The Man In the White Suit + Q&a

Join us for the second day of the Fashion Revolution Weekend!
 

An altruistic chemist invents a fabric which resists wear and stain as a boon to humanity, but big business and labor realize it must be suppressed for economic reasons. 

Like other so-called Ealing comedies, this popular comedy takes issue with the fabric of British society, and in this case the issue is capitalism. At the centre of the drama is the invention of a fabric which will never require maintenance and will never wear out. While this might seem to be a brilliant opportunity, reactions to the invention display the centrality of obsolescence to consumption, and the entanglement of factory workers livelihoods within this. It offers us an opportunity to think about the roe of technology and waste in the fashion industry today, as well as explore our own sometimes conflicted attitudes to newness, whiteness, perfected surfaces and mending.

For the Q&A after the film, we will be joined by Dr Amy Twigger Holroyd, Associate Professor of Fashion and Sustainability at Nottingham School of Art & Design and Dr Katherine Townsend, researcher, educator, practitioner and Professor in Fashion and Textile Practice at Nottingham School of Art & Design.