Radically Local
The Radically Local project explores the opportunities and challenges faced in reviving British fibre, textile and fashion traditions that have been eroded or even erased by capitalist fashion. The project team comprises Kirsten Scott, Emma D'Arcey and Clare Lopeman. The project is based at and supported by Istituto Marangoni London.
Our aim is to investigate how might we rebuild emotionally and environmentally sustainable local clothing systems in radically benign and culturally resonant ways, that have the potential to regenerate human and more than human ecosystems?
We have begun by asking:
What remains?
What might be rebuilt and how?
Our research methods include field visits; semi-structured interviews; a focus group; attending specialist events and festivals; and practice-based research including sketching, knitting, weaving, dye experiments and design as a research method. In addition, we have found that simply sourcing local materials proves a source of valuable data.
Practice based research, Kirsten Scott 2024-2026
Context and methodology
Textile and clothing production in pre-industrial Britain reflected close connection to local environments, and the distinctive knowledges and skills that evolved to meet local needs, using local resources. However today, as we face impending environmental collapse (DEFRA, 2026), capitalist fashion has systematically colonised and erased many traditions we might reference to rebuild culturally and environmentally regenerative textiles and clothing systems (Niessen, 2020; Mignolo, 2020). Few remnants endure of once rich and diverse regional traditions (Heritage Crafts, no date).
The term vernacular is commonly associated with local dialect, religion, or buildings that are indigenous to a community or place. In architecture, vernacular design characteristically draws on local resources, material intelligence and skills, resulting in aesthetics that reinforce local identities and sense of belonging - thus representing an effective tool for decoloniality (Prapattong, 2024). Extending the logic of vernacular design to local textile and clothing systems, this implies their potential to assist in decolonising these from capitalist fashion.
This research adopts unforgetting as an ethical and political framework for remembering and repairing local relationships and knowledges broken by the coloniality of capitalist fashion (Krawec, 2022). It speculatively excavates and tentatively reimagines local fibre, fabric, and fashion identities, to investigate how we might radically reconstruct emotionally resonant clothing vernaculars that counter the hegemony of industrialised textiles and clothing (Chapman, 2015; Prapattong, 2024). The research is informed by 25 interviews with sheep farmers, natural dyers, fibre processors, weavers, a textile historian, and experimental archaeologist, and small, independent designers; a focus group; archival research; and critical making.
References
Chapman, J. (2015). Emotionally durable design: Objects, experiences and empathy (2nd ed.). Routledge.
Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (DEFRA). (2026). National security assessment: Global biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse and national security. UK Government. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/696e0eae719d837d69afc7de/National_security_assessment_-_global_biodiversity_loss__ecosystem_collapse_and_national_security.pdf
Krawec, P. (2022). Becoming kin: An Indigenous call to unforgetting the past and reimagining our future. Broadleaf Books.
Mignolo, W. D. (2020). Coloniality and globalization: A decolonial take. Globalizations. https://doi.org/10.1080/14747731.2020.1842094
Niessen, S. (2020). Fashion, its sacrifice zone, and sustainability. Fashion Theory, 24(6), 859–877.
Prapattong, P. (2024). Vernacular design: Alive and alert. Asia Social Issues, 17(6), e260424. https://doi.org/10.48048/asi.2024.260424