The Dress — Dress 4 Our Time

Dress For Our Time is a project by Professor Helen Storey, an artist, designer and researcher at Centre for Sustainable Fashion a University of the Arts London research centre based at London College of Fashion.

Helen uses the power of fashion to communicate and act upon some of the world's most complex issues, notably climate change and the mass displacement of people.

The dress is created from a decommissioned UNHCR (United Nations High Commission for Refugees) refugee tent that once housed a displaced Syrian family at Za'atari Camp in Jordan, and was gifted to the project by UNHCR. In giving the tent a second life, it endows this public art installation with an unbreakable bond to humanity and represents the importance of nurturing and protecting all people and safeguarding generations to come.

It is a symbol of what it means to be human and the precarious nature of our existence.

““IT’S RARE THAT THERE’S A PIECE OF FASHION WHICH IS DESIGNED NOT TO INFLUENCE WHAT YOU BUY BUT TO SHIFT THE WAY YOU THINK. ITS EVEN RARER TO FIND A PIECE CREATED TO PROMOTE THE DISCUSSION OF CLIMATE SCIENCE. BUT THAT’S HELEN STOREY FOR YOU.””

— - LUCY SIEGLE, THE GUARDIAN

The dress has digitally displayed scientific data, which showed us the impact of climate change on our physical world, broadened the dialogue around migration, highlighting the millions of displaced people and the paths they take in search of a better life.

To date the dress has been shown at UK venues and internationally, including Buckingham Place, St Pancras International train station, UN Geneva, Science Museum London, Glastonbury Music Festival, UN Peace Talks in London and Dubai International Humanitarian Aid & Development Conference. The tour continues.

Through fashion, science and wonder the project seeks to help change the way we think and act!

Read people's thoughts and reactions to Dress For Our Time.

TRUTH AND REALISATION

In 2012, Helen brought together collaborators and supporters including Holition, Unilever, Met Office, UNHCR UK and the Universities of Sheffield, Exeter and Kingston - all with very different backgrounds in science, business, education, technology, humanitarian work and fashion, to explore ways to engender a public debate about our most critical challenges.

The conversation began with climate change and the UNCOP21 Paris Climate Summit 2015, as the focus, and explored how we as a species are, or are not, responding to climate change and why. A date kept reoccurring during the discussion, a tipping point for us a species - 2020, and this date has changed everything for Helen.

The link between the refugee crisis and climate change is set to define how our species responds to this next phase of our evolution and the project, which started as a work of art to raise awareness and encourage debate, has now led to a 5 year path of front line practical action.

FIND YOUR ROLE

Through social media, we are creating a community which has come together to make sense of and act upon these complex issues of our time.

PLEASE JOIN US & SHARE USING #DRESS4OURTIME

On #WorldRefugeeDay we are sharing the outcomes of our first project from our “Living Curriculum “. Designed with all Zaatari Refugee Camp has taught me about living & knowing.
A Living curriculum is a rapid response to the long planned curriculum- it does not separate out what we are teaching & learning from world events & how they make us feel in real time.
It is as much about life skills as foundational knowledge.
It actively knows, by working in the moment, there will always be more to know about knowing.
It can grow & respond to what is happening in the world & seeks to help deliver what our young may need to find their place in it.
A Living Curriculum brings both students & teachers into the same held place to reflect, make sense of and bring the emergency of our times into our creative practice - however we are effected- however this makes us feel.
Here, Mingjie Yang from 2nd year BA Hons Jewellerey course shares the project she was aske

Mother & Son for #WorldRefugeeDay tomorrow when we will share the “Masks4Zaatari” project with @peoples_masks & our Design for Humanity work.

The boys are full of super nature - in each,seemingly the energy of 5 others.
Minutes before the storm came in they ran towards us & spontaneously picked up where we had left off with our impromptu street yoga of last year - blown off balance only by blasting pulses of wind & sand, they were just as determined to see the images taken - through sign language asking for real copies, which I will bring back for sure next time.
On the edge of themselves & the camp,realising too, that in Za’atari there are very few places to see ones self reflected back - very few mirrors, shiny car,or shop windows, all those urban surfaces we glimpse & that remind us of knowing how we appear to others, knowing we are here.
Instead, there is an intensity of relating, where it is the eyes of the other that reaffirms connection, personalities seem more distinct, loudly, or quietly themselves, the absence of the once removed image heightens what it means to be yourself here.
And as I

My first day back in Za’atari this year. The best way to feel how things are is to walk it.
Meeting children’s faces, as they peer through the doors of their homes, shouting the English they know as a greeting - walking to the homes of our friends through much mud ( rain on a desert floor goes nowhere, the camp a patchwork of small lakes & dryer islands) hearing the gossip, & the challenge of the Winter & but mostly to me ,of their resilience within themselves & their wild innovation with materials & solutions to hardship. It’s the miraculous made almost ordinary,where rich human connection is everything.

The first ever global #RefugeeForum gets underway at the UN in Geneva today. With 1 in every 111 people on the planet either fleeing for life, or having to leave home to look for a safe & sustainable one, this is a challenge for us all. On the one hand humanity is asking us to put people first, not the concretising of borders and on the other, I know first hand,what those who I have been working along side at Zaatari Refugee Camp have taught me - refugees have so much to teach us about resilience, reinvention and hope & what it takes to wake up each day to a future you can’t influence, or design & yet make every day of life count.

