The inaugural PhD Vitrine Takeover extends Fashioning Frequencies into fashion鈥檚 expanded field; where garments, bodies, and ideas operate as methods of inquiry. Across seven vitrines, PhD researchers from across 91视频 (UAL) engage fashion as material, metaphor, and disruption to probe systems of power, visibility, care, and resistance.鈥�
London College of Fashion, UAL, East Bank,105 Carpenters Road, Stratford, E20 2AR
Free to all.
Presented in collaboration with the UAL Doctoral School, the PhD Vitrine Takeover invites PhD researchers from across UAL to translate their enquiries into exhibition form. Spanning both practice-based and theoretical approaches, this inaugural edition transforms seven vitrines into sites of critical engagement.
Extending the central concerns of Fashioning Frequencies, the works examine fashion’s expanded field through the lenses of protest aesthetics, diasporic knowledge, ecological grief, youth subcultures, and embodied transformation. Some engage directly with dress and material culture; others use sound, image, and gesture to trace how bodies, surfaces, and systems interact.
Together, these installations refuse static definitions of fashion; foregrounding it as method, metaphor, and medium. The vitrine becomes a testing ground: where research is made public, disciplinary boundaries are unsettled, and fashion’s entanglements with power, memory, and speculation are brought into sharper view.
Annie RigaAnnie Riga is a visual artist based in London and Athens, pursuing a PhD in Fine Art at Chelsea College of Art, UAL. She holds an MA from St. Joost School of Art and a BA from Falmouth University. Her work has featured internationally, including exhibitions at PLEX Athens, Hypha Studios London, Banff Centre Canada, Kurd Gallery Athens, TAF Foundation Athens, and Kunstrai Amsterdam. Riga has participated in residencies at Banff Centre, Salzburg International Academy, and Big Blue Dot Greece. Her insights have appeared in NOMAS, LIFO, and METROPOLIS M.
Toyin GbomedoToyin Gbomedo is a multidisciplinary artist and PhD researcher who uses Art Activism such as visual art, textiles, film, and music in her various campaigns against injustice. With a background in the Arts and Community work, Toyin continues to work with communities across London and the UK using creative arts as a medium to support communities to take action. Her previous work has included a textile installation highlighting the exploitation of workers in the fashion industry. Her current exhibition is a continuation of her poetic film with the same title鈥�‘Dapada’ highlighting the injustice of waste colonialism in the Global South and is also a Call to Action to disrupt passive consumption and instead, step into active participation.
Joel LardnerJoel Lardner is a PhD research student at London College of Communication, UAL. He started his PhD journey in illustration research in 2023. In his work exploring the American 1980s skateboard graphics, he asserts skateboard decks as enchanted objects embodying a unique relationship with urban space rooted in active embracing of jeopardy and risk. Joel’s visual experiments and augmented artefacts interfuse鈥痑ssociations/resemblances鈥痓etween Gothic horror, fairgrounds, accident, phantasmagorical projections, and skateboarding.
Mil Vukovic-SmartMil Vukovic-Smart is a London-based artist, researcher, performer, and choreographer. Her practice spans dance, digital, live and visual art and includes teaching practice that foregrounds embodied, site-sensitive and immersive approaches to arts education. Her practice-based PhD research at Chelsea College of Arts, UAL conceives gardening as a form of choreographic dwelling (Schiller/Rubidge) and builds an argument for an expanded notion of choreography as a disruptive technology to rethink historic landscapes as objects of material culture and ‘meeting places of nature and human labour’ (Mukerji).
Fiona UwamahoroFiona Uwamahoro is a researcher examining African fashion systems through a sociological lens. Her PhD at the London College of Fashion, UAL explores Rwanda’s emerging field of fashion, investigating how designers and intermediaries navigate shifting national and global networks to establish legitimacy. She teaches research methods at Vogue College of Fashion and contributes to discussions on culture, policy, and education.
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Keyi ZhangA PhD candidate at Central Saint Martins, UAL, researching Fashion Histories and Theories, Keyi draws on postcolonial and decolonial theories as part of her theory-based research practice which traces the role of the tracksuit in post-reform China. Her work contributes to discussions on global modernity and the decolonisation of Fashion Studies.鈥疊eyond academia, Keyi is seeking to visually present her research to reach a wider audience. Prior to her PhD, Keyi worked as a fashion journalist at鈥疶 China: The New York Times Style Magazine.
Fari BradleyFari Bradley (b. Iran) is an artist and composer working with audible and inaudible sound. Bradley’s research-based practice addresses listening and language in urban and rural environments. Bradley's work questions history, public space and society through installation, sculpture, performance and radiophonics. Materials employed are found objects, textiles, photography and electronics.鈥疉 member of arts-radio Resonance104.4FM, Bradley's background is in literature and classical music (Indo-European) and arts-radio broadcast. Now completing a PhD at CRiSAP (Centre for Research into Sound Arts Practice), London College of Communication, UAL, Bradley spent years researching around the Persian Gulf, releasing on The Vinyl Factory and Sub Rosa.