Co-founded by Abigail Jubb and Morag Seaton, Worn Workshop produces creative projects about people’s relationships with their clothing.
In April 2020, Worn began collecting and sharing the stories of our clothes and concepts from identity to sustainability. This work has since developed through their production of a series of Worn projects as well as commissions for fashion industry, education, community, arts and culture contexts, including: research, workshops, interviews, talks, consultation, publications and storytelling. All of these outcomes contribute to the Worn Archive: an ongoing collection of clothing stories. This, in turn, informs and inspires all of Worn’s future projects, which share insights that can change the way we design, make and wear clothes.
Worn challenges negative fashion cultures through new approaches by celebrating the stories of our clothes, so that more of them will become worn.
In April 2020, Worn began collecting and sharing the stories of our clothes and concepts from identity to sustainability. This work has since developed through their production of a series of Worn projects as well as commissions for fashion industry, education, community, arts and culture contexts, including: research, workshops, interviews, talks, consultation, publications and storytelling. All of these outcomes contribute to the Worn Archive: an ongoing collection of clothing stories. This, in turn, informs and inspires all of Worn’s future projects, which share insights that can change the way we design, make and wear clothes.
Worn challenges negative fashion cultures through new approaches by celebrating the stories of our clothes, so that more of them will become worn.
Making Zero Waste (MZW) is a collaborative project that was launched in 2024 as a cross-cultural exchange between Designers Consociate, Worn, and Zero Waste Design Collective. These organisations, based in Lagos, Glasgow and London respectively, came together to develop a series of in-person workshops in Lagos, Nigeria and Accra, Ghana in April 2024. These workshops were dedicated to advancing the practice of zero waste fashion design within the local African context by offering circular solutions in design and garment making. As a collective, MZW is committed to eliminating waste in the design process by inspiring tailors, upcyclers, brands and designers to re-think their waste strategies and re-imagine waste as an opportunity, as they continue to design products for a better future. The intent was for participants to gain knowledge about the theories, context and construction of zero waste pattern cutting and design. Throughout the workshops, MZW also explored how zero waste design can draw inspiration from the rich tapestry of African fashion and textile traditions and histories, while complimenting today’s contemporary fashion.
MZW began with a few online conversations and developed into a global knowledge exchange, challenging negative fashion cultures and celebrating global experiences of designing, making and wearing clothes.
With special thanks to the amazing sponsors and partners of MZW for the opportunity to bring this incredible, game changing workshop to life including: Creative Scotland, Join Roundabout, Designers Consociate, Zero Waste Design Collective, Worn Workshop, The Or Foundation, Lagos X Paris, Decode and the Four Nations Fund. Photography by Daniel Uwaga, and the MZW team.
MZW began with a few online conversations and developed into a global knowledge exchange, challenging negative fashion cultures and celebrating global experiences of designing, making and wearing clothes.
With special thanks to the amazing sponsors and partners of MZW for the opportunity to bring this incredible, game changing workshop to life including: Creative Scotland, Join Roundabout, Designers Consociate, Zero Waste Design Collective, Worn Workshop, The Or Foundation, Lagos X Paris, Decode and the Four Nations Fund. Photography by Daniel Uwaga, and the MZW team.
12 Stories From the Worn Archive is a publication about
clothing and storytelling curated by Worn Workshop from
contributions to the Worn Archive: an ongoing collection of
stories about people’s relationships with their clothes.
Together, as a collection, these stories share how people’s clothes are physically, emotionally and socially experienced through everyday acts of wear, as they become worn over time.
The first publication from Worn Workshop, 12 Stories from the Worn Archive brings together biographical and conversational stories of clothing to showcase how the ordinary garments within all of our wardrobes can become repositories for extraordinary personal experiences with universal resonance.
Together, as a collection, these stories share how people’s clothes are physically, emotionally and socially experienced through everyday acts of wear, as they become worn over time.
