Clothing Community Stories

A multi-stakeholder project of four London College of Fashion MA students in association with the Centre for Sustainable Fashion and Waltham Forest Council for London Borough of Culture 2019. Aniela, Megha, Rebecca and Sara have joined forces to explore alternative clothing practices in Walthamstow and celebrate the people behind them - culminating in a zine and launch event.

The project has been an opportunity to uncover the creative life cycle of clothing from fabric sourcing; garment construction and tailoring; onto garment alteration and repair - all within Walthamstow. We discovered a network of independent craftspeople and small-scale businesses that form an integral part of the local community. Through their trade and the way they support one another, those businesses are vital in creating a community resilience that shapes the cultural identity of Walthamstow the way we know it today.