Dyers off to Chelsea
Headington girls have joined forces with garden designers and fashion activists to help create an exciting garden for Chelsea Flower Show.
Garden designer Lottie Delamain will create the first ever garden at the world-famous flower show which features solely plants which can be used to make or dye clothes. Above the garden, which will be designed to imitate a textile, will be a textile installation made entirely from plants dyed by Headington students on the School’s new Eco Fashion Textiles A Level course. Shallow reflective pools represent dye baths, with fabric or fibres soaking in natural dyes, and a series of paved seams will lead through the planting.
A Textile Garden for Fashion Revolution (the world’s largest fashion activism movement) will showcase ways in which alternative resources can be used, addressing some of the many toxic elements of the textile industry such as synthetic fibres and chemical dyes.
After Chelsea Flower Show, the garden will be relocated to Headington. Head of Fashion and Textile Design Mrs Kate Turnbull has developed a new syllabus which includes the study of plants used for textiles dyes and fibres, along with their propagation and use. The garden will be reimagined in two parts – as a working dye garden for the Textile Design students, and as a Colour Wheel garden, designed to inspire pupils across the school about the myriad roles plants play in our lives.
The garden has been sponsored by Project Giving Back.
