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https://www.designforsocialchange.org/journal/index.php/DISCERN-J 

 

ISSN 2184-6995 

 
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 

International License. 

 

  

 

 
 

Decentring fashion – Participatory practices for shifting narratives and 
regenerating cultures 
 
 
Francesco Mazzarella, Seher Mirza 

 

Published online: May 2024 

 
To cite this article:  
Mazzarella, F., & Mirza, S. (2024). Decentring fashion – Participatory practices for shifting narratives and 

regenerating cultures. Discern: International Journal of Design for Social Change, Sustainable Innovation 

and Entrepreneurship, 5(1), 1-10. 
 

 

  



 

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Decentring Fashion – Participatory Practices for Shifting Narratives and 
Regenerating Cultures  
 
Francesco Mazzarellaa, Seher Mirzaa 

 
aCentre for Sustainable Fashion, University of the Arts London, London, United Kingdom. 

F.mazzarella@fashion.arts.ac.uk; S.mirza@arts.ac.uk 

 

Introduction 

Historically, the textile heritage of minorities has often been subjected to cultural appropriation practices 

(Young, 2008) or systematically undervalued and ‘othered’ as ‘non-fashion’, as such ‘sacrifice zones’ do not 

sit within the confines of specific fashion systems (Niessen, 2020). Designers are often ‘parachuted’ into 

marginalised or disadvantaged communities premised on bringing their knowledge and expertise to solve 

other people’s problems. However, there is growing recognition of the need to ‘decolonise’ such dominant 

approaches in collaborative design practice (Escobar, 2018; Mignolo, 2018; Tunstall, 2023). Different 

methods have been applied, sometimes in tandem, to tackle the challenges that face us as well as define 

new roles for the designer under different contexts, such as design activism (Fuad-Luke, 2009, 2017), 

design for social justice (Constanza-Chock, 2020), social entrepreneurship (Martin & Osberg, 2007) and 

policy design (Bason, 2014; Kimbell et al., 2023). 

 

While guest editing this Special Issue, we were undertaking the research project ‘Decolonising Fashion and 

Textiles: Design for Cultural Sustainability with Refugee Communities’, which addresses some of these 

multiple-level challenges in the UK (Mazzarella & Mirza, 2023). In line with Walker et al. (2018) and 

Kozlowski et al. (2019), we advocate for adding a cultural dimension to the three most recognised pillars  

of sustainability: environment, economy and society. Cultural sustainability refers to tolerant systems that 

identify and cultivate diversity of cultural heritage, beliefs, practices and histories in connection with places, 

resources and ancestral lands (Williams, 2022). Starting from the premise of not re-enacting dominant 

power narratives, we are engaging London-based refugees and asylum seekers in storytelling sessions, 

textile co-creation workshops and roundtable discussions as part of participatory action research aimed  

at understanding what cultural sustainability and community resilience mean in this context. These liminal 

and peripheral communities actively search for a new voice and identity as they rebuild their lives and 

resettle in a new place. Our research contributes to understanding the lived experiences of refugees, 

mapping ways to build resilience within the local community and collectively framing a sustainable future 

vision. Our ambition is also to shift narratives around refugees, amplify the participants’ voice and agency 

and foreground an alternative fashion and textile system based on equality, diversity, inclusion and 

sustainability of cultures. 

 

It is essential to highlight that our project team presents a mix of cultural backgrounds, and we speak at 

least one language other than English, overlapping with our research participants. This position of ‘credible 

messengers’ contributes to the varied frames of cultural and social reference, which are crucial in projects 

of this nature. We also acknowledge the different forms of privilege each of us brings to the project. At the 

same time, we strive to challenge power dynamics and adopt a critical self-reflective approach, leveraging 

our lived experiences to foster empathy and inclusion within the collaborative design process. 

 

mailto:F.mazzarella@fashion.arts.ac.uk
mailto:S.mirza@arts.ac.uk


 

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With our project team, we engaged with 41 participants having either refugee or asylum-seeking status and 

who had come to London from 13 different countries (e.g. Eritrea, India, Iran, Nigeria, Pakistan and Sudan, 

to name but a few) for very different reasons (fleeing from war, gender-based violence or discrimination 

due to racial, religious or political reasons). We conducted the research activities in community centres  

in East London, an area with centuries of fashion and textile manufacturing heritage and home to diverse 

migrant communities. We adopted an embedded and situated approach to designing (Mazzarella et al., 

2021) and explored cultural, social, economic, and environmental issues faced by refugees within the 

fashion context of East London. 

