Zanna Messenger-Jones's collection film has voiceover that begins:
“Growing up everyone around me would talk and laugh and I would talk and laugh too pretending that I was one of them. Growing up I was told I could do anything, I could do anything anyone else could do. But I am not everyone else. I was told I was different by children in the playground who had no patience to include me in their games, by teachers who refused to teach me, refused to treat me the same.”
The difference here is deafness and this is first time the designer has focused on the subject in her work.
“I’ve always had the idea that I don’t want or need to [bring it into my practice] because I’m more than my disability. This year, I’ve identified a lot more with it. I've met a lot more people in the Deaf community who’ve helped me identify further. Before I thought it was a part of me, but it didn’t define me, now I’m allowing it to a little more.”
The film, made to accompany her final pieces, offers a dreamy, sunshine drenched landscape with figures dressed head to toe in bright knitwear. The figures perform simple choreographed movements as Messenger-Jones reads her monologue. The whole atmosphere is an off-kilter dream, warm and intensely personal with moments of melancholia.
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The performance element is something the designer has been exploring in her final year. Her previous project was focused on the boxing club in her hometown. Looking at masculinity, Messenger-Jones used dance and film to share her work.
For this final collection, her pre-coronavirus plans included a six-person troupe of dancers and performance artists going down the catwalk. The knitwear pieces were planned to be larger, more sculptural with sections being removed and added. Instead, the designer had to rely only on handmaking to finish her looks and then work with members of her family and her local landscape for the film.
While the presentation of her final collection portrays her thoughts around her deafness, the clothes are part of that story but don’t define it. With baggy silhouettes with a skater aesthetic, the garments are both joyous and relaxed.
Having loved knitting since she was 14, the designer has been combining waste textiles into her work. Completing her final collection at home in Cumbria with her family, the designer siphoned off garments headed to the tip or the charity shop. Cutting it into strips, Messenger-Jones then crocheted the material into form: “'I created a new technique, thinking it would be quicker than crochet, but it ended up taking longer! But a big part of what I was trying to do was to be more sustainable and reduce waste.”
Explore the entire BA Fashion cohort's work at bafcsm.com