Month: January 2026

This blog post includes my presentation slides. Thank you!

When I first began this project, I thought I was researching discomfort. What I’ve come to realise is that I was actually researching silence, the kind that sits quietly in classrooms, between glances, beneath feedback, or inside someone’s decision not to speak. Silence doesn’t always mean exclusion, but it often points to something unacknowledged. And this project became, for me, a way of paying attention to that.

In a very early stage of this ARP unit, I had added a four objective: To test whether co-creating a brief Cultural Sensitivity and Dress Guidelines can enhance mutual understanding of self-expression across cultures at a HE creative space such as UAL. I imagined it not as a policy, but as a shared artefact: something that might signal care, create reflection, or offer a bridge between worlds that don’t always meet. 

But the findings make clear why that was premature. The terrain is not only complex; it is politically and emotionally charged in ways that make any “guideline” vulnerable to flattening nuance, hardening polarities, or being taken up as a tool of control. What I can responsibly take forward at this stage is not a draft document, but a clearer sense of what needs to exist before any co-created principles could be ethical: sustained listening, careful facilitation, and shared language that can hold disagreement without immediately converting it into complaint, discipline, or moral judgement.

I have had to reflect on my own positionality in a more disciplined way. I come from fashion, where visibility and aesthetic experimentation are often treated as forms of confidence, creativity, even legitimacy. I am also someone of faith, for whom dress can carry meanings of dignity, privacy, and intention. Holding these orientations together has shaped my research instinct: I do not want to “solve” dress through rules, nor romanticise self-expression as automatically inclusive. The data has pushed me toward a more difficult, but more honest, stance: inclusion in creative HE requires not only permission for difference, but cultural literacy, interpretive humility, and better ways of speaking when something feels uncomfortable.

This project has not given me a neat solution. It has given me a direction. If we are serious about belonging (not just inclusion), we need to attend to what gets decoded quickly, what becomes contextual “normal”, and what people choose not to say because the social cost feels too high. I may return to the idea of a Cultural Sensitivity and Dress Guidelines in the future, perhaps as part of a wider co-creation process involving staff, more students, and faith groups. But for now, the most ethical move is to stay in inquiry. To allow the conversation to remain open.

As I continue teaching across CSM and LCF, I will carry this learning with me: not as a fixed outcome, but as a habit of attention. I may not always get it right, but I will keep asking: Who is in the room? Who is not speaking? And what might it take for them to feel like they belong as they are?

Final note: Many thanks to the PgCert course team and my tutorial group peers for their insightful feedback throughout this journey. And a special thanks to my tutor, John O’Reilly, for his generous support and guidance throughout the development of this Action Research Project.

In my earlier posts, I framed this project as a response to a quiet but persistent tension: creative education often celebrates radical self-expression, yet that same freedom can produce discomfort, disconnection, and unspoken questions about boundaries and belonging.

I also described why I chose a small exploratory design (focus group plus two asynchronous follow-up interviews), precisely because this topic can be hard to voice publicly.

What follows is what my primary data genuinely shows, including where it did not show what I initially expected. It surfaced clear patterns, but also challenged my initial expectation. Three themes emerged:

• Theme 1: Dress gets ‘decoded’ fast, and the decoding is rarely neutral
• Theme 2: ‘Anything goes’ is more myth than reality, and context quietly governs what feels acceptable
• Theme 3: Faith and modesty showed up more through silence, self-monitoring, and sanction imaginaries than through open debate

1) Dress gets “decoded” fast, and the decoding is rarely neutral

Although I used AI-generated outfit stimuli to reduce personal exposure and keep discussion on clothing features to start with, the focus group quickly demonstrated how dress becomes a shortcut for reading identity, values, and “type of person.” The first Miro activity made this visible: participants added in the Words Walls that moved rapidly beyond description into social inference.

Across the four outfits, participants attached not only aesthetic labels (“minimalist”, “loud”, “DIY”, “layered”) but also moral and cultural scripts. Outfit 2, in particular, attracted high-intensity narratives (“attention-seeking”, “unapologetic”, “unapproachable”, “cold”), while Outfit 3 was repeatedly positioned as “approachable”, “blending in”, “has a job”, “sorted”. This matters because it shows how inclusion issues can begin long before anyone speaks: the atmosphere of a room is partly shaped by the silent interpretations people are already making about each other’s bodies and clothing.

