Professor Margo Barton discusses the relationships and experiences that people have with fashion and fashion systems – designing, making, curating, communicating and wearing clothes and accessories. Margo critically investigates the fashion system from both the insider’s and outsider’s view, drawing on her lived experiences nationally and internationally as fashion designer, wearer, educator, curator and festival director. Margo proposes alternative models of engagement and actively challenges how fashion is defined and communicated. Her practice asks us to consider our language of wearing, of personal identity. She recognises and empowers the fashion wearer to overlay meanings on to that of the designers worn.

Margo Barton is a Professor and Academic Leader for Fashion at Otago Polytechnic. This event is part of her ongoing research.

Image credit: Fashion and millinery – Margo Barton; Photographer - Fraser Chatham; Model Olivia at Unique Model Management; for the New Zealand Fashion Museum Intellectual Fashion Show Exhibition and Catalogue; Gus Fisher Gallery, Auckland; 2016