by Caryn Franklin, All Walks co-founder
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Credits: 1. Pam Craig wears blue dress by Shauni Douglas. 2. Eileen Reilly wears green dress by Isabella Lyginou. 3. Sarah Saunders wears red dress by Laura Jayne Nevis, and 4. Collette Nelson wears maroon and pink dress by Louis Anderson Bythell
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Editor Charlotte Gush, on Twitter @CavaCharlotte