Textile Takeover

Join Valerie Wilson, the Ulster Folk Museum Curator of Textiles for Fashion and Function – a talk on the 100 years of purses, bags and pockets from the Ulster Folk Museum textiles collection.

The textiles collection at The Ulster Folk Museum has a fine collection of fashion accessories dating from 1850 to present day, including bags, purses, and pockets in a variety of shapes and styles.  This talk will take you through 100 years of fashion, function, and frivolity, in a colourful overview of this delightful collection.

In this talk, Malú Colorín – co-founder of Fibreshed Ireland – will give us an overview of the current state of the textile industry in the island of Ireland, with a focus on natural fibres. She will then offer some invitations to prefigurate or co-create the kind of collaborative and regenerative textile ecosystem we want to live in.

Fibreshed Ireland is a community-supported movement building networks to craft a regenerative Irish textile system based on local fibre, local dyes & local labour.

Woolstore was started by Katarina Hruskova, a crocheter who couldn't understand why it was impossible to find 100% Irish wool in yarn shops, on an island full of sheep. On discovery that a vital step in the supply chain of producing Irish wool from sheep to fibre is missing from the Island of Ireland, Katrina has been working to put the value chain back together. Come along and hear about this journey and why it’s so important for farmers, makers and our environment.

Join us to hear from Jane McCann, a textile-led multi-disciplinary designer based in Northern Ireland. Throughout her career Jane has been an innovator in textile use and design. Her contemporary work explores the revitalization of heritage natural fibres including flax, hemp and wool for a range of applications. In this short talk Jane will share some of her recent projects, including her new brand Óna - inclusive and sustainable design with substance, shaped by real landscapes and real expertise.

Professor Jane McCann is a textile-led multi-disciplinary designer based in Northern Ireland. Her leadership of the unique MA Performance Sportswear programme, merging expertise in fashion, textiles, and graphic design together with marketing and clothing physiology, earned her the Sir Misha Black Award for innovation in Design Education (2004).

Building on her subsequent leadership of cross-disciplinary, collaborative research in smart wearables at the WT Research Group at University of Wales, Jane’s most recent publication, Smart Clothes and Wearable Technology, Second Edition (2023), is widely cited in the emerging fields of electronic and smart textiles.

Jane’s contemporary work in the revitalization of heritage natural fibres including flax, hemp and wool, focuses on innovative clothing applications as well as bio-composite products, for applications such as interior design and furniture.