Folk Fashion - Understanding Homemade Clothes

By Amy Twigger Holroyd

A dynamic resurgence in sewing and knitting is underway, with many people enjoying making and mending their own garments at home. However, stories abound of homemade clothes languishing at the back of the wardrobe.

Amy Twigger Holroyd draws on ideas of fashion, culture, and craft to explore makers' lived experiences of creating and wearing homemade clothes in a society dominated by shop-bought garments. Using the innovative metaphor of fashion as common land, Folk Fashion investigates the complex relationship between making, well-being, and sustainability.

Twigger Holroyd combines her own experience as a designer and knitter with first-hand accounts from folk fashion makers to explore this fascinating, yet under-examined, area of contemporary fashion culture. Looking to the future, she also considers how sewers and knitters might maximize the radical potential of their activities.

Amy Twigger Holroyd is an Associate Professor of Fashion and Sustainability at Nottingham School of Art & Design. Through design-led participatory research, she explores plural possibilities for post-growth fashion systems: alternative ways of living with our clothes that meet our fundamental human needs and respect ecological limits. 

Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2023, softcover, 9 x 5 inches, 56 pages.