On #Humanrightsday there are just so many images that could be posted from here @zaatarirefugeecamp, but only one that permanently speaks of protecting us all - no matter where,or to whom tragedy strikes - it is a complicated relationship between everyone involved in sheltering those that are forced to flee for their lives and all the years that follow and as I come to the end of this year as ‘Artist in Residence’ at Zaatari I am a bit overwhelmed by my feelings for everyone here - being an NGO worker is a hard hard hard life & being, that word I hate to use ‘ Refugee’ even harder.

You will think there is nothing special about this image, but it represents a small miracle- in these 16 days of activism against economic violence towards women, there are no females on bikes in camp - there is no other form of transport either - women walk everywhere, whilst men & boys ride freely- it’s not such a cut & dry form of injustice however- and a lesson in the sensitive nature of respecting the culture of others - most women don’t want to ride bikes, even though it slows down their days, makes daily activities of childcare & shopping more difficult, hinders their progress - in this line up of women are those who want more from tradition & under these exceptional 16 days,dare to say so. You could say that on this day, courage is the woman who works on female empowerment in the camp trying to ride a bike for the first time with child stabiliser wheels, one of them that never touches the ground!

What does being displaced from your home feel like ? Sometimes this is indescribable- art says what cannot be said - Za’atari is full of artistic talents who have much to teach us - only through reciprocity can life be bettered.

16 days of activism against economic violence towards women is strongly expressed through art in Za’atari & through some courageous forms of female activism to come later this week.
I was taken aback by a close colleague’s one liner this morning - supporting & empowering women for the last 7 years - “ Men are empowered by nature, women by law making”

The window into Tarek’s craft is looking beautiful care of @lcflondon_ Centre for Fashion Curation - if you are in London, do visit this amazing work at House of Hatton, 63, Hatton Garden EC1, open Monday to Saturday- I will be down there on Tuesday 19th and again December 17th between 2-4pm if anyone would like to know more. Please help me show Tarek that people on the other side of the world value him & his gift.

GALLERY

Through the project’s life we have captured, with key images, the path it has taken; from the arrival on the doorstep of the tent in a scrunched up DHL parcel, to the creation of the dress itself, it’s development into a data project and all the venues the piece has since been shown in – from The Science Museum in London, to a snowy day at The United Nations in Geneva.

Finally leading back to where the tent came from – Za’atari.

Day 1 - the tent arrives, well inspected by customs - tents don't come backwards.

What can I make you into?

First sketch of 'her'

Making her

Helen and Mark working on the dress 2015

Me & Her at St Pancras

Our Planet Now

First show

Ashton - "save my planet please"

Moving on through the night

D4OT fabric badge

Dawn on first day at St Pancras International

If you write your opinion on a human body, do you care more about what you say ? new evaluation experiment at St Pancras

The London UN Peace Talks

65.3 million people as pixels of light on the move

Dress at The Science Museum London

making sense of light and data - The Science Museum

Dress in Cold Fall Woods

' Her' on the bridge

360 view the dress - Tate - St Pauls

Roika opening Glastonbury 2016 in the dress

Rokia Traore opening on Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury 2016. Image by kind permission of Getty Images

With Refugees

Dress at UN Geneva

Dress For Our Time - On the steps of the UN Geneva

Through the snow to The UN Geneva

“WE ARE NOW FACED WITH THE FACT THAT TOMORROW IS TODAY. WE ARE CONFRONTED WITH THE FIERCE URGENCY OF NOW. IN THIS UNFOLDING CONUNDRUM OF LIFE AND HISTORY, THERE “IS” SUCH A THING AS BEING TOO LATE. THIS IS NO TIME FOR APATHY OR COMPLACENCY. THIS IS A TIME FOR VIGOROUS AND POSITIVE ACTION.”
— MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.

IN PARTNERSHIP WITH:

Thank you to the many wonderful human beings who have made this project possible -
Paul Albert, Ezzidin Alwan, Shane Bailey, Trish Belford, David Betteridge, Kiran Birk, Orsola De Castro, Chiana Capacyachi, Noemie Cavaliion - Ram, Georgina Chatfield and RSA Academies, Johnathan Chippindale, Alex Chunie, Caroline Coates, Agatha Connolly, Loukia Constantinou, Paul Copsey, Frances Corner, Tom Cranstoun, Renee Cuoco, Jon Daughtry, Nik Daughtry, Josh De Souza Crook, Lida Driva, Anna Fitzpatrick, Joanne Frears, Russell Freeman, Nikos Georgopoulos, William Gordon, Ellie Greaves, Sharan Grewal, Keith Hallam, Corin Harper, Noah Henderson, Claudine Henry, Mathew Higgins, Rosie Higham – Stainton, Stuar Hill, Seth Honnor, Pierre Houdyer, Marion Hume, Susan Ibreck, Shinny Jain, Bel Jacobs, Gavin Jenkins, Dave Johnson, Rebecca Johnstone, Cheonga Kim, Darren Kirby, Rob Knifton, Tim Kurz, Steve Legget, Andrej Mahecic, Ben Martin, Denise Maynard, Paula Maynard, Fiona McAuliffe, Sandy Munns, Rebecca Munro, Jon Nichols, Zoe Norton, Louise Owen, Laura Padoan, Irini Papadimitriou, Michele Paradise, Deepa Patel, Benjamin Rajapandian, Robert Randall, Naomi Richmond-Swift, Glyn Roberts, Jeff Rosevear, Phil Sams, Michael Saunby, Hilda Sheppard, Imogen Slater, Jess Smulders Cohen, Fiona Spence, Wendy Spinks, Carol Allen Storey, Mark Tarbard, Erin Thompson, Burcu Turkay, Cindy van Rees, Judith Wichmann, Binu Wickramsinghe, Dilys Williams