An international fashion research project exploring the 'craft of use'

Alternative Dress Codes

The choices we make about what we wear are influenced by life present, lives past and our ideas about our future selves. Expressions of values, aspirations, heritage, understanding and the physical shape of our bodies build a rationale for dress that transcend narrow commercial views about fashion. Instead they give us broader perspectives that honour our reality as well as our aspirations; and connect our psyche with our fibre and fashion choices.

Open neck

"I’ve had [my jumper] for about twenty years. I got it when I was about twenty. But Mum knitted for my father. Dad was a fisherman, a professional fisherman. So he’d go out and fish in jumpers like this. It would be arctic winds, so really freezing in the south of Australia but he hated things coming high up his neck so she made an open neck and he would wear it with flannel shirts and long underwear. It’s really beautifully made. It’s sewn with lots of love you know? Such a great colour as well… like charcoal…"

New York - January 2013
Photograph by Ellinor Stigle