A Textiles Manifesto
A Textiles Manifesto
Teaching Textiles at College is a huge privilege and a huge opportunity: to inform, challenge, inspire, and facilitate the next generation of designers, makers, and consumers of fashion.
I am on a personal mission to champion responsible design and manufacture, and ensure it underpins every activity that takes place in my classroom.
Miss Vicki Brandon, Head of Textiles
My students upcycle shirts and pitch their own policy ideas to create a more sustainable fashion industry, turn waste fabrics into bunting, bags and pyjama shorts, and develop unique products that are inclusive, ethical, adaptable and recyclable.
The absolute highlight of my College year is the Upcycled Fashion Show, where students showcase garments they have made from old textiles or from rubbish.
This came into being in 2013, at the insistence of one of my A Level Textiles students — thank you, Caroline Shukla, for giving me the confidence to push Textiles and Upcycling into the limelight!
We’ve hosted one every year since then, including an online version during the COVID-19 lockdown, where girls created their own catwalks at home!
Each year, the students’ creativity and vision are truly staggering: discarded tents become glamorous gowns, tired jeans become chic jackets, food packaging transforms into structured corsets.
The ambition of CLC students means that I am often faced with quite the challenge when they first present their idea and look to me to help them realise it!
However, I do love those evenings spent at Upcycling Club, developing my students’ problem-solving and engineering skills and encouraging them to experiment with the properties of their chosen materials, be it newspaper or a lace curtain.
The final outfits are amazing, but the process is always more important: it is the willingness to try something, fail, and try something else instead that matters.
This approach also underpins the Higher Project Qualification that my Year 10 and 11 students undertake.
Through developing and realising their own individual ideas for a textiles product, students learn how to deal with adversity and adapt their plans. I absolutely love teaching this course and facilitating my students to become independent decision makers and project managers, as well as skilled sewers.
I also love the diversity and deep personal significance of these projects, which may reflect a student’s favourite hobby, cultural heritage, or passion for a worthy cause.
My route into this incredible role was not typical: I have a degree in Physics and spent many years teaching Physics and Maths, whilst maintaining a love of fabrics and fashion.
Having taught Physics at CLC from 1996 for 11 years, and become Head of Department, I bravely ran away in 2007 to study Textiles! I loved my time studying art-textiles: it was a joy to be in learner mode, but I quickly realised that I really missed teaching and working with young people.
I was fortunate to return to College in 2011 (to teach Maths & Physics) and a year later to be asked to lead the teaching of Textiles.
It is important for my students to know that people and their careers can be multi-faceted, that a scientist can be creative, or that an artist can be passionate about science.
I try to bring my skills and interests in maths, science, and engineering to my textiles lessons where relevant – there is a surprising amount of crossover.
For example, in pattern drafting, project planning, understanding the molecular structure of fibres, or the behaviour of ‘smart materials’.
I have a strong interest in the history of fashion and the influence of textiles in social, economic, political, and technological developments.
My design hero is William Morris, whose creative vision was inextricably linked to his social activism. I have studied Morris’s resist-dyeing and block-printing techniques in depth.
His use of natural dyes, particularly indigo, led me to make my own indigo vat to experience the magical colour change from vibrant green to deep blue when the dyed fabrics are lifted from the vat and the indigo oxidises on contact with the air.
I love to seek out and handle (where possible) historic textiles and, during my studies, I arranged private views to examine fabrics by iconic textile designers such as Baron & Larcher (an eccentric female duo, Gloucestershire-based, who re-invigorated indigo-dyed, hand block-printed textiles in the 1950s) as well as Morris.
Examining these works of art in person not only enables me to truly appreciate the skill and craftsmanship involved, but also provides a strong and tangible connection to the makers: to their processes and to their lives.
Over the years, students have listened to me speak in Prayers (assembly) about topics such as the evolution of shoes, the history of pockets, the impact of the cotton trade, the rise of bio-materials, and the concept of digital fashion.
To me, textiles is an endlessly fascinating subject because it encompasses such a wide range of disciplines: business & ethics, history & politics, science & technology, art & craft. It is the perfect fit for a polymath like me!
Miss Vicki Brandon, Teacher of Textiles
