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Glitter & Stilettos - The Fashion Legacy of Latin-American Showgirls
A conversation that explores how showgirls influenced Latin American fashion.
About this event
We are excited to announce Glitter & Stilettos - The Fashion Legacy of Latin-American Showgirls, where we will explore how showgirls influenced Latin American fashion. We will explore not only their history and their costumes, but issues of gender, class, immigration, and race. Yup, you read right… we are digging d-e-e-p.
And last but not least, we will be talking about these amazing women as well, because after all, they were the main event. This talk honours and focuses on the legacy of showgirls in terms of their art.
We’re leaving this topic to the experts.. or in this case THE expert, Arturo Rico who has allowed us to pick his brain for an hour. Arturo Rico is a Mexican-Cuban journalist and researcher. Founder of Ficheraz, an archive dedicated to the preservation of the life and work of the showgirls from Latin America and the diaspora.
Have we caught your attention yet?
Details of this event:
Date: Wednesday, November 24th 2021.
Time: 6:00-7:30pm BST
Where: Zoom
*The Zoom link will be sent out to attendees the morning of the event day.
Oh, and in case you were wondering… it’s FREE to tune in.
Access Features
This event is designed in a webinar format, meaning all event attendees will be off-camera and allow for the event to be recorded. The conversation will take place over an hour, with a maximum of 30 minutes of questions and comments from the public.
About our guest speaker
Arturo Rico is a Mexican-Cuban journalist and researcher. Founder of Ficheraz, an archive dedicated to the preservation of the life and work of the showgirls from Latin America and the diaspora.
About Wearers Festival
Wearers Festival is a permanent multidisciplinary festival that explores and celebrates the intersections of dress, culture and identity among the diverse communities of London, the UK and the world.
About the Wearers Academy series
This event is the first one of our Wearers Academy virtual series, a sequence of conversations with independent and academic research on dress-related topics with accessible language to everyone.
The Mending Trade Cafe
Wearers Festival and Something™ present:
The Mending Trade Café, a free event where you can bring that beloved garment that needs mending and trade the service for another service or a good while having Sunday drinks!
The Mending Trade Café is about community, circular economy and the sustainable practice of mending and repairing. Volunteer London-based menders will be waiting for you from 12:00 pm to 6:00 pm at Truman’s Social Club.
How does it work?
Bring an item you love that’s in need of repair for our menders to salvage. As payment, they will accept goods or services in exchange.
Please see the guide below for more information about what you can bring.
Come with your pals; chat and meet local menders; watch the craft that involves repairing garments by hand; give a longer life to your favourite items and have a drink, all on the same day!
Access features
Date: Sunday 31th of October 2021
Time: 12:00 – 18:00
Cost: FREE, just confirm your attendance here.
Venue: Truman’s Social Club, 1 Priestley Way, London E17 6AL
What to bring? A Guide for attendees.
Bring two things:
A garment that needs mending.
Menders will work their magic by hand, so please bear this in mind. We ask that you only bring in items that have holes of no more than 5 cm max and/or that have loose buttons.
You’re welcome to bring your preferred colour of thread or choose from the selection of colours on hand at the event.
Please do NOT bring:
Broken zippers,
Clothes that need new hems.
Clothes with holes bigger than 5cm diameter.
Dirty garments. The clothes must be clean.
2. Something to trade with.
This can be a product or a service:
Goods: things you produce or make. These are some examples:
If you are a great baker, you can bring a fresh loaf of bread or cookies (in fact, home-made food is an excellent thing to trade);
If you sell painted plant pots, bring a nice one;
If you own a restaurant, offer a free meal.
If you are an illustrator, bring a lovely illustration for your mender.
If you sell plants, bring a lovely one in its pot.
Services: you can offer your knowledge and skills to the mender, for example:
if you are a graphic designer, you can offer the mender a free logo for his/her/their brand;
If you are a music teacher, you can offer a free piano lesson;
If you are a marketing manager, you can offer a free 1-1 to help the mender to promote their brand.
Speak other languages? You can offer a free class.
Do NOT try to trade with:
Old objects that you have around the house and you want to get rid of. This includes old clothes, house adornments, second-hand utilitarian objects and tools, etc.