 

Insights 

Against the backdrop of our ongoing project, key themes have emerged from the research observations 

and public discussions corroborated through the ‘Shifting Narratives’ symposium we held at the London 

College of Fashion, UAL, in January 2024. These themes capture the multifarious meanings attributed to 

cultural sustainability and community resilience, which help frame the parameters of fashion in this context 

and to which the authors of the papers published in this Special Issue have responded. The themes 

presented here relate to cultural sustainability and community resilience and are defined more specifically 

in the context they resonate with. This Special Issue is organised by correlating papers to these themes. 

 

The discussion on decoloniality foregrounded in this Special Issue aims to invert power in how knowledge  

is presented. In discussing the themes below, we highlight the voices of the participants and MA students 

from the London College of Fashion, UAL, who were involved in a collaborative project brief aligned with 

our research. We have chosen to use direct quotes from the participants and others involved in the project 

to give voice to their concerns and the space they deserve, which they are often denied. 

 

Reframing fashion 

Our project and the papers published in this Special Issue exemplify ways in which the practice of textiles 

and fashion design can be used as the catalyst for conversations around colonial legacy and lived 

experiences. In our project, we learnt that participants might be far from articulating or relating to 

definitions in a conventional way, and this made us think about accessible terminology and how to invert 

narratives by listening and recording what the participants defined as fashion, cultural sustainability and 

community resilience. In this Special Issue, we also intend to unpick and lay out the definitions from  

a non-dominant perspective. The visual data – textile artworks and fashion artefacts – produced by the 

participants in our project show a better articulation of cultural sustainability and community resilience 

than the words used to describe them. 

 

In her paper ‘Designed for life: Fashioning emergent futures’, Erica de Greef reviews the exhibition 

‘Designed for Life’ at London College of Fashion, UAL, from October 2023 to January 2024. De Greef 

examines the various elements of the exhibition and how the projects’ teams engaged with the lived 

experiences of refugees and migrants, involving them directly in the design process to bring forth untold 

stories of silenced communities and discuss the inequalities inherent in the world of design and fashion.  

De Greef also foregrounds a space in which design and conflict intersect at ‘the meeting of art with the 

extreme scale of human suffering’ as the unusual and challenging context from which some of the projects 

exhibited in ‘Designed for Life’ originated. 

 



 

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As we understand it in our research context and the papers published here, fashion is a system of what  

and who we interact with, not just an industry, which it is often reduced to or associated with in the 

mainstream narrative. Besides the fact that every garment we wear is made by a pair of hands, in the 

Global South, what we have understood from our diverse project participants’ decentred narratives about 

fashion is that it can provide an accessible, desirable medium to all. Therein, ‘fashion’ exhibits a divergence 

in its perceived privilege of access to some while others are excluded. In this context, fashion provides  

a vehicle through which participants from different levels of society, even those with no prior experience, 

education or training in fashion, are still keen to learn and pursue a career in fashion to build their new life 

in their new place of resettlement. Here, we see a glimpse of the less-defined spaces of inclusion for 

diverse players. For instance, a participant in our project stated that fashion ‘is about finding yourself, 

learning new skills, bringing together people from diverse cultures’. Fashion is conceived as ‘a tool to tell  

a story’, and the project ‘creates values and feelings … beyond the idea that fashion is something worn on 

the outside’. In her paper, de Greef also discusses the practice of making fashion and textiles to enable 

refugee participants to enact ‘practical negotiations between the local, global, past, present and future’, 

undertake a process of ‘becoming whole again’, engage with more established residents and, in so doing, 

influence the place where they resettle. 

