School of Fashion and Textiles

De Montfort University

Tuesday, September 09, 2025 →

Wednesday, September 10, 2025

We invite you to join us for meaningful conversations that will contribute to the ongoing debate about the evolving landscape of the fashion and textiles industry and education.

The conference provides a forum for the dissemination of research, creative practice and pedagogy surrounding fashion and textiles. Full papers, posters and exhibits will discuss, challenge and provoke debate.

Join us at Futurescan 6 to engage with experts, share insights, and contribute to shaping the future of our field.

Conference Themes

Heritage Values

This theme explores the relationships between historical contexts, heritage, physical settings, and the skills involved in fashion and textiles, examining how cultural, geographical, and historical influences shape our understanding of provenance and craftsmanship.

Technological Change

This theme delves into the intersections of technology and fashion and textiles through creative practice and business led approaches, focusing on new digital technologies, speculative futures, and the ethical considerations surrounding innovation within the sector.

Interdisciplinary Practice

This theme explores the intersections between textiles, fashion and other disciplines. It aims to bridge the gaps between fields, highlighting collaborative practices, cross-disciplinary innovations, and the transformative potential of integrating diverse disciplines.

Responsible Materiality

This theme focuses on the tangible aspects of fashion and textiles, including making, biomaterials, and the intrinsic value of handcraft and land-based practices. It seeks to explore innovative materials and sustainable practices that highlight the importance of biomaterials,

the lifecycle of products, and the circular economy.

Creative Futures

This theme explores the evolving landscape of employability and diversity within the fashion and textiles industry. Contributions redefine and reposition the roles of fashion and textile specialists: across creative and business job functions and the rise of non-human jobs, and the value of creative fashion and textile education more broadly.

Keynote Speakers

Charles Jeffrey

LOVERBOY is a creative force springing forth from the mind of Scottish Creative Director and Designer, Charles Jeffrey. Based in London – in the catacombs of historic Somerset House, to be exact – LOVERBOY continues to build on its stellar start in the fashion industry, taking on new challenges and reaching new customers year on year.

From humble beginnings in Charles’s East London bedroom, LOVERBOY is now an international fashion powerhouse, carried in over 90 stores across the world, and employing a team of eleven full-time staff.

Drawn to the inherent magic in queerness, Charles and his collaborators create fashion dreamscapes, adding new layers to the brand’s story with each passing season. Together they weave the folkloric thread of Scottish history into the rich tapestry of London’s queer nightlife and music scenes.

A radical sensibility informs all of LOVERBOY’s output, and the brand is proudly committed to making clothes that can be worn by anyone, in any conceivable way. With LOVERBOY entering its tenth year, Charles and his team of fashion visionaries are taking this approach to new heights, drawing inspiration from art, music and unconventional sources of queer joy.

Renewed connection to nature, the body and notions of queer wellness are all key creative stimuli in LOVERBOY’s current future-facing phase. The brand will also continue to renew its focus on collaboration through partnerships with artists in residence who act as contributors to the design process.

Fenella Hitchcock

Fenella Hitchcock is a Senior Lecturer in Cultural and Historical Studies at London College of Fashion. Her work as a writer and researcher focuses on the relationships between sexuality and style as articulated through the materials of fashion and performance. She publishes scholarly, critical and creative writing and her work can be found in publications such as Critical Studies in Men’s Fashion, Dress and Viscose.

In 2022, she designed and launched the module Queering Fashion, a research-led elective centred on queer theory and contemporary fashion practice, underpinned by queer and critical trans* pedagogies. She also conducts pedagogic research into the experiences of LGBTQ+ students in Higher Education.

In tandem with her work in academia, she also works with both emerging and established practitioners to contextualise and communicate their work through a range of media. Most notably, her research has led to an ongoing exchange with Charles Jeffrey LOVERBOY where she serves as a ‘critical friend’ to the brand and engages in various modes of collaborative storytelling.

Jenny Holloway

Jenny Holloway began her career as a senior buyer for the Arcadia Group and later worked as a selector for M&S. She eventually launched her own brand, which she managed for ten years, during which time she exported to the United Arab Emirates, operated three retail boutiques, and started a party plan business.

Jenny later served as a Government advisor, supporting new and emerging designer talent for six years before founding Fashion-Enter Ltd (FEL) in 2006.

Today, FEL employs nearly 60 people across its sites in Haringey, Islington, Leicester, and Powys in Wales. These sites are recognized as centres of excellence in garment manufacturing and serve as an approved Government training academy. FEL leads in providing technical fashion skills and qualifications, ranging from Level 1 to Level 5, in traditional areas such as stitching and pattern making.

Lucy Hardcastle

Lucy Hardcastle is an interdisciplinary designer and digital artist.

Her work focuses on tactility, visual illusions and sensual aesthetics through digital rendered pieces, sculpture, set design and moving image.

Her pieces highlight tensions between physical and virtual worlds and experiences, and aims to reconnect users and viewers with the material world through symbolism and metaphor. Her current projects focus on bridging the highly digital and physical aspects of her practice to produce immersive experiential pieces.

Having graduated from Information Experience Design at the Royal College of Art (RCA) in 2017, Lucy works as a visual artist and creative director at her eponymous studio. She lives and works in London.

Nick Tidball

VOLLEBAK

Founded in 2016 by British designers and twin brothers Nick and Steve Tidball, Vollebak uses advanced material technology to tackle the fundamental challenges of the next century — space, climate change, human health, and sustainability. 2x winners at TIME Best Inventions, their designs include clothing ranges built for Mars and Titan as well as the apocalypse. They built the world’s first solar charged jacket, the first jacket from graphene, and the first computer programmable clothing — bringing us one step closer to an invisibility cloak.

Exhibition Opening Special Guest

Mohammed Patel

Membership Manager at UKFT, with over 19 years’ experience in the collection, sorting, and processing of used clothing. A skilled contract negotiator, adept at working closely with charities, local authorities, reuse and recycling merchants to agree quality standards and build fair, sustainable partnerships.

Now focused on supporting UKFT members with legislative insight, site audits, trade representation, and the development of implementation codes of practice.

Actively engaging with UK Government bodies, UK Textiles Pact’s Reuse and Recycling Group and wider industry forums to ensure the used textile industry has a strong voice in policy, regulation, and the transition to a circular economy.