Slow Fashion Masters Project: Hand Weaving Garments for the Modern World

Thursday, 09 February 2023

Wintec Te Pūkenga Master of Arts student Carol Oldfield at her loom in her home studio where the creative has been working on a hand woven fashion collection for a contemporary New Zealand market. Photo: Geoff Ridder

Carol Oldfield has always worked with yarns.

“I knitted my first jersey when I was 6 years old. It was blue but we ran out of yarn, so the neck was finished in white,” laughs Oldfield.

This Hamilton local has spent most of her life living in the region and like many creatives and craftspeople Oldfield recalls her first influence being her mother.

“My mum taught me. She always made clothes for us and I’ve got photos of my sister and I wearing matching outfits.”

At school she developed sewing skills in home economics classes and extended on that knowledge at evening workshops. While she’s done a lot of things, from crochet and knitting, to working with glass and sewing, it was “weaving [that] stuck with me.”

For 20 years Oldfield has been part of Creative Fibre Hamilton where she meets weekly and where she leads their monthly meetings. It is here that Oldfield acknowledges her ongoing creative influences, “it’s the people around me, being part of the Creative Fibre community”.

Oldfield says that undertaking a Master of Arts at Wintec Te Pūkenga was about addressing unfinished business. Having completed her design degree at Wintec a year earlier she was ready to deep dive into developing the tools for designing her own garments.

With a focus on sustainability and slow fashion Oldfield researched historical weaving practices to design a collection for a contemporary New Zealand market.

“Looking at minimal waste in weaving,” says Oldfield, “I needed to make my own patterns and designs for my hand woven fabric.”

She also wanted to make hand woven garments accessible and not just put aside for a special occasion.

Her bespoke collection is made up of garments that speak of simplicity and also usability with many of the items allowing the wearer to experiment with layers and function.

“I would love to say that I’ve brought weaving forward with more contemporary and modern forms,” says Oldfield.

The process may be time intensive and does result in increasing the costs of each garment, but Oldfield says that there is something special about the item being handmade.

“They will last longer and you will treasure it more.”

This philosophy aligns with messages, research and data from the slow fashion movement.

Wintec academic Rebekah Harman’s research explores ways to lower the environmental footprint during textile production and she is Oldfield’s postgraduate supervisor. Harman says the climate crisis is the number one issue of our time and in 2019 alone, there was over 190,0000 tonnes of textile waste sent to landfill in Aotearoa New Zealand.

“Any projects like Carol's that explore ways to minimize waste are critical. The most important role of fashion designer’s today is to re-imagine systems and processes that put ecology at the heart of what they do," says Harman.

When it came to developing a lookbook for the collection, Oldfield could draw on her network of fellow Wintec School of Media Art alumni. In the campus photo studios, photographer Chris Davis and stylist Brydie Senior joined together to capture the collection, alongside former Wintec hair and make up students, Nadia Dillon and Leila Coombes. Oldfield enlisted close friends Lydia Hickson and Jen de Boer to model the collection.

“It was very humbling to see my friends model the garments I’ve made,” says Oldfield.

Of the future of hand loom weaving, Oldfield believes weaving is not going to die out overnight, “hand weaving is alive and thriving.” There are a lot of looms and weavers in New Zealand and she says these people are collectively contributing to the renaissance of this enduring craft. She encourages readers of this article to keep an eye out for a new upcoming exhibition from Professional Weavers Network of NZ, a group she belongs to, titled Ngahere: The Bush of Aotearoa, at Wallace Gallery from May 13-June 18.

Although Oldfield is coming to the end of her Master of Arts studies, she says working with fibre will always be part of her day-to-day life.

“I love seeing fabric develop,” says Oldfield. “And through that you can make cloth. It’s very satisfying.”

See more of Oldfield’s work on her website.

There are three intakes per year for the Master of Arts programme in March, July and October.

Find out more about the School of Media Arts at Wintec Te Pūkenga.