Some confirmed Menders:
Shelley Zetuni @_sewingsmith_
Sarah Foot @thread.the.word
Katie Nolan @katienolantextiles
Emma Matthews @sockoshop
Hannah Porter @hannah_hp_pea
Oksana Chaplyko @beyond_all_creations
About Wearers Festival
Wearers Festival is a permanent multidisciplinary art festival that celebrates and explores the diversity of London and the UK through the dress codes of its communities.
About Something™
Something™ is an independent creative studio helping ambitious brands & creatives grow within culture by doing things differently.
https://instagram.com/something_inc/
Patch Work: A Life Amongst Clothes, event series.
Patch Work: A Life Amongst Clothes event series.
Aaaah isn’t it just fantastic how our clothes hold specific memories of our lives and take us back in time? That is what we find most fascinating about Claire Wilcox’s recently published memoir: Patch Work: A Life Amongst Clothes. In fact, we loved her literary exercise so much that we decided to make it the subject of a new event series for this fall, and you don’t want to miss it!
Our Patch Work: A Life Amongst Clothes series encompasses a trio of intimate events taking place this Fall: a book club session (and believe us, our last book club session was LIT) in September, a live conversation with the author to comment on the book and ask all of your questions in October and last but not least, a Clothes & Memoirs creative writing workshop facilitated by the fab Joly Licks and inspired by Patch Work in November.
UNMISSABLE. You are going to share and chat about your clothes with lovely like-minded people, have drinks with an amazing fashion curator/author and stimulate your literary and creative veins. That’s Autumn sorted for you.
But hurry up, the package of 3 events is limited to 15 people only!
RSVP here.
Here’s all the info:
Patch Work book club.
Facilitated by Nao and Nessa, co-founders of Wearers Festival. We are gonna have many cups of tea (or glasses of wine, everything goes) and share our thoughts, questions and feelings on the book in an informal and friendly guided session.
Date: Tuesday 21st Sep 2021
Time: 6:00 pm
Where: Zoom.
Capacity: 15 people
Conversation with Claire Wilcox
The author of Patch Work: A Life Amongst Clothes is in da house! And we are having coffee with her. If you are based in London (or don’t mind commuting for this event) don’t miss the opportunity to attend this intimate conversation with Claire where we’ll get to ask her all our questions about her memoir and know more about her process writing the book. If you are not London-based, you can still sign up and attend the event through Zoom.
Date: Wednesday 13th Oct 2021
Time: 6:30 pm
Where: Secret venue near Oxford Street, Central London. Live streamed through Zoom.
Capacity: 15 people in the venue, unlimited attendants through Zoom.
Clothes and memoirs: Creative Writing Workshop
Inspired by Patch Work? Well, now it’s time to grab the pen and write your own memoirs. Designed for beginners (do not worry if you are not the next Pulitzer prize) this creative writing workshop facilitated by the fabulous Fausta Joly will give you resources and techniques to lose the fear of writing and have fun putting the stories of your garments on paper.
Date: Tuesday 9th Nov 2021
Time: 6:00 pm
Where: Zoom.
Capacity: 15 people
RSVP and cost
The funds from this event will help us keep running Wearers Festival (hey, remember we are a non-profit organisation!). We kept the cost fair and accessible, promise:
-Cost for the trio of events, attending the conversation with Claire in person: £22
-Cost for the trio of events, attending the conversation with Claire digitally: £12 (this option is for you if you are not London-based).
PLEASE NOTE: The events (with the exception of the conversation with Claire) can NOT be attended separately. Attendants must sign up for the package of 3 events.
About Patch Work: A Life Amongst Clothes
Claire Wilcox has been a curator of fashion at the Victoria and Albert Museum for most of her working life. In Patch Work, she turns her curator's eye to the fabric of life itself, tugging at the threads of memory: a cardigan worn by a child, a tin button box, the draping of a curtain, a pair of cycling shorts, a roll of lace, a pin hidden in a seam. Through these intimate and compelling close-ups, we see how the stories and the secrets of clothes measure out the passage of time, our gains and losses, and the way we use them to unravel and write our histories.
About Claire Wilcox
Claire Wilcox has been Senior Curator of Fashion at the V&A since 2004, where she has curated exhibitions including Radical Fashion, The Art and Craft of Gianni Versace, Vivienne Westwood, The Golden Age of Couture: Paris and London 1947–1957, Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty, and, as co-curator, Frida Kahlo: Making Her Self Up, and instigated Fashion in Motion (live catwalk events in the museum) in 1999. She is Professor in Fashion Curation at the London College of Fashion and is on the editorial board of Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress, Body & Culture. She lives in South London.
