Sustainable Challenge: Open Experts Talks

Within the framework of the Sustainable Challenge “Gender perspective in fashion”, a joint initiative of MODA-FAD, Design Manchester and the British Council, which aims to rethink the future of the sector from the point of view of sustainability based on the gender perspective, a series of talks given by experts and professionals from United Kingdom and Spain will take place in a streaming open to the public. The talks will be held in English and Spanish.

The online conferences program aims to present the experience of experts and provide knowledge about the gender perspective and inspiration to the 40 students participating in the Sustainable Challenge for the development of their proposals and projects that will be presented online to the public on November 21st.

For the talks we will have the presence of representatives of the organizing institutions that will introduce the sessions: Núria Mora (President of MODA-FAD), Malcolm Garrett (Artistic Director at Design Manchester) and Ludovic Assemat (Head of Arts at British Council Spain). The sessions will be led and moderated by the project curators Roberto Piqueras and Lucy-Isobel Bonner.

The first day will take place on November 15 and will feature Joss Jaycoff (fashion stylist and activist), Carmen Fernández Molina (vice president of Gitanas Feministas), Ben Freeman (creative director of DITTO London) and Èrika Dominguez Antillano (social educator, anthropologist and lecturer).

The second day on November 16 will feature Eden Loweth (creative director of Art School), Faith Robinson (strategist and consultant), Wekaforé Jibril (creative director of Wekafore) and Alona Pardo (curator at Barbican Art Gallery).

Open Expert Talks Program

Joss Jaycoff, fashion styilst and activist for the Non-Binary and Trans Identities
15/11/2020, 17:20h (GMT)

Advocate for LGBTQ+ Rights focused on Non-binary and Trand Identities. She is an actress, host, speaker, writer, fashion stylist, press and public relations. Graduated with a Master Degree in Fashion Styling, Advertising and Audiovisual Media at LCI Barcelona – Felicidad Duce. She is currently working between Barcelona and London.

Carmen Fernández Molina, State vice president of Asociación Gitanas Feministas Por La Diversidad
15/11/2020, 17:45h (GMT)

The group of founding women of Gitanas Feministas are dedicated to gathering information about the feminist movement in general, analyzing its benefits and shortcomings. Always being aware that for the construction of a gypsy feminist intellectual current there would be elements and lines of “payo feminism” that would be incompatible with their discourse. They were also aware that without a historical basis for the feminist movement and struggle, their speech would be diminished, so their first task was to draw up a meticulous and conscientious analysis, using material and documentation from feminism in Spain and other countries.

Ben Ditto, creative director and founder of DITTO London
15/11/2020, 18:10h (GMT)

Ben Dittois a creative director specialising in the execution of uncanny, utopian concepts that embrace beauty and technology. Working across platforms such as Dazed Beauty, he directs moving images, CGI, creative coding projects, augmented reality and virtual reality, print and live experience. Ditto, a publishing company founded in 2009 in London by Ben, specialises in publications and special projects in the world of fashion and subculture; some titles include Skinhead: An Archive, GUT Magazine and Future Fantasy. Freeman often works with fashion designers, notably producing graphics for Dilara Findikoglu, and has collaborated with Martine Rose, Wales Bonner, Liam Hodges, and many more.

Èrika Domínguez Antillano, director at Doble Via Cooperativa and associate professor at UAB and UOC.
15/11/2020, 18:35h (GMT)

Social educator and social and cultural anthropologist. Master in women’s studies, gender and citizenship. Professionally specialized in the socio-educational field and in the teaching field. She currently directs projects related to social action, gender and feminism in a cooperative of social initiative, a fact that she combines with university teaching in Catalan universities. She considers herself a restless person and lives feminisms as a way of personal and social transformation.

Eden Loweth, co-founder and creative director at Art School
16/11/2020, 17:20h (GMT)

Eden Loweth is co-founder and creative director of genderless design label Art School. Art School focuses on redefining gendered fashion and is a celebration of queer style. They defied convention when they showed as part of a men’s show with what was traditionally seen as a feminine line. The move created a large amount of backlash from the media at the time, but only made the pair more determined to succeed. He is an active social justice campaigner and a firm believer that change in the fashion industry must happen from within. He has worked with the Houses of Parliament to pass the bill making non-binary recognised as a gender.

Faith Robinson, creative strategist and consultant
16/11/2020, 17:45h (GMT)

Faith is a strategist and consultant working in fashion and sustainability engagement. At 28, she produces creative projects globally, always with a focus on smart and beautiful concept details. Most recently, she led content development for Copenhagen Fashion Summit, the global north’s leading industry event on fashion and sustainability. Entry Level Activist is a social media movement founded by Faith with the purpose of making “activism more relatable and less overwhelming”. Obsessed with communicating social, economic and climate research for mainstream engagement, Faith has a deep interest in world affairs and is a visual storyteller who loves debating the big topics. She is a holistic systems-thinker who works hard to present the necessary nuance to all projects.

Wekaforé Jibril, creative director at Wekafore
16/11/2020, 18:10h (GMT)

Wekaforé’s design explores the re-interpretation of urban African style prior to Americanization. Delicately mixing an array of fabrics and placing subtle feminine elements into comfortably-active ready to wear men’s clothing and finding beauty in masculine femininity with womenswear. Retracting black masculinity and femininity in the city life to its early days. Wekafore hopes to develop a unique aesthetic based on nostalgia and the reinvention of negritude. Showcasing and educating the public to a different side to black African culture that has been forgotten, they hope to use sleek African tailoring with a 1970’s street sensibility to re-visit this era, expand it and tell a new Wekafore story of the beauty within the struggle

Alona Pardo, curator at Barbican Art Gallery
16/11/2020, 18:35h (GMT)

Alona Pardo is a curator at Barbican Art Gallery, where she has curated a number of exhibition and catalogues, including ‘Another Kind of Life: Photography on the Margins’ (2018), ‘Vanessa Winship: And Time Folds’ (2018), ‘Dorothea Lange: Politics of Seeing’ (2018) and ‘Trevor Paglen: From ‘Apple’ to ‘Anomaly’’ (2019). Pardo’s curation of the groundbreaking ‘Masculinities: Liberation through photography’ (2020). The exhibition aims to disrupt easy assumptions about masculinity, taking as its starting point the idea that gender and sex are not synonymous, and that gender is learned and acted out.