Manchester Fashion Week 2026
This September, I had the opportunity to present Cotton Chains at Manchester Fashion Week, bringing a body of work that had been sitting in my archive for years into a physical exhibition for the first time.
Rather than presenting a traditional fashion show, I created an installation exploring Manchester’s textile history, the cotton industry, slavery, exploitation and the connections between the textiles of the past and the fashion industry today.
A project years in the making
The starting point for Cotton Chains goes back to my Masters at Manchester School of Art.
During my studies, I became increasingly interested in Manchester’s relationship with cotton and the enormous industry that shaped the city. Behind the familiar story of Manchester as Cottonopolis is a much more complicated history, including the dependence of the textile industry on cotton grown by enslaved people.
I began creating textile prints and artwork around these ideas, exploring the physical and metaphorical connections between cotton, industry and exploitation.
Then Covid happened.
The work was never exhibited in the way I had originally intended, and the prints remained in my archive.
Years later, when Manchester Fashion Week offered me the opportunity to create an installation rather than a traditional runway presentation, it felt like the right time to revisit the work and develop it further.
From cotton chains to modern supply chains
The title Cotton Chains reflects the different connections running through the project.
There are the literal chains associated with enslavement, the cotton chains that connected plantations to mills, and the supply chains that continue to connect the fashion industry today.
I wanted the exhibition to encourage people to think about what sits behind the clothes we wear.
Fashion can be beautiful, expressive and creative, but it also has a complicated history. The systems that allow clothing to be produced and consumed can involve exploitation, inequality and human cost.
For me, exploring those connections through textiles felt particularly important.
Manchester Print
For my new Manchester print, I researched historic maps of the city through the John Rylands Library and combined these references with drawings and watercolours of Manchester's mill architecture.
I also started with photographs and images I had collected around the city, collaging them together to understand how I could translate the different elements into a textile design.
This process of collecting, drawing, painting and layering is central to how I work. I wanted the Manchester print to feel like more than an architectural or historical record. It needed to become something personal and visual, seen through my perspective as a designer.
The print was first shown at Manchester Fashion Week and will now become part of a very limited edition collection, including a 100% silk scarf.
Bringing nature into an industrial story
One of my favourite parts of creating the installation was collaborating with Fusion Florist.
The exhibition was rooted in Manchester's cotton famine and the history of the correlation between the strikes within the mills helping to abolish slavery in the USA. This is why the prints show chains weaving though cotton plants its symbolic of my research. The Fusion Florist really took on board my vision and concept and from this created beautiful floral structures incorporating cotton plants, with spray gold chains beautifully weaving through them.
Working with Fusion Florist allowed us to create another visual layer within the exhibition rather than simply decorating the space. The botanical elements became part of the story and the built environment.
A personal connection
Although Cotton Chains began as an academic and creative exploration, the project became increasingly personal as it developed.
As a mixed-race designer with family connections to both the North West and the Caribbean, the histories explored within the project sit across parts of my own family story.
Manchester's textile history and the Caribbean are often discussed as separate histories, but for me there are connections between them that are impossible to ignore.
That is one of the reasons I wanted to revisit this work now. It felt a perfect platform to showcase this work at Manchester Fashion Week.
From exhibition to collection
Seeing Cotton Chains finally exist as a physical installation after years of sitting in my archive was incredibly meaningful.
But I don't want the project to end when the exhibition comes down.
A limited edition collection Is now available to shop when you sign up to the mailing list. 100% silk scarves in limited edition prints. To shop sign up here.
The collection is intentionally small.
Thank you to Manchester Fashion Week for giving me the opportunity to bring this work into the city, to everyone who visited and engaged with the exhibition, and especially to Fusion Florist for helping me bring the installation to life.
This project started with research, drawings and questions about the history woven into our clothes.
Isabelle x