Dress For Our Time: Using the Power of Fashion to explore Climate Change

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Dress for Our Time: Using the power of fashion to explore and engage with Climate Change - Launching at St Pancras International November 2015

“ACT LIKE WE HAVE JUST ENOUGH TIME. LIVE LIKE IT RUNS OUT TODAY”

HELEN STOREY MBE RDI

Dress For Our Time, by artist and designer Helen Storey MBE RDI (London College of Fashion, UAL Centre for Sustainable Fashion), uses the power of fashion to communicate some of the world’s most complex issues. Through fashion, science and wonder Dress For Our Time will help change the way we think and act upon climate change.

Dress For Our Time will be realised in a series of Chapters - the first will focus on Climate Change with the first ever physical embodiment of the Dress installed at St Pancras International train station at the end of November. As the gateway to Paris - the city hosting the United Nations Climate Change conference COP 21 - many of the delegates that will be passing through the station will come face to face with the world’s first digital couture dress dedicated to exploring climate change and its human impact.

Given the importance of the conference, where more than 190 nations will gather in Paris to discuss a possible new global agreement on climate change, this project will capture people’s imagination in a way that is both unexpected and beautiful.  With the scientific community overwhelmingly* in agreement that Climate-warming trends over the past century are very likely due to human activities, Dress For Our Time asks us what we can do individually and collectively, and invites us to join the conversation that will shape our future.

The dress will digitally display data which will show the impact of climate change on our physical world. It will show our planet as it will be if we DON’T DO ENOUGH. The dress has been developed in partnership with award winning interactive creative agency Holition, and the data has been taken from a study conducted by a team of global scientists and provided by the Met Office.** The Dress itself is made from a tent (which was no longer in useable condition) gifted to the project by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). In giving the tent a second life it gives this public art installation an unbreakable bond to humanity and represents the importance of nurturing and protecting all people and safeguarding generations to come.  It is a powerful symbol of what it means to be human and the precarious nature of our existence.

Helen Storey, former fashion designer, now social artist and designer is one of London College of Fashion’s leading researchers; she uses fashion and the power of collaboration (bringing together people who would not normally work together) to investigate the big global issues of our time. When she learnt that we consume 30%*** more resources each year than our planet can replenish, and that if we continue at this rate we will need at least 3 more planets to survive she knew that all of her work needed to be directed towards finding creative and unusual ways to help engage us in the urgent issues of our time.

Two years in the making, Helen has brought together collaborators including Holition, Unilever, Met Office and the UNHCR, people from very different backgrounds in science, business, education, technology, humanitarian work and fashion, to explore ways to engender a public debate about this most critical question.  Dress For Our Time at St Pancras is the first public art installation which will form Chapter One and marks the beginning of these investigations. Chapter Two of Dress for our Time will follow in March 2016 and will be announced later in the year.

As our leaders meet to make decisions that will affect our future Dress For Our Time will provide a platform for our voices to be heard.  Join us on: INSTAGRAM, TWITTER and the WEBSITE – add to the conversation using #Dress4OurTime and #ClimateChange

For more information and interview requests please get in touch r.b.munro@fashion.arts.ac.uk or 020 7514 2998.