One focus group moment captured this reflexive awareness clearly. When discussing discomfort, a participant reframed it as a mirror, not a verdict:

“My take on me feeling uneasy about something … it says something about me, rather than them. … I shouldn’t just judge people by their clothes.” (P2, focus group)

That comment does not erase the existence of discomfort, but it shows a key dynamic: students often manage tension by turning judgement inward, trying to be “a good inclusive subject,” even when the reaction is real.

2) “Anything goes” is more myth than reality, and context quietly governs what feels acceptable

A strong pattern across the discussion was not a simple permissive culture, but contextual permission. Several participants argued that the same outfit reads differently depending on institutional setting, audience, and expectations of professionalism. One participant contrasted “fashion school normality” with other university environments:

“It’s very normal in fashion school to wear something like that. But then if you were in a business school, it would be seen as more like a big statement, because in business school I think people come from more conservative backgrounds.” (P2, focus group)

Others described how visible political messaging or high-exposure styling can become read as disruptive depending on space, even if that disruption is not the wearer’s intent. The “decoded outfit” maps reinforced this: Outfit 1 (with visible text) was largely placed as socially/culturally coherent and symbolic, while Outfit 2 was clustered as disruptive and culturally ambiguous, suggesting that participants felt more unsure about how to interpret it and how it would land on others.

This tension sharpened when the group moved from “would it bother you?” to “should there be boundaries?” Several participants did not demand restrictions, but they did invoke the idea of shared norms and mutual responsibility. 

This is a crucial finding for my research question: creative freedom does not remove norms, it relocates them into the implicit, the contextual, and the emotionally negotiated. That is exactly where faith and modesty tensions can become invisible but powerful.

3) Faith and modesty showed up more through silence, self-monitoring, and escalation routes than through open debate

Here is the honest part: in the focus group, faith and modesty were not discussed as explicitly or as centrally as my framing might predict. The most visible “faith/modesty” element in the group data was indirect: the way participants placed outfits on the intent map (for example, Outfit 3 was consistently positioned toward “consideration” and “private/modest,” while Outfit 2 was placed toward “self-expressive” and “visible”). But the group’s verbal conversation was dominated by general inclusion language (avoid judging, be respectful, context matters), rather than sustained engagement with religious modesty as lived practice.

So, in what ways do dress, faith, and modesty intersect at UAL-like creative environments?

• They intersect through interpretation: students and staff do not just “see outfits,” they read them as signals of identity, politics, sexuality, class, morality, and social intent, often at speed and with high confidence. That interpretive layer shapes who feels safe to participate.

• They intersect through the difficulty of naming discomfort: the focus group leaned toward “I shouldn’t judge” and “it depends on context,” while the interviews revealed more direct boundary language. The method itself demonstrates how careful and constrained these conversations can be in public settings.

My data suggests that surfacing can help, but only if it is scaffolded. The Miro mapping worked because it externalised reactions (words, assumptions, comfort ratings) and gave participants something to point at. But it also revealed a risk: when you invite people to name assumptions, you will surface stereotypes. I don’t see this as a failure, but as the material of the problem. 

By the time I reached the data collection phase of the research, I had already gathered a great deal of insight from my literature review and critical reflections, but I knew that what I was looking for couldn’t be found in texts alone. I wanted to surface unspoken discomforts, unheard perspectives, and lived tensions around dress, modesty, and belonging in creative HE spaces. To do this, I designed a small, exploratory qualitative study combining a focus group with two asynchronous individual interviews.

This research was never about generalising. Instead, it was about making space for the subtle, emotional, and sometimes contradictory experiences that arise in classrooms where radical self-expression and religious/cultural modesty coexist, sometimes harmoniously, sometimes not.

RESEARCH DESIGN AND APPROACH

I adopted a qualitative, interpretivist approach rooted in the belief that knowledge is co-constructed, especially when working with embodied and culturally situated issues such as dress and identity. Inspired by reflexive thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke, 2021), I allowed themes to emerge through iterative engagement with the data, rather than imposing a rigid framework from the outset.

