MA Fashion work in progress exhibition

View work from the recent MA Fashion work in progress exhibition:


Serial Returner by Josh Marriot:

Serial Returner is an ongoing MA project investigating an epidemic currently facing the fashion industry. This research project aims to raise awareness of an issue most have participated in, but often unknowingly also contributed to.

It is estimated that product returns cost the UK on average £60 billion each year. The average returned parcel will pass through 7 pairs of hands before being resold. Many items unfortunately will not make resale.

A number of retailers do not have the technology in place to handle the inundated growth of returns. The most profitable option for retailers all too often is to discard goods to auction, donation or ultimately landfill. This overlooked area of the fashion supply chain is undeniably unsustainable, with returns generating 5 billion pounds of waste each year. Returns are unavoidable, but consumer behaviour exploiting lenient return policies has been on the rise, ‘Snap and Send back”. It has been reported that 1 out of 10 consumers will buy with the intent of return, posting a picture on social media wearing the recent purchase, and then to return the purchase in its original state.

During my MA studies, working collectively with experts in industry, I will develop strategies to break trending behaviour, investigate new technology and possibly create a new retail space in which to aid the crisis. This installation piece is to emulate the experience of shopping online. Taking the gamble in which we all hope our purchase will fit, suit and look like the image advertised. Like retailers, I encourage you to return your purchase for a full refund. This experiential experiment will get you living the heady feelings attached to the experience of purchasing through to the often-crashing disappointment of the fashion reality.

Josh Marriott
MA Fashion Innovation and Realisation
Email: J.A.Marriott@2019@ljmu.ac.uk
Instagram: @sustainingfashion

No more loaned language by Macarena Morilla Dominguez

As a professional translator and media expert, I deal with English and Spanish daily. Fashion often uses language to empower concepts, ideas or beliefs alongside a nonverbal system that stimulates the visual sense through colours, shapes and textiles. The conversation established with the viewer takes place through the utilisation of a specific lexicon which is rarely available in languages other than English, French and Italian. Although some of the words are untranslatable, many others have their equivalent in the meta language, which tend to take a back seat. 

In Spanish, there is a lack of fashion terminology and therefore, the industry overuses foreign or loaned words to fill that language gap which could result in the deterioration or even the extinction of the Spanish original terminology within the industry. No more loaned language is a project will act as an aid to fill the gap of the lack of owned terminology in the Spanish fashion industry and so, reduce the utilisation of foreign or loaned language by creating accurate terms that not only reflect the original reality but also keep the meaning.

Macarena Morilla Dominguez
MA Fashion Innovation and Realisation
Email: C.M.MorillaDominguez@2019.ljmu.ac.uk