Overview: the three stages

Stage 1

Stage 1 invites you to imagine a parallel world in which people live differently with their clothes, and to write a 100-word outline to describe the world’s fictional fashion system. The activity works well individually, but can also be carried out in a small group.

Remember:

• In Fashion Fictions, we imagine contemporary realities in parallel worlds: worlds that have split off from our own at some point in history, and taken a different path.
• We try to imagine positive and enticing worlds, in terms of individual satisfaction, social justice and sustainability.
• We imagine worlds that are physically possible, but push beyond what feels plausible to us today.

1. Identify one specific issue relating to our real-world fashion system that frustrates you. Consider how this issue could be reversed to create a positive vision.

Alternatively, work directly with a focused idea for a positive fictional fashion system.

2. Develop your core idea – the distinctive essence of your parallel world – by thinking in detail about the ‘what if’ question driving your fiction. Consider the location and scale of the fiction in the parallel world: is it local or global, niche or mainstream?

Be playful as you imagine your world. Include quirky elements to make it memorable.

3. Generate a ‘backstory’ for the world: an explanation for why its fashion system developed differently to the system in our own world. Identify an event in history – genuine or invented – that caused the fictional world to split from our world. This could be months, years or centuries ago.

4. Flesh out the idea and capture it in a 100-word fiction.

Want more guidance for Stage 1?

Try the Contribute a World guide or Methods of organising; Stage 1.

Stage 2

Stage 2 asks you to create a visual or material prototype to represent everyday life in a fictional fashion system. The activity works well in a small group, but can also be carried out individually.

1. Choose one of the Stage 1 Worlds to use as a starting point.

2. To develop your understanding of your chosen world, consider:

• If you visited this world, what would feel the most surprising or strange?
• How are clothes owned and used?
• What is an everyday person’s experience of fashion?

Use the information provided in the Stage 1 fiction. As you flesh out your understanding of the world, bring in your own ideas. Your interpretation of the culture or system will be unique.

Aim for an engaging and positive vision that stretches the imagination in unexpected directions.

3. Generate ideas for an object or image that you could create to represent everyday life in the fictional world.

Imagine that you have travelled to the world and brought something back, or taken a photograph, to show people what life is like there.

Consider the fashion-related objects, media and spaces that someone living in the world would experience and that you could create as a prototype.

Select the idea that communicates the distinctiveness of the fictional fashion system most effectively.

4. Create your prototype.

5. Write a short text to explain your prototype. Remain within the fiction: write from the perspective of a traveller who has just returned from the parallel world.

Want more guidance for Stage 2?

Try the Contribute an Exploration guide or Methods of organising: Stage 2.

Stage 3

Stage 3 invites you to enact a fashion-related practice or event from a fictional fashion world as a way of experiencing an alternative fashion culture. The activity works well in a group, but can also be carried out individually.

1. Choose one of the Stage 1 Worlds to use as a starting point.

2. Consider life in the fictional world and identify everyday fashion practices and/or events that take place there.

The practices/events may be present in the World selected in Step 1 or they may emerge from your thinking as you interpret and discuss the fictional world. Feel free to take the fiction in an unexpected direction to create an engaging vision.

3. Generate ideas for possible ways that you could enact the practices/events in the real world.

Enactments could take many forms, such as a one-day live event or a commitment to perform the world’s practices one day per week for a period of time.

Select the idea that will offer the most immersive and compelling experience of an alternative fashion culture or system.

Plan your enactment. Brief participants fully on the fictional fashion culture/system they will be performing.

4. Conduct your enactment, aiming for a playful and informal ethos.

5. Reflect on your experiences of the enactment and consider which aspects of the fictional world could be adopted in real life.

Want more guidance for Stage 3?

Try the Enactment recipes or Methods of organising: Stage 3.