The first publication from Worn Workshop, 12 Stories from the Worn Archive brings together biographical and conversational stories of clothing to showcase how the ordinary garments within all of our wardrobes can become repositories for extraordinary personal experiences with universal resonance.
A commute means to travel some distance between one’s home and place of work on a regular basis. An everyday circumstance that so many of us attend daily, yet experience in multifaceted ways. The Commute: Journeys of a Pocket Scent is a public archive and scented installation series that documents the individual and collective experiences of commuting to work.
The Commute collects stories from individuals, and documents the interactions they have with their clothing, spaces, people, sights and smells while on route to work, school, home and other places of connection. The project celebrates the mundane, everyday commute whilst interrogating the socio-cultural and political structures of these daily endeavours, using clothing and scent as tools to explore these journeys.
The Commute starts with a selection of digital postcards, carefully inscribed with individual scent journeys from around the world. The physical collection includes a series of public installations, fashion artefacts and carefully designed objects that together ask important questions about how we live our everyday. How can clothes and scent build communities? What is the role of fashion and fragrance in a post-individual world? What will we wear during our future commutes? What will we smell? Or, more importantly, what smells will be lost?
This is an ongoing project by Morag Seaton in collaboration with perfumers Samyak Varia and Xinning Zhao, The Royal College of Art, ISIPCA, and IFF (International Flavours and Fragrance) Europe. Sponsored by Halley Stevensons Ltd.
The Commute collects stories from individuals, and documents the interactions they have with their clothing, spaces, people, sights and smells while on route to work, school, home and other places of connection. The project celebrates the mundane, everyday commute whilst interrogating the socio-cultural and political structures of these daily endeavours, using clothing and scent as tools to explore these journeys.
The Commute starts with a selection of digital postcards, carefully inscribed with individual scent journeys from around the world. The physical collection includes a series of public installations, fashion artefacts and carefully designed objects that together ask important questions about how we live our everyday. How can clothes and scent build communities? What is the role of fashion and fragrance in a post-individual world? What will we wear during our future commutes? What will we smell? Or, more importantly, what smells will be lost?
This is an ongoing project by Morag Seaton in collaboration with perfumers Samyak Varia and Xinning Zhao, The Royal College of Art, ISIPCA, and IFF (International Flavours and Fragrance) Europe. Sponsored by Halley Stevensons Ltd.
Face Jacket, dry waxed cotton, 2023. Exhibited at the Truman Brewery, London, 13-16 July 2023.
With special thanks to my sponsors, Decode Design and to Halley Stevensons for their generous donation of materials.
With special thanks to my sponsors, Decode Design and to Halley Stevensons for their generous donation of materials.
Three Leather Pockets, with both discreet and indiscreet openings, are pocket artefacts carefully constructed from Abbey England leather and other offcuts from the studio. Each pocket has been interpreted from coloured chalk scribbles on a jacket toile, where a group of people were asked to ‘draw a pocket’.
Exhibited at the Royal Leather Studio Exhibition, Battersea Hangar Space, February 2023.
Exhibited at the Royal Leather Studio Exhibition, Battersea Hangar Space, February 2023.
A Pocket Guide to Using Pockets
‘A Pocket Guide to Using Pockets’ is a 12-step instruction manual depicting different pocket acts and their stories. The guide includes everyday clothing rituals, pocket transactions, and other repeated dressing habits that together paint a picture of individual characters and shared material cultures. The pocket uniform is a collection of carefully constructed garments with multiple discreet and indiscreet pocket openings. The garments have been produced with Scottish linen, wools, factory rejects and other obsolescences. Each pocket ritual is accompanied with a story from a clothing archive, a space which encompasses hundreds of everyday conversations about clothes. These documented dialogues have been collected by speaking to and observing people, which are then played with and dissected to challenge preconceptions and reveal alternative perspectives of how clothes should be worn.
With special thanks to Molly Davies.
With special thanks to Molly Davies.