Critical Costume 2026 Exhibit.
Travelling Pedagogies in a Pocket is an interactive, micro-curated work that explores how costume knowledge is produced, disseminated, and transformed through tactile and participatory encounters. The installation comprises an array of pockets in varied shapes and sizes which position the pockets simultaneously as costume elements and as pedagogical containers that invite embodied inquiry. Each pocket contains a concise, cited fragment of research relating to costume, costume practice, or the philosophy of costume, accompanied by critical questions designed to prompt reflection. These textual fragments operate as portable pedagogical devices: small enough to be held in the hand, yet expansive in the conceptual journeys they enable. The work frames the act of reaching into a pocket as a mode of knowledge exchange. Opening, retrieving, unfolding, reading, returning and adding new reflections become performative gestures through which visitors participate in a shared process of meaning-making. By foregrounding these haptic and relational actions, Travelling Pedagogies in a Pocket highlights costume as a site where materiality, imagination and critical inquiry intersect and where learning is enacted through curiosity and embodied engagement. Travelling Pedagogies in a Pocket emphasises the multiplicity of costume research and its capacity to be co-authored by those who encounter it. Visitors are invited to contribute handwritten reflections and responses, thereby extending and diversifying the content of each pocket. As these responses accumulate, the installation develops into a dynamic, participatory archive in which knowledge is continually reframed by successive encounters. This evolving assemblage makes visible the ways in which costume knowledge can travel both informally and collaboratively. Through its intimate and playful form of engagement, Travelling Pedagogies in a Pocket demonstrates how critical inquiry within costume studies can be activated through interactive installations, offering a model of learning that is tactile and continually reshaped through collective participation
Photography: Joshua Gianoli
Model: Daisy Gianoli
Costume: Susan Marshall. Pockets: Susan Marshall and Costume Design students from AFOL Moda Milano: Alice Archinti, Elisa Battivelli, Francesco Carcione, Alice Paggi, Matilde Romano.
Dramaturgical Advice: Gita Hacham