Designing for Absence

Simon Thorogood is a distinctive research-led fashion artist and designer, academic, and creative consultant whose work sits at the intersection of fashion, digital media, music, architecture and critical theory.

He is part of a generation of British experimental fashion practitioners associated with the intellectual culture surrounding Central Saint Martins during the 1990s and is acknowledged as one of the very first designers to integrate digital technology and coding into fashion practice, presentation and communication.

He approaches fashion as an expanded cultural medium, focussing on generative systems, audience interaction, and synaesthetic experience to create ‘unfinished’ design outcomes.

He has published and exhibited his work extensively in museums, galleries and universities internationally, and his garments are archived in some of the most renowned costume collections in the world, including London’s V&A Museum.

Within academia, he has established innovative research studios, developed forward-looking R&I initiatives, authored original courses for PhD learning landscapes, and has provide visionary leadership across a range of undergraduate and postgraduate design course.

Simon continues to push perceptions of design, championing progressive futures that compliment and extend conventional fashion education, practice, theory, enterprise, and partnerships.

He is currently Director of Fashion and Director of Learning and Teaching at the Cambridge School of Visual and Performing Arts, CSVPA.