We are delighted to present, as part of Winchester Fashion Week 2023, a temporary exhibition of costume design co-curated by a group of young people on the ICE Heritage Project who have been working with professional artist, Polly Perry.
The exhibition captures the young people’s creative engagement with leathercraft and textiles for costume design, showcasing a range of skills newly acquired by this talented group of young people.
These include: the stamping, bevelling and dying of leather alongside hand-sewn and machine stitched techniques and the application of structural design, fastenings and fittings.
Hampshire Wardrobe provided a fantastic opportunity for these young people to learn about costume characterisation in film and theatre and encouraged the young people to draw on a wide range of themes. From warrior costume imagery to historical floral motifs, mythical iconography, existentialism and popular culture, each piece demonstrates a unique response personal to its maker. Whilst these are functional costumes, they are equally pieces of visual art which resonate with the young people’s own exploration of self and identity.
The ICE Heritage project aims to use the arts as a positive way for young people, aged between 11 and 18 years, to acquire skills and express themselves with a resulting positive impact on both their psychological health and emotional wellbeing. The ICE Heritage project is a collaboration between Hampshire Cultural Trust and Hampshire Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services, funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund and Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust.
