LCF to open free exhibition exploring wellbeing through fashion

The London College of Fashion (LCF) at the University of the Arts London (UAL) has announced a new exhibition entitled ‘Collective Care’ at its new East Bank campus in London.

The exhibition will open its doors on September 24 and will run until December 14 and invites the public to reconsider the relationship between fashion and community wellbeing .

Visitors do not have to pay admission or book their tickets in advance, as per the press release sent out by LCF.

Collective Care challenges individuals to see care in its different forms such as ‘our shared responsibility to the world around us’ by showcasing the work of researchers, designers and artists affiliated with LCF, the release reads.

The exhibition and associated event programme are brought to life by LCF’s Cultural Programming Team, with the help of established and emerging names from the worlds of fashion, art and social sustainability.

It featured interactive inflatable garments (‘Inflatable Wearable Heterotopia’) designed by Yunpei Li who explores challenging conventional notions of personal space and emphasises people’s resilience in a changing world in the work in question.

‘Collective Care’: new LCF exhibition examines relationship between fashion and wellbeing

Dr. Mila Burcikova’s botanically dyed garments serve to examine the intersection of fashion and nature are presented in ‘Life in Clothes’, a project that explores how this connection can be employed to create sustainable fashion as an act of care for planet earth.

In addition, ‘A Mother’s Guide to Love’ by Eve Lin seeks to reimagine Taiwanese cultural traditions through a virtual fashion film that touches on ‘the unspoken language of care’ that is maternal love, the release reads.

Also featured in the exhibition is Katelyn Toth-Fejel’s project ‘Clothing Cartographies’ for which she has mapped out the relationship between residents of East London and the clothes they wear, an illustration of how fashion can serve as a ‘powerful medium of collective care’ within people’s social and emotional environments.

Finally, ‘Conversations en Plein Air’ by Charlotte Rhodes aims to showcase the decorative arts and how they relate to the female experience, individual autonomy and collective action, and ‘The Presence of Care’ is a collaborative work by Amy Goodwin, Leah Gouget-Levy and Susan Zheng in which the artists investigate the role of archives in preserving and obscuring history.

Commenting on the new exhibition Dr. Leila Nassereldein, curator of Collective Care said: “Collective Care is a vital exploration of how care extends beyond the personal to touch the social, environmental, and political spheres.”

She continued: “This exhibition brings together artists who are not only rethinking fashion and art but also reimagining how we care for each other and our planet.”

“By challenging the boundaries of fashion, we aim to inspire a deeper, more holistic understanding of well-being that is grounded in empathy, compassion, and collective action,” she said.

A number of associated events fit within the Collective Care exhibition concept. These include fashion illustration workshops taught by well-known fashion illustrators, an immersive evening tailored to the exhibition as part of LCF’s ‘After Dark’ event programme that features a communal ‘knit-in’, dance and sound activations and the late openings of other LCF exhibitions. Jeff Horseley will also present the Exhibiting Fashion Toolkit for non-specialist curators.