Aiden Davey from Nottingham Trent University has been recognised for outstanding work by winning the GFW24 Zandra Rhodes Fashion Textiles Award, highlighting Aiden's talent and creativity in the field of fashion textiles. This prestigious accolade reflects dedication to the craft.
What is the most valuable thing you have learnt at university?
I began my degree studying textile design, so I thrive in the process of developing fabric, especially exploring textures and combining these to further enhance their material/yarn qualities. My time at university has taught me to be a conscious designer, to think of the wider world and the implications my practice has on not only the environment but people as well. I now see myself as a true knitwear designer, as I love the technical side of this discipline and enjoy finding creative approaches to zero-waste manufacturing.
What was the starting point of inspiration for your final project?
I am passionate about delving into society and its relationship to fashion, which led to my graduate brief that focusses on the industry’s relationship with smoking, particularly the glamorisation of this deadly habit. Negative impacts of smoking are exaggerated through fabrication and silhouette that appear to engulf the wearer, as the smoking habit does. An exploration of the amassing and staining that occurs within your body when you take up fashion’s coolest habit is glamorised, with inspiration from the 1990’s when heroin-chic was at its height. The use of bold colours, inspired by the effects of nicotine, combined with decaying, mutated knits emphasise this. Even though smoking is so deeply rooted in glamour, the aftermath can be devastating.
What form did your project take?
I love to explore multidisciplinary techniques with a particular focus on texture; this can include exploring with my choice of yarn or developing post-knit processes to create eye-catching and tactile fabrics. This was implemented in my graduate collection to reflect the effect of smoking on the body, looking at ideas of decay, staining, and mutation. Fine gauge knits, hand dying, and fluffy textures capture the glamorous relationship between fashion and smoking, shedding a new light by contrasting with themes of decay, mutations, and staining. All outfits within the collection comprise of glamorous pieces that are layered over with dramatic, asymmetric, and encapsulating silhouettes, creating a powerfully visual stand against harming our health for the sake of looking cool. This collection finds a new way for women to explore femininity and rebellion within the fashion space. The outcomes are truly intended for catwalk, but the details within them create unique storytelling moments.
What materials have you used, and how did you source them?
Dead-stock yarns help reduce waste as they would otherwise not be used and go to landfills; this limits demand for new yarn production. The university yarn store will be a great place to source yarns as well as a local charity shop and resell sights such as eBay. Dead-stock yarns sourced in the UK will be used to limit the amount of emissions created by this project.
These yarns will be manipulated to create drama and dimension, and colour will be added using natural dyes such as tea to cut out chemical impact. Not only do synthetic dyes require a lot of water to be produced and applied to the fabric, but the dye runoff can also contaminate local water supplies, harming agriculture, aquatic life, and people’s health. Cutting out this process by using only natural dyes in small batch dying will help to reduce associated risks.
Much textile waste is produced from bad-quality garments not lasting and therefore being thrown away. A simple way to reduce this is to make high-quality, long-lasting garments to stand the test of time.
How has it evolved from your initial ideas, and what have you learnt along the way?
I started this project willing to see where the concept could take me, and it has been a journey. The project colour palette sits far away from my original ideas, making the final collection much brighter than I originally planned for it to be, and although successful and eye-catching, the addition of deep purple doesn't necessarily correlate directly back to my concept but was added in due to colour theory to accentuate the yellow undertones in the tea stained fabrics. By using the orange viscose throughout the outfits, particularly within pleats, the looks are cohesive, although very different from each other.
The textures created encapsulate my key words of mutate, growth, and decay, with various successful domestic, dubied, and shima fabrics being developed in a variety of gauges and techniques, creating a wide range of fabric handles and qualities. They are able to juxtapose each other yet sit together in a cohesive way to communicate concepts. As this is a part of the design process I thrive in, my knit development has been stronger than the silhouette development in this project.
My collections approach to silhouette development has resulted in a visually exciting range of pieces that tackle sustainability in a successful way. I have minimised waste where possible, with the majority of my silhouettes being made from creative pattern cutting and draping involving using strips of knitted fabric to cut out traditional cut and sew techniques. Where possible, I have shaped panels using fully fashioning; however, there have been some points where I have had to cut and sew, such as in the arm and neck hole of outfit one’s sleeve, but this has been kept to a minimum. If I had more time in this collection and could develop it further, these pieces would be fully fashioned, or alternative alterations to the panel would avoid waste being produced.
What are the messages and themes behind your project that you want people to take away?
“We know smoking isn't good for us. The problem with fashion is it's about rebellion." (Kwel, M., 2019) Glamorous, rebellious, and cool connotations to smoking are the reasons that women, in particular, start.
Research shows that women are deterred from this habit when anti-smoking imagery is centred around its outward-facing effects; “Smoking concession campaigns have reproduced the idea that smoking is unfeminine." Haines-Saah, R. (2011)
By using the inward effects of smoking and putting them on display on the outside, I will be able to draw awareness in a way that is shown to get people’s attention. Creating confidence for a new generation in a healthier way.
What’s an aspect of the fashion industry that you’re passionate about fixing or having a positive impact on?
I would like to continue to build collections around ethical/societal issues in the future, and for this collection in particular, I will explore alternative ways for adolescent women to develop self-confidence and sexuality without harming their health.
Looking into glamour and rebellion as themes within fashion trends today will help me achieve this, giving young women an alternative outlet of self-expression.
What are you planning to do following your BA?
My time at university has taught me to be a conscious designer, to think of the wider world, and to consider the implications my practice has on not only the environment but people as well. Developing skills such as fashioning, in terms of both calculations and practice, and the awareness I have about ethical and sustainable yarns, it comes naturally to me to want to work as part of a sustainable brand that specialises in knitwear, as this would continue to give me the opportunities I relished in my university experience. My design identity is fun, experimental, and creative. I am able to create strong concepts from conceptual ideas and am drawn to runway and fashion week shows for inspiration.
I thrive in the process of developing fabric, especially exploring textures and combining these to further enhance their material/yarn qualities. The privilege of being able to be creative within high fashion draws me to this market level. I aspire to work for a brand that falls in line with my morals as a designer while being playful in texture and curating experimental runway shows.
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