Tuesday 16 April 2013

Alice Firman - Ammunition of Expression

 
Alice Firman's Future
With the most recent news from Boston today the future takes a seismic leap and we land flat on our faces once again. The yellow brick road ahead of us is full of cracks and the uneven surface looks daunting. We do not live in a Chocolate box world and it is refreshing that some fashion doesn't either.

I'm currently working on a book about the Future with students from University for the Creative Arts - Epsom. We've had 52 entries so far with such a broad range of styles and quality. They come from a wide spectrum of disciplines too. These are pre-degree minds, fresh and ripe with ideas about the future.

Over the next month I'll be writing about some of the pages that have caught my eye.
Alice Firman's entry certainly did! Who knows whether we will need gas masks and protective clothing to walk the streets safely but I see a future where we will be proud to display our personal slogans across our chests . The Protest in its purest form is fast becoming a laughing joke. Huge numbers of people rally against wars, cuts and most recently funerals but if you haven't got your hands on the wheel of the media band wagon then its a lost cause.

If the choice 'to buy or not to buy' is one of society's catalysts for change then Fashion must be at the tip of future revolutions. Here is an artform that has the ability to communicate ideas, bind communities together through identity and offers the ammunition of expression. Unlike the powerful online voices that unfortunately wither in the ether, the future of fashion gives us the chance to wear our hearts and ideologies on our sleeves.

Alice Firman displays a dark future ahead of us in her FutureBound page, but will she be a voice for change? At CollectConnect we will be keeping an eye on her when she takes the journey north to Scotland next year for her BA. Hopefully in 3 years time we'll see a new style of kilt invading our southern counties once again. One that reflects the true defiance and strength of the tartan clans rather than the limp variety we are served at weddings nowadays.

AL.

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