Matilda Aspinall

Biography

Dr Matilda Aspinall is a researcher, designer-maker and educator.

The research for her practice-led PhD focused on the analysis of the re-fashioned historical garment. Historically it was not unsuual for a garment to be unpicked and the fabric used to reconstructed into another style. Her multi-disciplinary research and fashion practice demonstrated that historically inspired re-fashoining techniques could be applied in a contemporary context as a means of pro-longing the life of redundant or unwanted garments as a creative means of reducing textile waste.

Currently through research and practice, she is investigating ways in which one can alter our relationship with those textiles that are no worn or wanted, but for a variety of reasons cannot been thrown away. Is it possible to claim agency of these feelings through the re-fashioning or re-working of these textiles thus creating new found connections to give the textile a second or third life.

She works as a lecturer at UAL: London College of Fashion, Chelsea College of Art and Design and Central St Martins. Alongside her academic career she is the joint partner of Sean O’flynn Shirt Makers, a bespoke shirt making service located on London’s Savile Row where all garments are ethically produced in-house using the finest quality organic cotton.

Alongside Professor Jo Turney of Winchester School of Art, she is the associate editor on the academic journal Clothing Cultures. In June 2024 she became an Associate of the Centre for Sustainable Textiles.