Ashley Charles Burr has a love for fashion magazines, visual snapshots into contemporary fashion history. Based in London, they predominantly focus on womenswear but aim to challenge the binary. They are delving into a world where the separation between the voyeur and exhibitionist becomes blurred.

While working on their BA degree in Fashion Design, Ashley focusses on how power relationships work in gendered fashion. Symbolic statements from the 70s and 80s are reflected through silhouettes and the exploration of pattern cutting. An integral part of the design process is to recontextualize elements of traditional design and who can wear them, sourcing information from archived magazines with barely any influence from the internet.

Ashley’s interest in fashion grew into a way for them to explore parallels between societal expectations and dress codes, changing the popular rhetoric. Their sensitivity to textures and details acts as a form of language. Ashley actively provokes values perpetuated by inherent attitudes and amalgamates them with the requirement to stay relevant as opposed to offering designs that only evoke nostalgia.