Fashion is one of the significant areas where each of us can clearly express our style and values but how do our personal choices impact our shared planet?

What Are You Wearing? will showcase that there is no style compromise when it comes to choosing sustainable fashion.

Be inspired by specially-styled mannequins from celebrated fashion stylist Bay Garnett and images from award-winning photographer Tom Craig. As Oxfam’s Senior Independent Fashion Adviser, Bay Garnett has worked on several Oxfam Second Hand September campaigns with Tom Craig. This exhibition features selected campaign photographs of Michaela Coel, Sienna Miller, and Stella Tennant with her daughter Iris.

What Are You Wearing? will also showcase the work of textile designer Kate Turnbull whose display will illustrate the use of natural dyes in repurposing pre-loved clothing.

The exhibition will be a visual feast to inspire the fashion-, eco-, and cost-conscious. In addition, activist and writer Aja Barber will directly address sustainability in fashion through an Inspiring People talk (in conversation with Zoe Souter, Head of Careers & Stakeholder Engagement, Condé Nast College of Fashion); and there will be a screening of the documentary Fashion Reimagined (2020), signposting an alternative approach for industry and for consumers.

What Are You Wearing? is inspired by Oxfam and is supported in kind through the loan of all clothing.

The exhibition production has sustainability at its heart, from rescued mannequins to digital-only materials. Visitors will be invited to contribute their own creative responses within the exhibition and online, and to pick up a copy of Bay Garnett’s Style and Substance – Why What We Wear Matters (2023) and Aja Barber’s Consumed – The Need for Collective Change: Colonialism, Climate Change & Consumerism (2022).

This exhibition is a joint project between The North Wall Arts Centre and its principal sponsor, St Edward’s School, Oxford.