Fashion Body Doubles

This is 1 hour bookable event. Two one hour sessions are available to choose from.

Join us for an interactive workshop to explore how the fashion industry is harnessing technologies to better represent who it designs for.

Participants will have the opportunity to create digital versions of themselves as avatars (digital fashion body doubles) on a computer screen and/or personalise a fashion industry mannequin (in half scale) using hand crafting techniques, whilst sharing ideas around what it means to have their type of body represented.

Don’t use computers? Don’t worry, there will be lots of help to guide you.

Participants will have the opportunity to take images of their creations to share on social media.

What’s it about?

An interactive digital workshop exploring themes beyond fashion industry ‘standard’ shapes and sizes, as a workshop to celebrate our individuality.

Through creative crafting on a computer, follow a step-by-step guide to make a digital version of how you would like to be represented as a 3D fashion mannequin. Work with fashion technologists to explore themes of inclusivity, representation and diversity in the fashion industry. Find out what the limitations and opportunities are with 3D digital mannequins (known as fashion avatars).

Using innovative fashion industry software come along to freely explore and express how you would like to be represented, connect with others and hear about innovations such as 3D body scanning, fashion avatars being used for designing clothing and how AI is being used.

Led by experienced fashion technologists, the session will be for you to gain hands on experience of innovative fashion technologies that are used to created 3D digital fashion mannequins. Participants will learn how the fashion industry can, and are able to embrace 3D technologies, connect with fellow attendees to share your thoughts on 3D technologies for creating fashion body doubles.

The session will offer the participants a safe setting to explore these ideas together, in an exploratory way, facilitated by experienced Fashion Industry and academic practitioners.

Learn how the fashion industry is challenged with better representing the population with the latest digital technologies.

Who’s leading the event?

The event is led by Jayne Mechan, Adrian Thornton and Naomi Khumalo (Manchester Metropolitan University),

Jayne is a senior lecturer in fashion technologies with over 20 years of fashion industry experience. Her research explores ‘phygital’ concepts of the fashion body through the interplay between physical and 3D digital fashion practice. Key themes of temporal nature of our bodies, body change experiences and body difference explored through collaborative research including partnering with businesses, third sector, health organizations and public engagement projects.

Adrian is a self-taught tailor with over 22 years teaching in higher education. Adrian’s specialism is focused to pattern cutting in 2D and 3D digital pattern making techniques reflecting the ever-changing fashion environment. Adrian’s current research experiments with Zero Waste pattern cutting practices and designing with half scale mannequins

Naomi is an award winning fashion entrepreneur of Refigure Activewear, current Masters student and founder of cultural insights platform Soulfully Digital. Her areas of interest sit across digital politics and lived experience insights into inclusivity within the fashion industry.

Open to

Adults over the age of 18 years are welcome to attend, those who have an interest in how fashion designers and 3D digital technologies are changing the way designers work. We will be discussing themes of inclusivity, diversity and body representation within fashion.

Of particular interest to

Open to anyone, we particularly welcome people who have an interest in how fashion designers use mannequins to represent and reflect the population it is designing for.

Would you like to try out innovative fashion industry 3D software, create a fashion body double in 3D computer software? Explore themes of inclusivity, and creatively experiment with a 3D digital version of you.

Would you like to know more about how 3D digital technologies are changing the way we design for people?

Hear about the challenges and opportunities for the future of fashion design and the complexities of integrating the range of technologies, their limitations and challenges and themes around standardisation of body types in fashion systems.

Host or Publisher MIGS: Migration & Interdisciplinary Global Studies