 

Decentring fashion 

This Special Issue illustrates ways in which fashion can provide a different access platform in a decentred 

context. Historically, it has been used as a political and social symbol of defiance to colonial power, notably 

in Gandhi’s personal choice of dress and the Swadeshi movement (Bean, 1991; Gonsalves, 2012). Through 

the handmaking of clothing, cheaper industrially made imported European textiles were boycotted as  

a metaphor for liberty from colonial oppression in South Asia. In our project’s context, amplifying a 

peripheral fashion system tied to ‘othered’ identities is also examined through the lens of clothing that is 

separated from the dominant stance of the ‘Fashion’ industry. In decolonising dominant design practices, it 

is vital to adopt a listening-first perspective, unlearning inherent knowledge and relearning new viewpoints. 

 

In her article ‘The decentralisation of fashion education in the Northeast of England through collaborative 

practice between education, communities and industry’, Gayle Cantrell et al. report on initiatives to re-

localise the fashion system through collaboration with various stakeholders. With the ambition to move 

away from the established centralised (London-based) fashion sector in England and contribute to a social 

diversification of the industry, such counter-initiatives are aimed at bringing benefits to the local system, 

having design education at the heart of this process. Such a system is grounded on values of localism, 

degrowth, circularity, sustainability, repair, activism, community engagement and social innovation. In this 

context, fashion is presented as a vehicle for the regeneration of the local industry and community through 

engagement with local fashion brands and the creative industries more broadly. The paper illustrates UK 

universities’ role in engaging with local communities to foster place-making and decentralise the fashion 

system, which has the potential to shift power dynamics and contribute towards decolonisation. 

 

Through engagement with the diverse groups in our project, we argue that language must also be 

decentred. It became evident that using native languages in the artefacts created can promote diverse 

cultures. Embracing a multitude of knowledge and approaches, this decentred process entails working  

in solidarity ‘with’ marginalised communities rather than assuming a ‘helper’ attitude. 

 

 



 

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Cultural sustainability 

Our project defines cultural sustainability as a strong sense of identity attached to an emotional sense of 

belonging, such as comfort in the space of two cultures and redefining fashion through nonconformity. 

Sustaining textile heritage and making spaces for its discussion can contribute to fostering a sense of 

belonging, especially for refugees who are displaced and live transient lives, as highlighted by one of our 

project participants: ‘This project made me love my culture more. No matter where I go, my culture will 

remain with me’. 

 

On the other hand, it is also important to note that some refugees have traumatic memories of their home 

countries and may want to erase some of their heritage while absorbing cultural elements of the place of 

resettlement. Hence, sustaining the past is not always appropriate, especially when it might echo the 

dominating narratives of imperial colonialism. This resonates with Hall’s (1997) definition of culture, not  

as a return to our fixed ‘roots’ but as ‘routes’ through which we travel; therefore, our culture changes and 

develops. From this perspective, cultural sustainability means continuing certain traditions while allowing 

certain elements to evolve and embracing change to design ‘regenerative cultures’ (Wahl, 2016). 

 

Our research shows that the dominant fashion system is making people from cultural minority backgrounds 

believe that their material culture and way of dressing may be less valuable. With this in mind, we argue for 

the designer’s role as an advocate for foregrounding personal and cultural identity and the need to feel safe 

in embracing native and new cultures to express shifting identities. Equally, we advocate for the need to 

facilitate co-creation processes and enable the necessary conditions for all cultures to thrive in their own 

right, and this includes leveraging the power of cultural activism – through design, art, craft and making 

(Corbett, 2017; Fuad-Luke, 2009; Hackney, 2013) – to challenge social injustices and dismantle the many 

layers of dominant and oppressive forces that prevent equality of all cultures. 

 

Our research also revealed that the reconciliation between values and economic differentials must be 

considered in any definition. This was highlighted at the ‘Shifting Narratives’ symposium. For instance, 

Professor Stuart Walker highlighted that regional and central government policies in the UK for economic 

development are often aimed at fostering innovation and change, which are at odds with the values of 

tradition and conservation on which the principle of cultural sustainability is grounded. Furthermore, 

mainstream Western cultures are grounded on individualism and consumerism, and such values are socially 

and environmentally damaging and should not be sustained. 

 

Shifting narratives 

The plight of people whose identity is instantly stripped away and replaced with a quick label when arriving 

in a new place, resounds in a quote shared by artist Laura Nyahuye at the ‘Shifting Narratives’ symposium: 

‘I became a black woman when I came to the UK’. 

