Fashion Design as a Means to Recognize and Build Communities-in-Place

This article explores how fashion design—an activity that fundamentally weaves together the practices, skills, and materials associated with clothing the body—can begin to weave together people in places. I reflect on collaborative encounters emerging from participatory design practice to consider how fashion-related activity might recognize and inspire deeper relational connections between people, and between people and their environment. I explore the role of the designer as host: one capable of creating conditions that lead to interactive movement among people and dialogue that expresses and explores intent. The designer as host activities of the action research project described here—I Stood Up in Chrisp Street—demonstrate fashion design’s capacity to inform not only localized sustainability practices, but also Fashion and Design for Sustainability research, education, and business practice. Keywords: Designer as host, Inside-out, Outside-in, Meaning-making, Matter-making, Cultures of resilience