fash­ion design as a tool for resilience

Dr. Chomwan Weer­a­woraw­it-Huang is a cul­tur­al strate­gist, cura­tor, and co-founder of PHILIP HUANG, a cross-dis­ci­pli­nary brand root­ed in arti­sanal futures, mate­r­i­al intel­li­gence, and com­mu­ni­ty-based col­lab­o­ra­tion. Her prac­tice moves flu­id­ly between con­tem­po­rary art, fash­ion, and sys­tems thinking—bringing con­cep­tu­al clar­i­ty to tac­tile process­es of mak­ing and liv­ing. She holds a PhD in intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty and has worked across law, pol­i­cy, design, and exper­i­men­tal cin­e­ma. As a cura­tor of the Bangkok Art Bien­nale in 2022 and founder of Cin­e­ma for All, she devel­ops frame­works that dis­solve binaries—tradition and spec­u­la­tion, sur­face and depth, slow­ness and strat­e­gy. She is also the founder of Mys­te­ri­ous Ordi­nary, a con­sul­tan­cy focused on cul­tur­al strat­e­gy, intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty and inter­dis­ci­pli­nary cre­ation. Chomwan col­lab­o­rates close­ly with artists, arti­sans, and thinkers across dis­ci­plines, includ­ing Apichat­pong Weerasethakul and Rirkrit Tira­vani­ja, to build long-term cul­tur­al ecosys­tems ground­ed in process, place, and the poet­ics of the in-between.

Philip Fim­mano is a trend ana­lyst and con­sul­tant at Trend Union, work­ing in pub­lish­ing and strate­gic stud­ies for inter­na­tion­al com­pa­nies in fash­ion, tex­tiles, inte­ri­ors and lifestyle. As a design cura­tor, he has cre­at­ed exhi­bi­tions for promi­nent muse­ums and insti­tu­tions, includ­ing the Arn­hem Fash­ion Bien­nale, Lille Métro­pole 2020 Inter­na­tion­al Design Cap­i­tal, Tex­tiel­mu­se­um in Tilburg, Design Muse­um Holon and 21_21 Design SIGHT in Tokyo. In 2011, Philip co-found­ed Talk­ing Tex­tiles with Li Edelkoort; an ongo­ing ini­tia­tive to pro­mote aware­ness and inno­va­tion in tex­tiles through tour­ing exhi­bi­tions, an annu­al pub­li­ca­tion, a design prize and free edu­ca­tion­al pro­grammes. He is the co-author of the design book A Labour of Love (Lec­turis, 2020) and the co-founder of the World Hope Forum, an online plat­form for cre­ative com­mu­ni­ty build­ing and sus­tain­able prac­tice. Philip is the men­tor of Polimoda’s Fash­ion Trend Fore­cast­ing mas­ters in Flo­rence. He is also a found­ing board mem­ber of New York Tex­tile Month and serves on the boards of F.I.T.’s Tex­tile Depart­ment, the Inter­na­tion­al Folk Art Mar­ket in San­ta Fe and the Xtant tex­tile fes­ti­val in Mallorca.

Mala Siamp­tani is a design prac­ti­tion­er with sub­stan­tial expe­ri­ence in the research, devel­op­ment and deliv­ery of cre­ative projects in Fash­ion, Design and Art sec­tor. After obtain­ing two Mas­ters degrees and cur­rent­ly con­duct­ing a PhD research, Mala runs her stu­dio in east Lon­don spe­cial­iz­ing in the design and man­u­fac­ture of prod­ucts and sculp­tur­al objects. Mala has designed and man­u­fac­tured jew­ellery and objects that have been exhib­it­ed inter­na­tion­al­ly. Fol­low­ing exten­sive mate­r­i­al research, Mala’s work attempts to con­nect tra­di­tion­al craft with dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy. This is evi­dent through her work in edu­ca­tion, where she has been pro­vid­ing up-to-date knowl­edge, exper­tise and expe­ri­ence of pro­fes­sion­al prac­tice in a spe­cif­ic 3D/Jewellery spe­cial­ist sub­ject area. Mala deliv­ers work­shops and pre­sen­ta­tions on exper­i­men­tal process­es and the future of mate­r­i­al cul­ture. She has recent­ly pre­sent­ed her research projects at the Glob­al fash­ion Con­fer­ence (UK), the Cre­ativ­i­ty Researchers Con­fer­ence and the 1st World Sym­po­sium for Fash­ion, Jew­ellery and acces­sories (Shang­hai). Through her design work and research, Mala demon­strates both the use and need for mate­r­i­al research and its acknowl­edg­ment of expe­ri­en­tial knowl­edge to advance craft think­ing and practice.