 

This statement illustrates the resistance to her strong sense of identity; she felt that ‘there is no room for 

me because of what I look like’ as the space ‘resisted who I was’. Culturally, educationally, and linguistically, 

diverse people with differing backgrounds may be reduced to a single label, which confines them as the 

‘other’ and, in many cases, as ‘unwanted’ in the dominant culture and power narratives. Moreover, 

listening to the stories of our project participants one on one and asking them to share culturally and 

personally meaningful textiles led to a reflection on identity and the juxtaposition of presumed identity and 

representation in a new context. It shed light on the human qualities and values necessary to diverse 



 

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participants in meaningful ways. For instance, the making space offered our project participants the 

opportunity to rebuild shattered self-confidence as well as relocate themselves within a vastly different 

social structure and as valuable contributing members of society whilst raising awareness of ‘others’ and 

the other ‘self’: 

 

“I’m here to find myself. We can pray for this to happen every day and night … The reason why I do 

this is because I know [that] a picture can send a message to the outside world. If someone sees this 

[referring to her textile artwork], they know that this lady is still fighting for her freedom”. 

 

The current prevailing narratives around refugees are reductive and limit the multidimensional aspect of 

being human. Our research highlights that refugees, similar to other groups, are neither a collective entity 

nor identify with the same things despite the collective grouping ascribed by general perception and often 

even those in power, such as the top tiers of governments. The refugee label might reduce the experiences 

of diverse individuals. Nevertheless, the labelling or exoticising or commodising of ‘native culture’ or people 

is not a new phenomenon. 

 

Pallavi Chamarty’s paper ‘Kalamkari and chintz: A decolonial reassessment of entangled textile histories’  

in this Special Issue critiques the absence of artisanal subjectivity and the persistence of Eurocentric and 

Orientalist assumptions within the existing historiography pertaining to specific Indian textile crafts. 

Chamarty demonstrates and highlights the dialectic relationship of colonisation with traditional crafts in 

South India through its commodification. The paper underlines the significance of the relationships of 

power that may historically define spaces for cultures from non-dominant sources. As designers and 

practitioners working towards social change, our role is to question and identify the gaps by which we are 

endangering human values of creativity, resilience, resourcefulness and collaboration that form the basis  

of culture and ways of being. 

 

Regeneration of cultures 

What is culture in this context? Culture here can be defined as a multi-layered living reality that evolves 

with people as they travel, integrate, learn, unlearn and make meaning. In the paper ‘Exploring the 

extraordinary design motifs of Wollo Gabi in Ethiopian textiles and design development of women’s fashion 

accessories’, Hazal Gümüş Çiftçi, Tewodros Tenagne, Temesgen Agazhie and Michael Reta discuss a traditional 

textile worn by both Ethiopian men and women. The paper discusses a commercial gap for product design 

in international markets and the potential for adopting co-design methods for an inclusive approach to 

brand development. The authors provide insight into traditional crafts that are less known in mainstream 

fashion and which contribute towards informing consumers against cultural appropriation practices and 

aesthetics. Importantly, it also frames the discussions around overlapping cultures where native material 

culture may have to adapt and regenerate towards a dominant one to survive. This raises questions about 

balancing power and values where diverse cultures meet. 

 

Our research connected people who would not have otherwise met and focused on finding cultural 

commonalities that create a bridge between different worlds. While engaging with participants living 

transient lives and bringing together people from different countries, we were aware of potential conflicts 

and tensions that could have emerged across cultures. We felt our responsibility was to facilitate dialogue, 

co-existence, and connection. As one of our project participants shared, they were ‘exposed to the 

sensitivities and perspectives of other people’. Another participant has consistently used a pair of jeans and 



 

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a T-shirt as symbols to campaign for unity and equity among different people, arguing that less division is 

created through reduced ring-fencing of cultures and cultural heritages. Our approach encourages 

participants to practise empathy for one another’s struggles, respect diverse cultural heritages and engage 

in respectful and mindful conversations based on active listening. 

