The first UK Professor of Science and Fashion - and a free radical
My sister’s interest in science shone out straight away when we were young, but I was a bit lost. We were very different.
At 19, I had the best year of my life: I did a foundation course in the arts at Kingston University. We did a bit of everything. The course enabled you to explore your own creativity.
I could have gone in a number of directions, but the fashion Head Daphne Brooker picked me out to join the Ba course. I ended up in Rome, designing for Valentino and another designer. Then I joined forces with Caroline Coates to set up a fashion business. We ran it for 12 years and we now run the Helen Storey Foundation together.
My sister is Professor Kate Storey, a neurobiologist and Associate Dean of Research in the College of Life Sciences, University of Dundee. She’s been my entry point to science. In 1994 she told me about a Wellcome Trust science/art initiative. We joined forces, applied for funding and ran a project called Primitive Streak. I left the business to do this full time: the project toured in seven countries and was seen by three million people.
I’ve always been fascinated by science, in particular in how things come to be and how they disappear. Several things got me thinking about packaging. How sensitive could packaging materials be? Could they detect volume change? If you had a bottle, for instance, could it shrink as you gradually got rid of its contents?
Then I heard Professor Tony Ryan speak on Radio 4 and knew he was someone I wanted to work with. We set up and ran ‘Wonderland’ together. We created a dress that disappeared. We showed this in different UK cities. And we’ve ended up inventing a bottle that you put under the hot tap when its empty which turns it into a soil-like gel while the cap becomes like a pepper pot lid with seeds.
You get flowers!
The professorship of science and fashion was set up for me a year ago, and it enables me to carry on exploring science, fashion and sustainability. I’m working with Tony Ryan again, and others, and we have backing from NESTA to look at Catalytic Clothing. We are developing a detergent you add to the clothes wash. Explosed to light (UV rays), your clothes purify the air around you. It will work best when lots of people use it.
We also set up Free Radicals, a group of 22 academics who want to tackle world problems. Each of our universities has committed to saving 30 percent of the water they use, and they’ll donate half the money they save to One Water , which is a project that builds roundabouts in third world countries. When children and adults play on the roundabouts, they power a pump that supplies cleans water.
Through science and art, I want to involve people in technology-to-come.
Helen Storey is Professor of Science and Fashion at the London College of Fashion. She also runs the Helen Storey Foundation, a not-for-profit arts organization promoting creativity and innovation. You can see a film of the dissolving dress on the Wonderland site.
Comments
Ruth Wilson (UKRC moderator):
Hi Helen, Your work is so exciting! A dress that disappears is an amazing idea - and the idea of using the fabric we wear to clean the air around us is inspired. Do you find the students at university respond to your approach and come up with inventive ideas? I wonder how much this creativity is something just some people have loads of, or if the right environments can get more of us thinking differently about things. Thank you for joining us on the blog!
Malcolm Davies:
Hi Helen - my first time on the blog. Great story - 2 questions 1. What is Primitive Streak? And what , if anything, did it result in? 2. Your ideas are fantastic. Do you look to take them to the mass market where they will \'make a real difference\' to the world in which we live, or is that a task for others? AND a dissolving dress- wow that\'s another question.
