textiles as metaphors for care
As part of my research, I created an ongoing series of workshops titled “Textiles as a Metaphor for Care”, in which I present “care” as a tool to uncover the tacit knowledge embedded in making. These workshops aim to turn the passive imprint of wear into an active one - to connect the user to the maker and honour the emotional imprints that shape our world. Central to this approach is the maker’s attentiveness to the material - their sensitivity to the needs and potential - and how this is expressed through action.
In my work in bespoke tailoring, this attentiveness extends to the client’s body, their posture and areas of distress in their garments. Recognising these visual cues builds the foundation to respond to the client’s needs. This implicit care forms the starting point for the workshops. By centring the areas of distress in the participants’ own clothing, the act of mending becomes representative of caring for oneself. When the solitary practices of working with textiles are brought into a collective setting, the mutual awareness of each other’s needs and personal methods of care create a vulnerability in sharing these with a group of strangers. Through the participants’ engagement with repair methods, the workshop links the repaired clothing to its maker and their intentions, fostering a felt proximity (Elaine Scarry). In doing so, textiles become more than objects; they emerge as sites of human interconnection
In my work in bespoke tailoring, this attentiveness extends to the client’s body, their posture and areas of distress in their garments. Recognising these visual cues builds the foundation to respond to the client’s needs. This implicit care forms the starting point for the workshops. By centring the areas of distress in the participants’ own clothing, the act of mending becomes representative of caring for oneself. When the solitary practices of working with textiles are brought into a collective setting, the mutual awareness of each other’s needs and personal methods of care create a vulnerability in sharing these with a group of strangers. Through the participants’ engagement with repair methods, the workshop links the repaired clothing to its maker and their intentions, fostering a felt proximity (Elaine Scarry). In doing so, textiles become more than objects; they emerge as sites of human interconnection