AWARDS
EXHIBITOR: Zaha Hadid Foundation Fashion x Architecture Gallery 2026
DEANS CHOICE: Award for Foundation Degree, Ravensbourne University 2023
HIGHLY COMMENDED: Sibling of the Year Award, Autism Hero Awards 2019
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Alice Mary Partington is a fashion designer and multi-disciplinary artist. Her graduate collection 'Unravelling the Mask' is a personal exploration of struggling with the cognitive dissonance of ingrained neurodivergent masking, using perfectionism as a coping mechanism.

Growing up as a carer for her AuDHD brother, Partington had to repress her own issues to protect him. Until her adult life, where she began to struggle and received her own diagnoses. She never understood why she felt so tense and uncertain all the time. Through many moments of identity crises growing up, she found it impossible to feel a comforting sense of authentic self, and questioned how much of her behaviour was born out of self protection and feeling responsible for everyone else’s wellbeing.

This common experience for neurodivergent women only diagnosed in adulthood, is complex experience of masking. The embracing neurodiversity is the focus of the collection.

Partington’s journey of acceptance and unlearning the survival mechanism of completely altering herself to avoid any sort of vulnerability is just beginning. This collection has unknowingly been her way of proving that she doesn’t have to be alone in this all-consuming struggle anymore.