Methodologically, this took shape through one focus group, followed by two asynchronous individual interviews with participants from that same group. I added the interviews deliberately, not as an “extra”, but as a way to extend care and create a different kind of space: slower, more private, and less shaped by group dynamics. The intention was to give participants the opportunity to share anything they may have felt hesitant to voice in the moment, and to do so individually and anonymously, at their own pace.

Interestingly, it was the move into asynchronous, one-to-one reflection that most clearly confirmed the sensitivity of this topic. What emerged in those follow-up responses was not simply “more data”, but a clearer sense of how challenging it can feel to name discomfort around dress, faith, and perceived respect within a culture of inclusivity. In that sense, the method became part of the finding: the need for anonymity and time was itself evidence of how carefully these conversations are currently held, and how easily they can be silenced.

DATA COLLECTION

1. Focus Group: Tabling the Conversation

The focus group brought together CSM MA level students from a mix of cultural and religious backgrounds, including those who identified as believers, agnostic, and non-religious. We explored a set of AI-generated outfit images designed to open up reflection across a broad spectrum, from bold, revealing looks to more modest, covered styles.

On Creating the Outfit Stimuli for the Focus Group

For this stage of the project, I chose not to use photographs of real students. Instead, I generated four outfit images using AI, drawing on multiple visual references that I input to produce variation in silhouette, coverage, texture, colour, and styling detail. The aim was not to create “representative” students, but to produce non-identifiable visual stimuli that could be discussed more safely.

This decision was shaped by ethics and pedagogy. Because the project explores how dress can trigger feelings of comfort, discomfort, neutrality, or belonging in shared creative learning spaces, using real students risked shifting attention from the outfit to the person, and inviting judgements or assumptions about identity, even with consent. AI helped keep the focus on observable features of dress while reducing the risk of personal exposure.

Using AI also supported methodological clarity. I designed the four outfits to differ across visually verifiable variables, including coverage, opacity, layering, silhouette volume, and the presence or absence of text or graphics. This created a more consistent basis for discussion and helped me separate description from interpretation when analysing participant responses.

Below, I present a short, objective description of the four outfits, alongside a comparison table focusing exclusively on observable variables. The descriptions intentionally avoid interpretation or value judgement, establishing a neutral baseline for later analysis. I also include screenshots documenting the process of using ChatGPT to generate and refine the outfit stimuli from multiple visual references, to make the image-production method transparent.

Here is the Miro board I used during the focus group.

I’ve broken it down into sections and shared as screenshots to improve readability.

Below I include my moderator notes, the session transcript and the participant consent forms links:

• Focus Group Moderation Notes
• Focus Group Transcript
• Participant Consent Forms

2. Asynchronous Individual Interviews: Listening More Closely

After the focus group, I invited participants to share further reflections through asynchronous individual interviews, mainly to reduce the social pressure of speaking “in the room” and to offer a quieter, more anonymous space for anything that felt too delicate, unfinished, or hard to phrase publicly. What these follow-ups gave me was a slightly different register of insight: participants wrote more openly about how personal style can feel, and how real the fear of “unintentionally offending someone” can be when commenting on clothes tied to identity. 

One participant described the experience as unexpectedly introspective, noticing how quickly we attach cultural connotations to colours, accessories, and silhouettes, and how they “struggled” to express their perceptions while still respecting the intent behind someone’s style. 

Another reflected on context and behaviour as shaping interpretation, and noted the group’s hesitation to voice anything that might sound negative, suggesting that more time and probing could have surfaced richer disagreement. 

Collectively, these interviews didn’t just add detail; they confirmed the sensitivity of the topic and the careful self-monitoring it can evoke.

• Here are the interview transcripts

References

Braun, V. and Clarke, V. (2021) Thematic Analysis: A Practical Guide. London: SAGE Publications Ltd.

This research emerged from a moment that might have seemed minor at the time but stayed with me. After a seminar, a student quietly shared that she had felt uncomfortable engaging in the discussion due to how another peer was dressed. Her concern wasn’t rooted in moral judgement or conservatism; it was about emotional safety, a sense of disconnection, and the absence of shared boundaries in the space. It raised uncomfortable questions I couldn’t ignore: in a creative institution where we actively encourage radical self-expression, what happens when that very freedom creates discomfort for others? Whose sense of belonging gets protected, and whose discomfort goes unspoken?