 

Community resilience 

Community resilience is highlighted in a description of lived experiences, as some forms of culture are 

carried while others are left behind in the cause of survival. Resistance is one basis of resilience in the face 

of extreme adversity. Similarly, one of our project participants pointed to the fantasy-like association with 

the UK as the home of Shakespeare and other positive Western narratives, which were in stark contrast  

to arriving in London as an asylum seeker where she felt unwelcomed and ‘hated’. 

 

Whilst we advocate for leveraging the power of communities (as groups of people with a shared matter  

of concern) to achieve social justice, we acknowledge the importance of also creating spaces for ‘agonistic 

pluralism’ (DiSalvo, 2010; Mouffe, 1999) to avoid the risk of creating echo chambers of the same ideas, 

seeking consensus instead of challenging existing power structures and activating social change. Our 

research highlights the resilience built by refugees in the face of experienced oppression and exploitation. 

However, it also critically challenges the notion of resilience, pointing towards the need for well-working 

systems and services instead of having no other choice than reacting to external shocks, as stated by one  

of our project participants: 

 

“People from the Global South are resilient, although … they should not have to always be resilient, 

because they also deserve tenderness and loving care, instead of violence and resilience. … 

Sometimes, resilience is worshipped because it’s easier to worship resilient people rather than 

deconstructing and dismantling the system that oppresses them. Many of them do not even want  

to be resilient or face this violence, but they have no choice”. 

 

While resilience is a positive quality to have to react to adverse situations, it should not be used – for 

instance, by local authorities, which have a duty of care towards their residents – to deflect responsibilities. 

 

The power of participatory practices 

In social and political theory, Foucault (1994) notes power as a form of domination, while Bourdieu (1984; 

1986) describes a kind of power in social and cultural distinctions. It is essential for design researchers to 

constantly reflect on their positionality, challenge their privilege and consider the power dynamics at play 

in collaborative processes. In their paper ‘Sustainability culture and fashion enterprises: From creating 

questions to co-creating participation’, Daniele Busciantella-Ricci, Marco Berni, Andrea Del Bono and Rita 

Duina discuss an experimental collaboration between a circular fashion company and a local third-sector 

entity promoting co-design for social innovation and adopting a Design Ladder model. This is an example of 

design’s role in fostering sustainability within the fashion industry by identifying new business strategies 

and systematically adopting co-design tools for social change. 

 

Active engagement in a reciprocal process of making and learning ‘with’ project participants rather than 

studying ‘them’ underlines the power of participatory practice. Wherever possible, enabling opportunities 

for shifting roles, such as empowering refugees to progress from participants to facilitators of design 

activities, fosters spaces for personal growth and the development of new perspectives. Active listening is 



 

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crucial in such collaborative processes to not impose one’s beliefs and design ideas and not elicit traumatic 

memories, as highlighted by one student participating in the collaborative project brief we set up: ‘Listening 

with mind, not just with ears’. 

 

As brought forth in the discussions at the ‘Shifting Narratives’ symposium and in the co-creation process 

with our project participants, making things together contributes to restoring lost connections (with 

people, places and practices), building support networks and fostering community resilience (Gauntlett, 

2011; Hirscher, 2020; Sennett, 2008). Making things together also unlocks meanings and narratives that 

cannot be expressed through words but become evident in the choice of fabrics, the enactment of 

movements such as mark-making on cloth and the building of new relationships (Mirza, 2020). 

 

Transformative learning 

Decolonising fashion implies unlearning inherent knowledge and engaging wholeheartedly in learning new 

viewpoints. This points to the crucial role that design education and reflexive practice play in this process. 

In their paper ‘Drum magazine: A decolonial shift in teaching fashion theory and history,’ Khaya Mchunu 

and Kiara Gounder discuss a cross-institutional project which offers a new perspective on decolonising 

fashion pedagogies. Mchunu considers fashion within the social, cultural and political landscape of South 

Africa in the 1950s and 1960s and illustrates – through biographical essays and magazine covers – students’ 

responses to the brief, with a focus on creative individuals who, although featured in Drum magazine, are 

not widely documented in fashion theory. The project presented in this paper critically acclaims untold 

stories and shapes new narratives centred on alternative fashion histories and imaginaries, contributing to 

– necessary and yet uncomfortable – shifts towards decoloniality. By proposing context-specific examples 

within fashion education, the paper offers a poignant call for engaging in an ongoing process of ‘renewing, 

stretching, and decentring the teaching of fashion theory and history’. 