Helen Storey:
Thank you for your questions. Ruth, I find students respond very well to these sorts of ideas. I work very closely for example with the students on the first MA in Fashion and the Environment at London College of Fashion, and in many ways by setting them the same sort of technological challenges they help me and the scientists enormously with other ways of thinking about technologies yet to come. In return, I think my work can sometimes set their imaginations free, in the sense that I want to encourage them to believe you can make it in the world on the strength of good ideas, and the power of ambitious research. The right inspiration and environment can bring creativity out of students beyond their first imaginings, confidence to follow your imagination without fear of failure is very important. Helen
Helen Storey:
Hello Malcolm, Primitive Streak was one of the first Wellcome Trust Sci/Art awards. The collection elucidated the first 1,000 hours of human life. It\'s a project that changed my life. There\'s something in its universal origins, ie where we come from and how we are created that has transcended language and culture. It has been touring for 12 years now, and we are looking at new funding to continue this with added and new works. I guess it\'s lasting impact has been on schools, both teachers and students have used it in many different ways to allow young people with varying kinds of intelligence to get to grips with the fundamental processes by which we come to be . It\'s also given teachers the opportunity to swap teaching disciplines and at Thomas Tallis School in Greenwich it has had a dramatic effect on teaching in multidisciplinary ways, they in turn became ambassadors for this way of teaching and have spread to many other schools. As to my other work, which can at times appear fantastical, it is rooted however in wanting to make a tangible contribution to advancing science in new ways and helping to give it a cultural and societal context, so that what is produced will be used and accepted by the public at large. All the projects which in the first instance appear to be about wonder and art have produced more quietly real products, further research work for the science community and one has even got a global patent on it. so it is about the real world ! I hope that answers things OK ? Helen
Shona Ferguson:
Hi Helen, How do you see the relationship between the fashion and science communities developing? Shona
Rachel Tobbell:
Hi Helen I had always assumed that the only way to have a career in science was to study it for years - through school, university, postgraduate study...... It seems amazing that you could have a post with \'science\' in the title after studying and working in fashion for so many years. Have you had to do lots of studying to pick up the scientific knowledge you need, or do you rely on your scientific contacts for the specialised/technical input?
Helen Storey:
Hello Shona, They seem to be developing quite naturally in the areas of \\\" smart textiles \\\"" how I hate that saying.... but what it\\\'s meant to suggest is materials/textile substrates which can do more than keep us dry and warm and let everyone know how stylish we are or aren\\\'t !
Helen Storey:
Hello Rachel, Yes, the traditional climb up any academic ladder hasn\\\\\'t changed in years. I think we are living in \\\\\'emergency times\\\\\', if not ON Emergency Time, and no ones life is long enough to know all there is in any discipline, so I haven\\\\\'t aimed to re train myself into becoming a scientist. There are however a growing number of both scientists and artists ( I use the word very broadly), who in realising that there is a greater external world imperative in action just now, have come together to deliberately collide each others very different knowledge and diverse life experience to solve global problems. ( please see the Free Radicals Group in the main body of the text). There is massive intellectual generosity going on there - and in that space I have developed a reputation for being able to ask of \\\\\' science \\\\\' questions it might not think to ask. There then follows ( and I think this is because there is some kind of equality in life motivation between us all) a cross disciplinary \\\\\' tennis match \\\\\' that goes on, where who knows the science and who knows the \\\\\" art \\\\\"" gets forgotten - and ideas neither could have thought on their own begin to emerge.
Fiona Campbell:
Transforming materials for a new purpose - what a brilliant idea....I love the idea of dissolving fabrics - when my daughter was younger (and having only one child) I was endlessley chucking out, giving away or taking to the charity shops clothes, shoes, toys...not to mention my own private nappy \'mountain\'...what about time activated transformation of materials aimed at children\'s products?
Tamsin:
Ah I see... I\\\'ve just watched at your film on the the dissolving dress - it\\\'s beautifully filmed. Before i saw it, I imagined the dress somehow dissolved while just walking down the street - could be slightly worrying if it suddenly decides to dissolve when you least expect it - but that would make good performance art I guess. Pity I missed your last exhibition in Sheffield - I will certainly look out for your future exhibitions. Very inspirational.
Helen Storey:
Thanks Fiona, Think that\'s a very good idea, I also don\'t why there isn\'t a National Toy Bank - apart from realising that love is expressed in the buying of something special for ones children, the country must be awash with grown out of toys - Often still in great nick. They should have one out the back of every Toys R Us, although they\'d be worried about loosing turn over on first times purchase I imagine. I suppose if you extend this thinking to all \' things \' the bigger question is whether we can live happily with less stuff of all kinds. and thank you Tasmin for your message too. this will be over and out - it\'s been a pleasure to be part of this blog and amongst you all. Thank you to Ruth for making it so easy to engage with. Warmest wishes Helen
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