ALL WALKS to launch First Educational Centre for Diversity

27 May '11

4 min read

Britain's first educational centre devoted to the promotion of diverse body shape launches at Graduate Fashion Week. May 26, 2011.

“We want student fashion designers to be introduced to a realistic range of body shapes during their training process. Diversity can enhance craftsmanship not impede it.” All Walks, Co Founders Caryn Franklin, Debra Bourne and Erin O'Connor.

Fresh from the success of SNAPPED, All Walks' Spring/Summer '11, campaign involving nine major fashion designers from Vivienne Westwood, Giles Deacon to Stella McCartney, the award winning fashion diversity initiative, delivers on its' pledge to inspire changes to Britain's fashion curriculum.

Britain's first ever, educational institution devoted to furthering the promotion and design requirements of diverse body shape to meet consumer demand, will be launched by All Walks Beyond the Catwalk with Edinburgh College of Art, at their 2nd annual All Walks Futures Forum at Graduate Fashion Week. The Forum takes place on June 7th 2011 and will be attended by Govt. Minister for Equalities and Lib Dem Body Confidence Campaign founder, Lynne Featherstone.

The All Walks founders believe that there's a need to promote fashion as an inclusive and inspirational force in women's lives by creating imagery that mirrors the diverse and individual beauty of women, and design that has been informed by knowledge of a realistic body shape not just a tailors dummy or a sample size model. Currently all fashion colleges train exclusively on dummies size 8/10.

The All Walks Centre, headed by Course Leader of Fashion, Edinburgh College of Art, Mal Burkinshaw, will research and develop new approaches in fashion education to include more emotionally aware and considerate practice. Students will benefit from training on a specially commissioned set of UK sized 8 to 18, tailors dummies, donated by leading mannequin specialist, Proportion London. Skills might range from learning language to aid working on different body shapes, listening and understanding the needs of the consumer, as well as using diverse body shapes to inspire the form and design of garments.

”We support All Walks in agreeing that the fashion industry currently has a very narrow approach to diversity of image. It's the responsibility of fashion educators to teach our future fashion practitioners from designers to image-makers to become more aware of the emotional impact of their design and messaging through creative and exciting educational methods.” says Burkinshaw, who has just implemented a project to introduce students to designing for ordinary bodies.

"It makes a big difference working with a real human being, than training on an inanimate object,” say Franklin, Bourne and O'Connor. “Only when those in the fashion industry understand how powerful fashion imagery actually is, and how ordinary women feel about the limited physical ideals that are currently used as a learning template, will we see progress.”

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