Ann Marie Kirkbride
Senior Lecturer
I am a practice-based researcher, with interests in fashion and diversity, currently working on bringing together fashion and the older consumer for mutual benefit. I have presented/exhibited my work at conferences including Praxis and Poetics th Annual Conference (2018), and Futurescan 4; Valuing Practice (2019).
For me, fashion is not just about clothes, but also the person who wears them, and I draw my own creative inspiration from their stories. Drawing is at the root of my understanding of the person, their fashion, and the design problems to be solved, so my practice is built around this. I prefer to work from life, and with a range of muses, learning from their experiences of fashion and interpreting this to develop my own creative work. I am interested in fashion as an interface between the person and the outside world, and as a vehicle to carry messages and meaning, so I choose to work with muses that are characterful and disrupt existing fashion ideals – my current muse is in her 70s. I enjoy working closely with students to help them to find and develop their own fashion motivations and voices. I also work closely with our industrial partners on live projects, supporting the students
Ann Marie's Projects
Envisioning Fashion’s Invisible Woman