 

Education implies a journey of learning and transformation through self-discovery, new skills, gaining new 

knowledge and finding one’s role in society. Two main contributors to adult learning, Mezirow (2000) and 

Freire (1970; 1973) advocate for transformation through critical reflection and raising critical 

consciousness. Both Mezirow’s meaning making and Freire’s experiential learning approaches are relevant 

to people’s transformation, but our project points towards contextually relevant material culture as central 

to triggering transformative learning in participants. In particular, our project has contributed towards the 

development of a wide range of technical and soft skills (design, sewing, pattern cutting, embroidery, 

critical reflection, ethical thinking, listening and communicating, teamwork, systems thinking, creativity and 

advocacy) as well as personal qualities (such as empathy, flexibility, resilience, resourcefulness and 

activism), as stated by one of our refugee collaborators: ‘I improved many skills in myself, like 

communication, teamwork and finding mutual goals whilst we stay creative’. 

 

Most importantly, drawing on Miller and VeneKlasen’s (2006) social sciences framework for power 

relations, we are witnessing that the refugees participating in our project are undertaking a transformative 

journey, from the feeling of being powerless while power is exercised by top-down institutions ‘over’ them, 

towards gaining power ‘within’ themselves (in terms of self-worth), power ‘with’ people (as collective 

strength) and power ‘to’ shape their own lives and make a difference in society. For instance, reflecting on 

her transformative journey of empowerment, one of our refugee collaborators stated: ‘As a refugee, I felt 

like a stone. You need to find a way to share your pain, and this project is giving me an opportunity to get 

closer to my feelings and turn my pain into something beautiful’. 



 

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Closing reflections 

While findings from our research point towards the invaluable lived experience of refugees and what it 

truly means to be human, we hope that the papers included in this Special Issue will inspire you – the 

reader – with multiple ways in which design and fashion can be used to challenge perceptions and 

narratives around marginalised groups and to engage in participatory and decolonised processes aimed  

at fostering cultural sustainability and community resilience. We would like to invite you to join us on  

a collaborative journey to develop practices of resistance to the hostile environment in which we live, 

nurturing ethics of care and repair and contributing towards unlocking people’s freedom to express their 

shifting identities and their abilities to access resources, representation and power – in and through 

fashion. 

 

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About the Authors: 
Dr Francesco Mazzarella is Design for Social Change Reader at the London College of Fashion, UAL. Francesco’s 
research spans the fields of design activism, textile craftsmanship, decolonising fashion, design for sustainability  
and social innovation. He is currently Principal Investigator on the AHRC-funded ‘Decolonising Fashion and  
Textiles’ project. 
 
Dr Seher Mirza is a cross-cultural design practitioner, researcher and facilitator. Her research focuses on power in 
design and making contexts, spanning 15 years of work with marginalised craft communities. Seher works at the 
Centre for Sustainable Fashion, UAL, as a postdoctoral research fellow in ‘Decolonising Fashion and Textiles’. 
 
Acknowledgement: We gratefully acknowledge funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and 
the invaluable support from the Centre for Sustainable Fashion, UAL. We are infinitely grateful to our research team, 
project partners and refugee collaborators for joining us on this journey towards decentring fashion while fostering 
cultural sustainability and community resilience. We would like to express our gratitude to the authors of the papers 
published in this Special Issue for sharing invaluable insights on their participatory practices aimed at shifting 
narratives and regenerating cultures. Finally, our gratitude goes to the DISCERN Journal co-editor Nicos Souleles for 
his ongoing support in this process and all the reviewers (Danah Abdulla, Tanveer Ahmed, Spyros Bofylatos, Serkan 
Delice, Reina Lewis, Paul Micklethwaite, Lucy Orta, Cory Rodgers, Laura Santamaria, Kirsten Scott and Tim Stephens) 
who have so generously shared their experience and expertise to craft this Special Issue with us. 

