Organised in collaboration with the Royal College of Art and Parsons Paris, the event explored fashion as a lived and tactile experience.
Bringing together students from MA Design History (Royal College of Art), MA Fashion Studies (Parsons Paris), and MA Fashion Cultures and Histories (London College of Fashion, UAL), the annual project culminated in a day of curated talks and workshops held on 14 March 2025 at the Royal College of Art.
The idea for a collaborative fashion symposium emerged three years ago during discussions between Caroline Stevenson, Programme Director of MA Fashion Cultures and Histories, Dr Marco Pecorari, Assistant Professor and Program Director of the MA in Fashion Studies at Parsons Paris, and Sarah Cheang, Head of Programme in History of Design at the Royal College of Art.
“We thought it would be a great opportunity to bring our students together and create a community because we’re all working on very similar courses,” she explains.
All coming from theory-based backgrounds, the project helps students not only meet their peers and build a network within their field of study but also understand how the academic world is structured.
The project began with the formation of an organising committee of 6 students, 2 from each institution. MA Fashion Cultures and Histories students Ananya Athaiya and Ashley Swartwout were the elected representatives from LCF.
Having been introduced to the opportunity at the very start of their studies, they jumped at the chance to participate in the extracurricular activity.
“I thought this would be something really cool to do because it was in collaboration with two other really great institutions,” shares Ananya. For Ashley, this project was one of the motivating factors in applying for the course.
The committee then proceeded to work within a specific budget and space but was given complete freedom in all other aspects of organisation.
Choosing the theme was their first task to tackle, and the team was keen to explore fashion not merely from an objective academic lens but also bring in subjective human experiences.
The name crystallised during early discussions around embodiment and identity. Playing with words like “threads,” “wires,” and “tailoring,” the committee decided to translate the idea of garment construction into the concept of building a fashion identity, ultimately landing on “Between the Seams.”
“It felt like the best way to capture this undefined space where we can simply explore whatever we want to - and also leave room for interpretation,” reflects Ananya.
The next stage was the call for papers which, despite being open for only four weeks, amassed more than 65 submissions from countries such as the US, Brazil, Australia, and Singapore.
Stevenson notes that such a high number of submissions is phenomenal for any conference, but the committee was especially surprised to receive applications from researchers whose work they had just studied in class.
“It was surreal to think that this is someone whose text we were just reading, and now they have responded to our call for papers,” Ananya remembers with a smile.
The selection stage proved to be the most challenging part of the process. To manage this, the committee created a detailed spreadsheet with carefully devised criteria.
“There were so many that we would have wanted to include, but we needed to stay focused on the concept of the symposium,” the organisers highlight the need for critical thinking.
In the end, the symposium featured eight research papers dissecting topics ranging from socio-politics to race and identity, two keynote speakers delving into the themes of cultural identity and embodiment, and even a few zines to add a fun and creative element to the agenda.
Discovering different ways of thinking and learning was Ananya’s key takeaway from the project. It underscored the need to break down complex fashion theory into digestible pieces of information for those not immersed in the field.
The language barrier was another aspect that initially seemed challenging but turned out to be essential in exploring cultural identity and individual interpretations of the topic.
For Ashley, the most rewarding part was feeling supported by the global academic community, even if some participants couldn’t participate in the event directly.
“It was a really big thing for us to know that there’s a whole legion of people we can freely approach and rely on,” Ananya echoes the sentiment.