This project is rooted in that question. It seeks to explore how students and staff in creative HE spaces like UAL navigate the tensions between cultural and faith-informed modesty and dominant cultures of inclusivity that often promote a “maximalist” approach to dress, where anything goes, and everything is valid. While this principle may appear open and liberating, it risks marginalising those whose dress choices are shaped by modesty, reverence, or religious conviction.

Before we carry on, it is important to distinguish between inclusion and belonging. Two terms that are often used interchangeably in institutional discourse, yet carry very different implications. As Strayhorn (2018) explains, inclusion refers to being invited or allowed to participate, typically framed as an institutional action: a policy, a gesture, a structural change designed to allow someone “in.” It is conditional, often focused on access or representation. Belonging, by contrast, is relational, feeling accepted, valued, and safe to be fully oneself. It is not something granted, but something experienced (Pleet-Odle, 2023). While inclusion may allow someone to be present, belonging means they feel safe enough to participate fully, without needing to assimilate or suppress key parts of who they are. This distinction is particularly relevant when thinking about dress and expression of one self through fashion. A student might be “included” in a space where all styles of dress are technically allowed, but if the cultural codes in that space reward only visibility, skin, or transgression, they may never feel they truly “belong”. Inclusion without cultural literacy risks becoming performative, and belonging requires attention to the unspoken, the relational, and the emotional dynamics of power, especially around the body.

According to HESA (2025), over 44% of UK students identify as Christian and Muslim, two belief systems where modesty is not simply a personal preference but often a spiritual or ethical imperative. Yet modesty is systematically under-theorised in higher education policy, pedagogy, and creative curriculum design. It is rarely addressed in institutional narratives around belonging or inclusivity, despite being a central element of identity for a significant proportion of the student body. As the Modest Fashion and Policy report from UAL (2022) highlights, modesty in secular spaces is frequently misunderstood, misread as repression, or seen as incompatible with contemporary feminist or creative values.

This misreading has real consequences. When modesty is met with silence or suspicion, students and staff who practise it may feel unable to fully participate, or they may internalise the idea that their mode of dress,  and, by extension, their presence is somehow out of place. 

Literature across multiple fields underscores this complexity. Oliver et al. (2022) show that what educators wear can shape students’ judgements of credibility and professionalism, highlighting the social and affective “work” that dress performs in learning environments. Ibrahim et al. (2016), examining moral education and dress expectations in higher education, similarly suggest that institutional norms around “appropriate” appearance can be culturally coded and unevenly experienced, with students reading them through different lenses of identity, morality and resistance. In school settings, Gajardo (2015) analysis of bans on religious symbols in British schools makes a parallel point from an equality-law perspective: rules framed as general, uniform standards can still operate as indirect discrimination when they disproportionately constrain pupils whose religious or cultural practices involve particular garments or symbols, thereby reproducing dominant norms while maintaining the appearance of neutrality and inclusion.

Waite et al. (2024) offer valuable insight into how university students articulate the relationship between appearance, wellbeing, and inclusion. Their study reveals that concerns around dress and appearance significantly impact students’ mental health, sense of belonging, and willingness to participate in university life, with many describing moments of comparison, discomfort, and invisibility. Crucially, participants highlighted the need for intentional, culturally aware, and genuinely inclusive practices, not surface-level representation or tokenistic gestures. As several students stressed, inclusion only works when people feel their identity is not just permitted but valued, and this includes appearance, culture, and visible difference. For creative HE contexts like UAL, the question isn’t just whether everyone can dress freely, it’s whether everyone feels seen and respected in the process. 

My research doesn’t aim to resolve the tension, at least not yet. Instead, it seeks to table a conversation that remains largely absent from institutional discourse: one that surfaces unspoken experiences, discomforts, and silences; that centres those often overlooked in discussions of inclusion; and that asks how we might co-create more respectful learning environments where differing values around dress, including modesty, are acknowledged rather than sidelined.

These reflections continue to raise questions for me: How can we make space for the full spectrum of self-presentation within our creative classrooms? And are we truly considering how appearance norms, both spoken and unspoken, shape who feels welcome, who feels seen, and who quietly withdraws? These are some of the initial provocations that now guide my primary data collection.