About Joly Licks
Fausta Joly is a poet/performer and arts events organiser; with her company, Joly Licks - hosting workshops and mini-festivals designed to spread the word that creativity is a guarantee of sanity! Recently published in collaboration with Transient Light Tarot deck - providing the poetry for the guide book. Check the beautiful deck out here! She has performed her poetry all over London and for festivals in Berlin, Portugal, the U.S. and the U.K. Currently residing in Greenwich and working on her first poetry collection.
About Wearers Festival
Wearers Festival is a permanent multidisciplinary art festival that celebrates and explores the diversity of London and the UK through the dress codes of its communities.
Visible Mending: workshop and book presentation
Visible Mending: Workshop and book presentation.
Wearers Festival and Something™ are excited to present a Visible Mending Workshop as part of the event series Wearers Mending Something, a friendly, informal and intimate soiree aiming to reflect on our personal relationships with our clothes and the importance of repairing and giving a long life to the garments we already own.
The session (which will be taking place live in an actual venue #GoodbyeZoom yasss!) will feature a short presentation by Mila Embury on her exciting research for her book The Beauty of Mending and a visible mending workshop for beginners facilitated by the marvellous Shelley Zetuni. Refreshments included.
Bring that damaged jumper/sock/vest/etc. that you don’t wear anymore but you love too much to throw away. Shelley will be teaching the basics of the lovely technique of darning.
Visible Mending is a gorgeous way to mend clothes. The techniques you’ll learn in the workshop are inspired by the Japanese art form of Kintsugi, which means golden joinery. They re-weave yarn into the fabric of a garment or item of upholstery to seamlessly patch a hole. Instead of hiding the mend, Visible Mending techniques celebrate it by making it bold and beautiful.
Access features
Date: Saturday 11th of September 2021
Time: 3:00-5:30pm
Cost: £25 (processing fees may be incurred- we’re a small non-profit organisation)
Venue: Something™’s studio near Oxford Street (Central London)
Capacity: 10 people
RSVP to this event here.
Materials you will need to bring:
- A garment that needs mending (ask us if you are in doubt of what to bring!)
- Thread or yarn of similar weight, or a little lighter to what you’re mending
- 1 x darning needle
- A darning disc, mushroom or small embroidery hoop (or something to tension the work on)
- a pair of scissors
Let us know if you’d prefer us to provide your materials for £7
About the facilitators
Shelley Zetuni
Shelley is the creative force behind Sewingsmith. Having trained as a couture milliner with Mrs Rose Cory, milliner to the late Queen Mother, she set up and ran her own millinery studio in North London’s iconic Hornsey Town Hall, where she was lucky enough to count royalty amongst her client list. Shelley's approach to mending clothes draws on the Japanese art form of Kintsugi, which means golden joinery. By applying an understanding of colour and pattern, she aims to sensitively repair damaged clothing by reinventing the imperfections and celebrate their beauty. Shelley loves that she is adding to the history and helping to extend the life of an item of clothing..
Mila Embury
Mila is a Fashion Promotion graduate from Ravensbourne University specialising in art directing, writing and editing the original publication The Beauty of Mending. The book explores visuals and written content based around the unexpected beauty of “worn” clothes and the lost art of mending, inspired by the Japanese concepts of ‘Wabi-sabi’. The Beauty of Mending aims to introduce the philosophy of the beauty of imperfection to Western society, specifically within the context of the garment industry.
About Wearers Festival
Wearers Festival is a permanent multidisciplinary art festival that celebrates and explores the diversity of London and the UK through the dress codes of its communities.
https://instagram.com/wearersfestival/
About Something™
Something™ is an independent creative studio helping ambitious brands & creatives grow within culture by doing things differently.
https://instagram.com/something_inc/
Wearers Rocking their Disabled Bodies
An important conversation that explores clothing and self-expression through the lens of the disabled community.
Veiling in Fashion: Dress and Modesty
Get your free tickets HERE
We are excited to announce the first virtual talk for our Wearers Academy series, a place where academic and independent researchers have the opportunity to share their passions so that all wearers can enjoy it!
