In Uncertain Times, This Is a Sure Thing! - Autumn/Winter Collection, BFC Show space, 180, The Strand. AW19
- Submitting institution
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Leeds Beckett University
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 9
- Type
- K - Design
- Open access status
- -
- Month
- February
- Year
- 2019
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
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- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- In fashion, certain fabrics, textiles and silhouettes tend to get written off. In Uncertain Times uses these to explore the idea of the scapegoat. What is the style of the outcast? Here, it is a kind of glamour on the hoof. These could be clothes made for people who are fleeing something: hybridity predominates, individual garments looking like collisions between other garments. These subtly political methods address the wider question of what it means to be British now.
A York-based designer supporting northern industry, Bovan uses factories in Sheffield and Leicester, numerous iterations of each garment being worked through before arriving at something unique that cannot be re-made. Knitted and crocheted elements by local artisans consolidate this uniqueness, with jewellery fashioned from chair spindles by a wood-turner, shaped by Bovan’s mother into talismans carried by the models. The collection draws on research into northern English history, notably the Pendle Witch trials. Combined with prints from Liberty Fabric Archives, these ‘pariah’ elements become symbolically vindicated, contrasting vectors of Englishness meeting in a single garment.
The collection was shown at London Fashion Week 2019 as part of the British Fashion Council’s NewGen initiative for emerging designers. Seen by 1000 people and sponsored by Mac, Babyliss, Coach and Gina, the collection generated much press interest including features in the Evening Standard magazine (22.03.2019) and The New York Times Style magazine (19.02.2019).
Bovan’s collection made Vogue’s top ten shows of London Fashion Week. According to Vogue, Vivienne Westwood ‘gave Bovan a hearty personal benediction at his last show, praising his DIY craftiness and hailing him as a new punk’. Like Westwood, In Uncertain Times offsets transgression with conformity, seeing clothes not just as expressing ‘contemporary’ style, but as sites where past and present collide, ‘historicising’ the wearer even as they move into the future.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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