Centre for Fashion and Systemic Change
The School of Fashion's Centre for Fashion and Systemic Change (CFSC) supports research and knowledge exchange that cultivates inclusion, equity and decolonization in the field of Fashion Studies and the fashion system more broadly.
Our work centres fat, disabled, trans, gender non-conforming, Indigenous, Black, racialized and/or other bodies that have been marginalized in and by fashion. Our projects use participatory and decolonizing methodologies to centre the experiences and ideal futures of these wearers and makers and to redesign the field of fashion for and with them.
Through research and events, our goal is to open up conversations about systemic injustices in fashion and foster collaborations between academics, designers, entrepreneurs and justice-seeking communities to shift misrepresentations and redistribute power.
Consumer culture
Fashion and social justice
Fashion and masculinities
Fashion and disability
Fat fashion
Indigenous fashion
Design research
Design activism
Arts-based research
Cripping Masculinities:
Disabled Men’s Intersectional Narratives through Fashion
Year: 2019-2023
Role: Principal Investigator
Funding received: $229,999.00 CAD
Funded by: Insight Grant, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council
Sizing Up Gender:
Intersectional Narratives of Fat and Gender through Fashion
Year: 2019-2020
Role: Co-Principal Investigator
Funding received: $6,973.00 CAD
Funded by: Explore Grant, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council
The Fashion Hackathon:
Designing an Inclusive Fashion Industry with LGBTQ2S+ Youth
Year: 2017-2018
Role: Principal Investigator
Funding received: $6,989.37 CAD
Funded by: Special Small, Faculty of Communication and Design
Bodies in Translation:
Activist Art, Technology, and Access to Life
Year: 2016-2023
Role: Co-Investigator
Funding received: $2,499,684 CAD
Funded by: Partnership Grant, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council
Refashioning Masculinity, external link:
The Use of Fashion to Deconstruct and Reimagine Men’s Gendered Identities
Year: 2014-2016
Role: Principal Investigator
Funding received: $61,608.00 CAD
Funded by: Insight Development Grant, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Refashioning Masculinity:
Man in the Mirror: An Exploratory Study of Men’s Consumer Response to Diverse Male Fashion Models
Year: 2014-2016
Role: Principal Investigator
Funding received: $6,973.40 CAD
Funded by: SIG, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
Co-Directors of the Centre for Fashion Diversity and Social Change
As a fashion educator, researcher and activist, I strive to intervene into the fashion system and redesign it to centre inclusion and decolonization – creating a future in which bodies that are currently stigmatized and excluded are instead valued and desired. As a teacher and supervisor, I work with students to confront, resist and transform the fashion system’s narrow ideas and ideals about the body as well as the hierarchical and exclusionary fashion design process. My research program centres the intersectional experiences of disabled, fat, trans, queer and gender nonconforming people and collaborates with them to co-design clothing and media. I also serve as co-Editor of Fashion Studies (with Alison Matthews David) and Director of the FCAD Centre for Fashion Diversity & Social Change. Before becoming faculty, I started the first inclusive modeling agency in the world; for this work, I was awarded the Governor General’s Award in Commemoration of the Person’s Case for advancing gender equality in Canada.