How do you define what you wear, is it fashion or anti-fashion? We will discuss how Muslim women get dressed as a form of expression within their identity and faith. Veiling in Fashion: Dress and Modesty will dig into the hijab’s relationship to individuals’ cultural and social positions as well as their rights to dress according to their religious belief.
Our guest speaker, Anna-Mari Almila is a fashion researcher in sociology at London College of Fashion. She has spent the last eleven years researching Muslim’s women clothing strategies and has published two books on the topic. She will be joined by Zinah Nur Sharif, a pro on the topic of modest fashion, who has been writing about since 2010 whilst doing it in style! During this conversation, Anna-Mari and Zinah will be sharing their thoughts and knowledge on veiling in fashion and the intersection between being fashionable and faithful.
So why should we care about the topic of Veiling in Fashion: Dress and Modesty? The emergence of an “Islamic fashion system” in a western context where Muslim women are challenged and criticised for their stylistic choices interferes with their self-expression, making it a topic we are all too familiar with when discussing the notion of modesty and femininity. These topics all deal with notions of global feminism, colonialism, cultural imperialism and the history of Islam and the Middle East.
To join this incredibly pertinent conversation, grab your tickets now because spaces are limited!
If you use clothes as a form of self-expression, don’t miss out on this opportunity to learn more about or better yet, grab the bloody mic and share your experiences too. This is your official invite, because after all, we are all wearers.
Access Features
This event is designed in a webinar format, meaning all event attendees will be off-camera and allow for the event to be recorded. The conversation will take place over an hour, with a maximum of 30 minutes of questions and comments from the public.
About our guests speaker
Anna Mari-Almila is Research Fellow in Sociology of Fashion at London College of Fashion, University of the Arts London. She writes about the materiality of dressed bodies and their environments, fashion globalisation. She is the author of Veiling in Fashion: Space and the Hijab in Minority Communities (2018) and the Routledge International Handbook to Veils and Veiling Practices (2017). She has been researching veiling in fashion for the last 11 years. Her next book will be Fashion's Transnational Inequalities, and she has also written The Globalization of Wine (2019), and The Sage Handbook of Cultural Sociology (2016).
Zinah Nur Sharif is a modest fashion veteran, who has worked in the fashion industry for the last 10 years (and counting!). She has an appetite for customs, arts and branding within fashion. As a citizen of the world, Zinah has lived in four different cities, across three different territories. This has allowed her to develop adaptive proficiency, acknowledge changes and differences and develop exceptional new perspectives that she will bring to our conversation. She has a BA in Graphic Design and a MA in Strategic Fashion Marketing.
Date: Wednesday, June 30th 2021.
Time: 6:00-7:30pm BST
RSVP to this event: it’s free, unlike your unsustainable shopping addiction.
*The Zoom link will be sent out to attendees the morning of the event day.
About Wearers Festival
Wearers Festival is a permanent multidisciplinary festival that explores and celebrates the intersections of dress, culture and identity among the diverse communities of London, the UK and the world.
About the Wearers Academy series
This event is the first one of our Wearers Academy virtual series, a sequence of conversations with independent and academic research on dress-related topics with accessible language to everyone.
The New Dress, book club session
We can’t keep it a secret any longer… We are thrilled to announce the first edition of what will become THE BEST book club in town! Focusing on Virginia Woolf’s short story The New Dress, wearers will be able to discuss and share their experiences with clothes, exchanging awkward social stories, moments of using clothing as self-expression, protection and feeling like an imposter, or the ever enchanting spell and anticipation of wearing a special garment for the very first time, and so much more.
This informal session will begin with a 10-minute introduction to the concept of Frock Consciousness (don’t worry, we’ll explain everything) from the facilitator, Jennifer Anyan who will unpick the story of Mabel Waring and lead the session into talking about the effect that our experiences and clothes have on us mere wearers.
Who can join the book club? Anyone who has a mutual love for reading, sharing and an interest in what you put on your body.
About The New Dress
Virginia Woolf’s short story, The New Dress was written in 1924, while she was writing the novel Mrs Dalloway, published in 1925. Critics have entertained the possibility that the story may originally have been a chapter of the novel because some of the same characters and events appear in both bodies of work. In the story, Mabel Waring arrives at Clarissa Dalloway’s party and is instantly consumed by feelings of inadequacy and inferiority. These negative feelings are offset by concerns that her new dress is not appropriate for the occasion.
