Podium

'Podium’ is a series of collages made with the goal of enacting graphic fashion theory, working in a feedback loop with fashion practice, at the coalface of cultural production. These triptychs are intended to enmesh with the playful mundane, like a mirror or a map, producing an alternate perspective on sportswear and competitive activity in the embodied actions of the user, becoming a tool that the user can take with them as they make fashionable choices about how to be. Background: Fashion, sports and technology intersect in many ways and varied strengths lie in different disciplinary responses. This project was developed over three years as a practice-based PhD in collections management, with a remit to develop opportunities for public engagement with under-studied fashion and textile collections and to expand sportswear history’s interdisciplinary potential. Aims: The subject aligns with cultural trends concerned with the role that technology, fashion, speed, and competition (both formalised and spontaneous) play in contemporary society. By looking at the ways embodied time and speed have been networked together in competition, the project aims to expand conceptions of experimental fashion theory and design. Developing moodboards in complexity and utilising them in research elaborates their potential as fields of play Findings: A triptych of triptychs, ‘Podium’ blends ephemeral digital collections and historic sporting, film and fashion imagery in a collage process that highlights the vast potential of fashion’s popular vernacular of the ‘moodboard’ in forward thinking research. Each panel explores a facet of success, spanning the highs and lows of achieving a celebratory podium. The result is akin to a bar graph. Discussion: Operating through automatic practices of everyday life, fashion collage is an active zone for experimentation, with varied applications and risks. Conclusion: Ultimately, ‘Podium’ posits experimental fashion with graphic outputs as an exploratory practice, with the ability to anticipate cultural shifts through its dynamic, layered forms.