References

Aune, K., Lewis, R. and Molokotos-Liederman, L. (2021) Modest fashion in UK women’s working life: A report for employers, HR professionals, religious organisations and policymakers. London: University of the Arts London and Coventry University. Available at: https://www.arts.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0030/362370/modest_policy_FINAL.pdf [Accessed: 20 January 2026].

Gajardo Falcón, J. (2015) ‘Erica Howard. Law and the Wearing of Religious Symbols. European bans on the wearing of religious symbols in education, Routledge, Londres, 2012 (223 pp.)’ Revista de Derecho (Valdivia), 28(2), pp. 265–267. doi: 10.4067/S0718-09502015000200014.

HESA (2025) Higher Education Student Statistics: UK, 2023/24 – Religious Affiliation. [Online] Available at: https://www.hesa.ac.uk/news/20-03-2025/sb271-higher-education-student-statistics/numbers [Accessed 20 Jan 2026].

Ibrahim, R., Mohamed, S. and Salim, N. (2022) The Role of Moral Education on the Dress Code in Higher Learning Institutions. Journal of Education and Social Sciences, 20(1), pp. 15–26.

Oliver, M.B., Moshontz, H. and Green, M.C. (2021) Fitted: The Impact of Academics’ Attire on Students’ Evaluations and Intentions. Teaching of Psychology, 47(3), pp. 390–410. doi:10.1177/0098628320938776

Pleet-Odle, A. (2023) ‘Inclusion & belonging’, Joyful Inclusion, 26 October. Available at: https://www.joyfulinclusion.com/blog/inclusion-and-belonging [Accessed: 28 January 2026].

Strayhorn, T.L. (2018) College Students’ Sense of Belonging: A Key to Educational Success for All Students. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge.

Waite, E., Parnell, J., Guest, E., Harcourt, D., Stokes, R. and Slater, A. (2024) ‘“Make sure that everybody feels there is a space for them”: Understanding and promoting appearance inclusivity at university’, Body Image, 51, 101809. doi: 10.1016/j.bodyim.2024.101809.

UAL (2022) Modest Fashion and Policy Report. London: University of the Arts London. Available at: https://www.arts.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0024/274074/modest_policy_FINAL.pdf [Accessed 25 Jan 2026].

My name is Elisenda, and I’m an AL at UAL, working across CSM with the MA Innovation Management and at LCF in the BA Fashion Buying & Merchandising, the MA Fashion Design Management, and the MBA Fashion Business, where I contribute to the Innovation and Fashion Business Futures unit. My background spans fashion styling, entrepreneurship, and tech-driven innovation across both industry and academia. I collaborate with fashion-tech companies, supporting the development of algorithmic styling journeys for e-commerce, and I’m currently pursuing a PhD exploring how AI-driven fashion recommendations intersect with human values and aesthetic decision-making.

Whether working in digital retail spaces or the classroom, my practice has always centred on how we express who we are through what we wear. Over time, this interest has deepened: moving from questions of aesthetic preference into the politics of self-presentation, especially in creative learning environments. In these spaces, dress is not just a mode of expression but often a site of negotiation: between visibility and discretion, freedom and discomfort, belonging and difference.

This Action Research Project emerged directly from reflections from previous posts, particularly a moment that stayed with me long after one of my sessions finished. A student approached me after class and, in a confidential and respectful tone, shared that she had felt deeply uncomfortable taking part in the discussion because of how one of her peers was dressed. Her response wasn’t about moral judgement, but about the emotional difficulty of feeling out of place in an environment where full visibility is often the default. That moment made me pause. What are the unspoken norms about self-expression in creative institutions like UAL? When we say “everything is accepted,” who might feel excluded, silenced, or unseen?

As John O’Reilly said, sometimes the task is simply “to table the conversation.” This research seeks to do just that; to create space for the often-unheard voices around dress, modesty, and belonging. Through this research, I aim to explore how students and staff with diverse beliefs and backgrounds navigate inclusion and discomfort in relation to how we dress in shared learning spaces. My goal is not to resolve the tension, but to better understand it, and to invite an open dialogue within institutions like UAL.

This leads me to my core research question:

In what ways do expressions of dress, faith, and modesty intersect within HE creative learning environments such as UAL; and how might surfacing students’ and staff’s experiences help initiate more open conversations around inclusion, discomfort, and mutual respect in how we dress in shared spaces?

See here the Ethical Action Plan document.