Date: Wednesday, Tuesday, 22nd of June 2021
Time: 6:00
Location: Zoom
*The zoom link will be sent out to attendees 1 day before.
The event intimate: just like your relationship with your shoes.
To RSVP to this FREE event, email your interest now as it is limited to the first 10 wearers.
Workshop Facilitator
Jennifer Anyan is an artist and academic. Jennifer’s interdisciplinary practice uses sculpture, image, sound, clothing and critical text. All her work in some way explores how we read fashioned bodies and how wearing clothing affects how we experience and perceive the world around us.
Jennifer has a BA (Hons) from Winchester School of Art and MA from Central Saint Martins in Fine Art and worked as a fashion stylist before moving into an academic position, becoming Associate Professor of the Art of Fashion in 2018. Jennifer currently teaches at Winchester School of Art alongside working on a range of art and fashion projects.
Wearing Human Rights
SIGN UP HERE. It’s FREE!
We are excited to announce the first virtual talk of our “Wearers from Everywhere” series: Wearing Human Rights. Yes people, we all NEED to have this conversation. Our guest speaker, Chilean-Arab soon-to-be lawyer and fashion independent researcher Marti Barroeta has spent the last 4 years studying the intersections of fashion and Human Rights. During this conversation, Martin will be sharing her thoughts on the universality of the very overlooked human right to adequate dress with Mexican cultural manager and activist Cristina Peregrina, who will be leading the session.
Putting our clothes on every day is something most people just give for granted. Most individuals in privilege don’t necessarily question what would it be like to face social, physical and cultural challenges every time we reach our closets and we definitely do not talk enough about the role that legislation plays in such challenges. Wearing Human Rights will dig into the freedom of dress as a civil and political right and what happens when this right is transgressed.
This is a conversation about the groups that are especially vulnerable when it comes to dressing practices: How does policy affect the lives of people who dress according to their religious beliefs, especially in Western countries? Should the government be responsible to provide appropriate garments for disabled people? What are the tensions between freedom of dress and the use of uniforms? What’s the role of clothes in the journey of the immigrant? What happens when dress becomes an obstacle for refugees to integrate into their new home countries? Why should we all be concerned about this?
We can not think of a more relevant moment in history to address these questions, so sign up ASAP because tickets are limited and it is not every day that Marti shares her research in English. Just saying.
The invitation is simple: if you wear clothes, sit back and listen, or better yet, grab the bloody mic and share your thoughts with us. After all, we are all wearers.
Access Features
This event is designed in a webinar format, meaning all event attendees will be off camera and allow for the event to be recorded. The conversation will take place over an hour, with a maximum of 30 minutes of questions and comments from the public.
About our guest speaker
Martina Barroeta Zalaquett is a Chilean-Arab independent researcher dedicated to the analysis and study of the intersections between clothing, fashion and human rights since 2017. She holds studies in Law at the University of Chile. She founded the first Chilean platform on critical fashion studies, Fashionerd.cl. (2019). She has published articles on the right to body privacy of prisoners, the criminalization of certain garments by the States and the human right to adequate clothing. Marti hosts the Fashionerd podcast and is currently giving a virtual course on Dress and Human Rights from her platform.
About our moderator
Cristina Peregrina is a Mexican cultural manager and activist studying an MA in Arts, Policy & Cultural Entrepreneurship. She has done training on cultural diversity with the IFCD and on Human Rights advocacy in immigration contexts, a seminar on minority rights and conflict transformation with Sehir University, and a course on gender studies at Colmex (Mexico). She has worked as a research intern for a commissioned investigation for the Human Rights organization CEJIL and in the International Cooperation area of the Mexican Embassy in Morocco, as well as working as a volunteer for several Mexican human rights organizations.
*The Zoom link will be sent out to attendees the morning of the event day.
About Wearers Festival
Wearers Festival is a permanent multidisciplinary festival that explores and celebrates the intersections of dress, culture and identity among the diverse communities of London, UK and the world.
About the Wearers from Everywhere series
This event is the first one of our Wearers from Everywhere virtual series, a sequence of conversations with wearers from all over the world highlighting their perspectives on relevant dress-related topics.