Advisory Board

Zowie Broach is Head of Programme for FASHION RCA. Since arriving in 2015 she has radically changed the paradigm of what it means today to consider how we might design in FASHION. Zowie previously co-founded the label BOUDICCA, the first independent British Label to show during Couture, Paris, as well as exhibit at and become part of the permanent collections in a number of international museums, such as Chicago Arts Institute and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Whilst at the RCA, FASHION has established a new series of platforms – Optimal Systems, Digital 360 and Bio as Design that expand the practice of Fashion. This is not exclusive of values, economy and philosophy of self; taking on board the myriad of potentials that need investigating to assure a practice that can reveal and express the question of identity for our future. Zowie Broach has been voted into the top 500 Fashion Leaders by Business of Fashion for the last 5 years and was a member of the British Fashion Trust jury in 2019.

View the profile

Christina H. Moon is an Assistant Professor of Fashion Studies in the School of Art and Design History and Theory at Parsons School of Design. Her research looks at the social ties and cultural encounters between design worlds and manufacturing landscapes across Asia and the Americas, exploring the memory, migration, and labor of cultural workers. Moon writes on fashion, design and labor, material culture, social memory, the ephemeral and everyday, and ways of knowing and representing in ethnographic practice. She is a fellow of the Social Science Research Council,  Graduate Institute of Design, Ethnography, and Social Thought and India China Institute at The New School, and a member of the Fashion Praxis working group at Parsons. Her most recent book project is  Ephemera, in collaboration with the photographer Lauren Lancaster, which traces fast-fashion across Los Angeles, Seoul, and New York. She is also the author of Labor and Creativity in New York's Global Fashion Industry and the co-edited volume, Fashion and Beauty in the Time of Asia. 

View the profile

Alistair O’Neill is a writer, curator and professor of Fashion History and Theory at Central Saint Martins (University of the Arts London). He is a member of the Photography and the Archive research centre, sits on the editorial board of Fashion Theory and writes regularly for Aperture magazine. His research interests include twentieth-century and contemporary fashion; menswear; fashion photography in relation to visual culture; fashion curation and histories of display; and London as a centre for fashion cultures.

View the profile

Valerie Steele is director and chief curator of The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology, where she has personally organized more than 25 exhibitions since 1997. She is also founder and editor in chief of Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress, Body & Culture, the first peer-reviewed, scholarly journal in Fashion Studies. As an author, curator, editor, educator and public intellectual, Valerie Steele has been instrumental in creating the modern field of fashion studies and in raising awareness of the cultural significance of fashion.

View the profile

Professor Dilys Williams FRSA is the founder and Director of Centre for Sustainable Fashion, a University of the Arts London Research Centre, based at the London College of Fashion. Dilys’ work explores fashion’s relational ecological, social, economic and cultural elements to contribute to sustainability in and through its artistic, business and educational practices. Trained at Manchester Metropolitan University and holding a UAL professorship in Fashion Design for Sustainability, Dilys publishes widely on fashion and sustainability in peer-reviewed academic journals and published books.  Dilys’ work draws on extensive experience in lead womenswear designer roles for international collections, including at Katharine Hamnett, Liberty and Whistles. This industry experience is complemented by a longstanding internationally recognized teaching and research portfolio centered on the development of sustainability centered design practices, based on principles of holism, participation and transformation design. She is a member of the UNFCCC Global Climate Action in Fashion and sits on advisory committees for Positive Luxury and the Global Fashion Agenda. Her place on the Evening Standard London’s Progress 1000 list in 2015, 2016 and 2017 evidences the public and academic influence of her work alongside regular appearances on broadcast television, radio and magazines including recent appearances on BBC World, Sky News, Radio 4, WWD, the Gentlewoman, Vogue and Elle magazine.

View the profile