Romilly Hoskins
Romilly Hoskins is a designer and storyteller who merges fashion with textiles, always conscious of fast fashion and incorporating sustainability into her design ethos. Her practice is rooted in storytelling and communicating conceptual designs, exploring how clothing can become a vessel for conveying political ideas, history, culture, and emotions.
In her Final Major Project, Stitched Voices, she explores the protest of the suffragettes by reclaiming traditionally “feminine” crafts like embroidery as a form of protest through fashion. Merging her love for textiles with political fashion, Hoskins plays with historical social norms and, like Vivienne Westwood, reclaims the traditional undergarment as an overgarment.
Hoskins’ work communicates stories that have been lost and overlooked by society, reclaiming them to highlight what needs to be understood about the world we live in in the 21st century, using fashion as a form of power.
Final Major Project, zoomed in detail photography based on the Suffragettes protest. – This photograph highlights the details that form Hoskins' Final Major Project. In detail photography based on the Suffragettes protest, creating a makeup look that overemphasises “stereotypical” feminine features to convey Hoskins' theme of the Suffragette's protest and rage through the model's emphasised scream.
Final Major Project location photoshoot of the final womenswear garment. – This image showcases Hoskins' Final Major Project garment, shot on location, titled “Stitched Voices,” inspired by the suffragette's protest. The project combines the themes of restriction and protest, aiming to reclaim the restrictive garments historically worn by women to empower them and highlight their fight for the right to vote.
The themes are represented in the garment through the use of boning, eyelets, and corset lacing, along with hand-stitched elements such as the paper protest banner skirt. These design choices symbolize the endurance and bravery displayed during the protests.
Final Major Project – Mod Roc corset toile photoshoot. This image shows the Final Major Project toile, an experimentation with material and photography. Creating this corset with newspaper and Mod Roc to create a structural and sculptural piece made to fit the model. Choosing to experiment with a range of materials to understand more about the direction of the final garment.
Accessories Sustainability Project. – This project shows the use of combining textiles and accessories fashion with sustainability and ethical design. Reusing old plastic bags to create a woven handbag, thinking of how to reduce overconsumption and source materials already on this earth, and thinking of protecting the environment for the future.
Cultural Studies Project, Wangchei Mutu Inspired Collage. – The image above shows Hoskins' love for collage, experimenting with mixed media materials such as hot glue, magazine cut-outs, and watercolour paints.