 

https://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/id/eprint/20562/1/IASDR2023_Textile%20Autobiographies_full%20paper.pdf
https://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/id/eprint/20562/1/IASDR2023_Textile%20Autobiographies_full%20paper.pdf
https://read.dukeupress.edu/books/book/2479/chapter/1191552/ForwardOn-Pluriversality-and-Multipolarity
https://read.dukeupress.edu/books/book/2479/chapter/1191552/ForwardOn-Pluriversality-and-Multipolarity
https://researchonline.rca.ac.uk/4479/
https://www.fashionseeds.org/_files/ugd/ed0694_8f92d71d49ab46329cf26872d02c38f5.pdf

	https://www.designforsocialchange.org/journal/index.php/DISCERN-J
	ISSN 2184-6995
	This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
	Decentring fashion – Participatory practices for shifting narratives and regenerating cultures
	Francesco Mazzarella, Seher Mirza
	Published online: May 2024
	To cite this article:  Mazzarella, F., & Mirza, S. (2024). Decentring fashion – Participatory practices for shifting narratives and regenerating cultures. Discern: International Journal of Design for Social Change, Sustainable Innovation and Entrepren...
	Decentring Fashion – Participatory Practices for Shifting Narratives and Regenerating Cultures
	Francesco Mazzarellaa, Seher Mirzaa
	aCentre for Sustainable Fashion, University of the Arts London, London, United Kingdom. F.mazzarella@fashion.arts.ac.uk; S.mirza@arts.ac.uk
	Introduction
	Historically, the textile heritage of minorities has often been subjected to cultural appropriation practices (Young, 2008) or systematically undervalued and ‘othered’ as ‘non-fashion’, as such ‘sacrifice zones’ do not sit within the confines of speci...
	While guest editing this Special Issue, we were undertaking the research project ‘Decolonising Fashion and Textiles: Design for Cultural Sustainability with Refugee Communities’, which addresses some of these multiple-level challenges in the UK (Mazza...
	It is essential to highlight that our project team presents a mix of cultural backgrounds, and we speak at least one language other than English, overlapping with our research participants. This position of ‘credible messengers’ contributes to the var...
	With our project team, we engaged with 41 participants having either refugee or asylum-seeking status and who had come to London from 13 different countries (e.g. Eritrea, India, Iran, Nigeria, Pakistan and Sudan, to name but a few) for very different...
	Insights
	Against the backdrop of our ongoing project, key themes have emerged from the research observations and public discussions corroborated through the ‘Shifting Narratives’ symposium we held at the London College of Fashion, UAL, in January 2024. These t...
	The discussion on decoloniality foregrounded in this Special Issue aims to invert power in how knowledge  is presented. In discussing the themes below, we highlight the voices of the participants and MA students from the London College of Fashion, UAL...
	Reframing fashion
	Our project and the papers published in this Special Issue exemplify ways in which the practice of textiles and fashion design can be used as the catalyst for conversations around colonial legacy and lived experiences. In our project, we learnt that p...
	In her paper ‘Designed for life: Fashioning emergent futures’, Erica de Greef reviews the exhibition ‘Designed for Life’ at London College of Fashion, UAL, from October 2023 to January 2024. De Greef examines the various elements of the exhibition and...
	As we understand it in our research context and the papers published here, fashion is a system of what  and who we interact with, not just an industry, which it is often reduced to or associated with in the mainstream narrative. Besides the fact that ...
	Decentring fashion
	This Special Issue illustrates ways in which fashion can provide a different access platform in a decentred context. Historically, it has been used as a political and social symbol of defiance to colonial power, notably in Gandhi’s personal choice of ...
	In her article ‘The decentralisation of fashion education in the Northeast of England through collaborative practice between education, communities and industry’, Gayle Cantrell et al. report on initiatives to re-localise the fashion system through co...
	Through engagement with the diverse groups in our project, we argue that language must also be decentred. It became evident that using native languages in the artefacts created can promote diverse cultures. Embracing a multitude of knowledge and appro...
	Cultural sustainability
	Our project defines cultural sustainability as a strong sense of identity attached to an emotional sense of belonging, such as comfort in the space of two cultures and redefining fashion through nonconformity. Sustaining textile heritage and making sp...
	On the other hand, it is also important to note that some refugees have traumatic memories of their home countries and may want to erase some of their heritage while absorbing cultural elements of the place of resettlement. Hence, sustaining the past ...
