Alice Mary Partington.

The White Project

^{Year 1 Term 1 Undergraduate Degree 2023}BRIEF: Create a colourless garment inspired by three strands of research: a historical event, a non-fashion object, and a photographer for styling.
INSPIRATION: 1850's cage crinoline skirts; scaffolding cranes and bubbles; photographer Erwin Blumenfeld.

PORTFOLIO:

PHOTOSHOOT:
^{Model: Weronika Bucko
My own photography,editing and styling.}

Graduate Pre-Collection

Year 3 Term 1 Undergraduate Degree 2025CONCEPT:
Unravelling the Mask is a pre-collection inspired by my personal experiences with masking. Masking is a survival instinct where neurodiverse people alter their facial expressions, gestures, attitudes, personality, and suppress "unacceptable" natural behaviours in order to appear neurotypical and be socially accepted. Masking can be both conscious and subconscious, so people who are diagnosed late tend to mask without realising it.

Personally, it was a very long journey from realising I was constantly masking - around strangers, friends, even with family at home - to slowly unlearning this suppressive behaviour and working out what I like and who I am. I am fascinated by the different ways I have experienced life comparing masking and unmasking, and have investigated this through Unravelling the Mask. While it can be exhausting, masking is a form of instinctual self protection by blending in. This inspired me to look into biomimicry, armour, and anatomy as my initial inspirations. What I found particularly intriguing though, is the sensation of contorting oneself to match others, and how different a sensation this is to embracing one’s neurodiversity and living truly as you are. This dynamic tension is the primary exploration of this project.

Additionally, other characteristics of neurodiversity inspired parts of this collection. The postural differences found in ADHD and autistic people informed my play with shoulder pads and transforming the body. Sensory processing led me to experiment with 3 dimensional textiles by focusing on tactile feel and visual detail. These RTW garments capture the unique perspectives of the neurodiverse experiences through distorting contemporary silhouettes; each look creates a different mood and showcases the complex mental dynamics of learning to unmask and celebrate the beautiful chaos of neurodiversity.
PORTFOLIO:

SKETCHBOOK:

PHOTOSHOOT:
^{Model: Caitlin Herbert
My own photography, editing, styling, garments.}

^{See full project research and all references here.}

#TakeYourSpace

^{Clo X Coach Competition - The Handbag Edition}BRIEF: Using CLO, create a digital capsule collection for a Coach Play store. The submission should include at least 1 (one) handbag and may be combined with other items, including bag charms, lifestyle objects and garments. Coach Play locations are spaces that allow the customer to co-create, hang out, have fun - to create community within our brand. Keeping in mind our target consumer (Gen Z) your designs should be youthful and innovative while also speaking to our brand’s 85-year history. ^{Brief from the competition information, Clo Connect 2025}CONCEPT:
Inspired by the message of becoming confident and overcoming insecurities in Coach’s #WearYourShine and #CourageToBeReal campaigns, my concept explores taking up space as a design prompt for both a conceptual and aesthetic narrative. With a focus on chunky exploded silhouettes, the #TakeYourSpace capsule uses Coach’s signature style of leather and gold chains to take ideas from heritage staples into expressive and playful ready-to-wear designs.

PORTFOLIO:
^{Secondary sources cited, all the rest is my own work & images.}

CAPSULE COLLECTION OUTCOME:

The Tailoring Project

^{Year 2 Term 2 Undergraduate Degree 2024}BRIEF: Create a tailored jacket, inspired by your chosen concept, designing in the style of your chosen brand.

CHOSEN BRAND: Yohji YamamotoCONCEPT:
Through the medium of traditional tailoring practices, this project explores the creative potential of occlusion shadows by investigating its natural presence in geological formations and birds.This project focuses conceptually on pigeons, both as a prime study of the presence of occlusion in their anatomy and their historical rocky habitats, and as a symbol of tailoring's London heritage.

PORTFOLIO:
^{Including some research images from archmillenium.net (2025) and of Elle Fanning from footwearnews.com (2024).
The rest is my own photography, design, textile & Clo3D work.}