Leeds Beckett University - City Campus,
Woodhouse Lane,
LS1 3HE
Sam is Cluster Lead for the Fashion arm of FABRICATE, the Fashion and Architecture Research Cluster, established in 2023, FABRICATE is the acronym for Fashion, Architecture, Buildings, Research, Inclusion, Cities, Applied, Technology, Environment and is responsible for driving, supporting, and allocating funding to, REF-able research. Sam is particularly keen to support Early Career Researchers, as well as those more established in the field.
The 2-year strategic aim for FABRICATE is to develop research into the histories, traditions, and cultural specificity of situated fashion in Leeds. This will culminate in a pioneering graduate fashion event, Graduate Fashion: North, launched in Leeds at the LSA in June 2025. It is proposed that this will become a multi-institutional annual event, involving regional educational and industry partners, grassroots associations, non-governmental organisations, local councils, and central governments who implement public policy. As well as showcasing academic research, this network will also support emerging graduate designers by connecting them to industry.
North ethos, from the tentative to the far-reaching and impactful, including a contribution to the Leeds School of Arts Drawing Symposium, and the match-funding of a Leeds Beckett Fashion x Fashion Revolution collaborative zine, titled Sewing the Seeds: Fashion Activism in the North of England, spearheaded by Dr Richard Hudson-Miles. Fashion Revolution are the leading organisation campaigning for a more ethical fashion industry.
Their Fashion Transparency Index has become the leading tool to force the world's fashion brands to be more transparent about their social and environmental efforts. Fashion Revolution also organise Fashion Revolution Week. This is an annual campaign event which brings together Fashion revolution's 75 country network for seven days of activism. We hope the ideas contained in Sewing the Seeds, will be the catalyst for new collaborative co-research and new forms of activism.
The magazine can be purchased below.
A fashion academic and PhD student. MA in Fashion Design from Central Saint Martin's (1994). Director of eponymous label and CMT facility (1996-2000). Career as a fashion educator, teaching on, leading, and designing new undergraduate fashion design programmes (2000-present).
