Josefina Vidal Miranda (KCL) - 2023-24 Students
josefina.f.vidal_miranda@kcl.ac.uk

Remaking and Rewriting: Chilean Memories of Clothing and Textile Design

This PhD research will seek to contribute to rewriting Chilean design history through practice-based research. This project will take as its axis what Walter Mignolo called an ‘epistemic disobedience’ (2010) to define a genealogy of practices of clothing and textile design rooted in Chilean territory. This delinking from the Western notions of what design means (Recklies, 2022) will be done through the study of women’s textile and clothing design practices, which remain on the margins of design history because of their relation to crafts. This research will explore the links between decolonial practices, ecofeminism and sustainability; relations that are becoming urgent in the transition to a more sustainable world. Nowadays, the fashion industry in Chile is predominantly centred around the import of foreign clothes, producing a large amount of waste and environmental impact. For this reason, I believe it is necessary to study the practices of textile creation that notions of innovation and progress have marginalised from the design discipline to establish propositional dialogues with the fashion industry supply chain.

Primary supervisor: Dr Kate McMillan

Secondary supervisor: Dr Jessica Rapson