	Our research shows that the dominant fashion system is making people from cultural minority backgrounds believe that their material culture and way of dressing may be less valuable. With this in mind, we argue for the designer’s role as an advocate fo...
	Our research also revealed that the reconciliation between values and economic differentials must be considered in any definition. This was highlighted at the ‘Shifting Narratives’ symposium. For instance, Professor Stuart Walker highlighted that regi...
	Shifting narratives
	The plight of people whose identity is instantly stripped away and replaced with a quick label when arriving in a new place, resounds in a quote shared by artist Laura Nyahuye at the ‘Shifting Narratives’ symposium: ‘I became a black woman when I came...
	This statement illustrates the resistance to her strong sense of identity; she felt that ‘there is no room for me because of what I look like’ as the space ‘resisted who I was’. Culturally, educationally, and linguistically, diverse people with differ...
	“I’m here to find myself. We can pray for this to happen every day and night … The reason why I do this is because I know [that] a picture can send a message to the outside world. If someone sees this [referring to her textile artwork], they know that...
	The current prevailing narratives around refugees are reductive and limit the multidimensional aspect of being human. Our research highlights that refugees, similar to other groups, are neither a collective entity nor identify with the same things des...
	Pallavi Chamarty’s paper ‘Kalamkari and chintz: A decolonial reassessment of entangled textile histories’  in this Special Issue critiques the absence of artisanal subjectivity and the persistence of Eurocentric and Orientalist assumptions within the ...
	Regeneration of cultures
	What is culture in this context? Culture here can be defined as a multi-layered living reality that evolves with people as they travel, integrate, learn, unlearn and make meaning. In the paper ‘Exploring the extraordinary design motifs of Wollo Gabi i...
	Our research connected people who would not have otherwise met and focused on finding cultural commonalities that create a bridge between different worlds. While engaging with participants living transient lives and bringing together people from diffe...
	Community resilience
	Community resilience is highlighted in a description of lived experiences, as some forms of culture are carried while others are left behind in the cause of survival. Resistance is one basis of resilience in the face of extreme adversity. Similarly, o...
	Whilst we advocate for leveraging the power of communities (as groups of people with a shared matter  of concern) to achieve social justice, we acknowledge the importance of also creating spaces for ‘agonistic pluralism’ (DiSalvo, 2010; Mouffe, 1999) ...
	“People from the Global South are resilient, although … they should not have to always be resilient, because they also deserve tenderness and loving care, instead of violence and resilience. … Sometimes, resilience is worshipped because it’s easier to...
	While resilience is a positive quality to have to react to adverse situations, it should not be used – for instance, by local authorities, which have a duty of care towards their residents – to deflect responsibilities.
	The power of participatory practices
	In social and political theory, Foucault (1994) notes power as a form of domination, while Bourdieu (1984; 1986) describes a kind of power in social and cultural distinctions. It is essential for design researchers to constantly reflect on their posit...
	Active engagement in a reciprocal process of making and learning ‘with’ project participants rather than studying ‘them’ underlines the power of participatory practice. Wherever possible, enabling opportunities for shifting roles, such as empowering r...
	As brought forth in the discussions at the ‘Shifting Narratives’ symposium and in the co-creation process with our project participants, making things together contributes to restoring lost connections (with people, places and practices), building sup...
	Transformative learning
	Decolonising fashion implies unlearning inherent knowledge and engaging wholeheartedly in learning new viewpoints. This points to the crucial role that design education and reflexive practice play in this process. In their paper ‘Drum magazine: A deco...
	Education implies a journey of learning and transformation through self-discovery, new skills, gaining new knowledge and finding one’s role in society. Two main contributors to adult learning, Mezirow (2000) and Freire (1970; 1973) advocate for transf...
	Most importantly, drawing on Miller and VeneKlasen’s (2006) social sciences framework for power relations, we are witnessing that the refugees participating in our project are undertaking a transformative journey, from the feeling of being powerless w...
	Closing reflections
	While findings from our research point towards the invaluable lived experience of refugees and what it truly means to be human, we hope that the papers included in this Special Issue will inspire you – the reader – with multiple ways in which design a...
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