Dr. Ricarda Bigolin
Details
College: School of Fashion & Textiles
Department: Fashion & Textiles
Campus: City Campus Australia
ricarda.bigolin@rmit.edu.au
Open to
- Media enquiries
- Masters Research or PhD student supervision
- Collaborative projects
- Industry Projects
About
Dr Ricarda Bigolin is Associate Professor of Fashion Design at RMIT University, working at the intersection of critical and practice-based fashion. They hold visiting roles at the Swedish School of Textiles (2013–) and ArtEZ University of the Arts, Arnhem, in the MA Critical Fashion Practice (2018–). Their research affirms alternate fashion practices through cultural, community and industry partnerships, fusing archival research with creative practice to reveal regenerative approaches. With Lecturer Chantal Kirby, they form D&K, an award-winning, women-led collective using fashion as a tool of social, cultural, political and environmental imagination, with work shown Internationally including the NGV Triennial, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, and OCAT, China.
Supervisor projects
- The Influence of Temporality, Nostalgia, and Narrative on the Emotional Durability of Clothing: Historicism, Historical Practice, and Contemporary Approaches to Fashion Sustainability.
- 28 Aug 2026
- Double Take: Text, Garment, and Filmed ‘Replica’s’ as a site of production in Costume and Fashion practice
- 1 Jun 2024
- ONE PUBLISHES TO FIND COMRADES: Critical Fashion Publishing, Publishing Critical Fashion Practice
- 10 Jan 2024
- Language and Love: An analysis of designing, making and writing a conceptual contemporary artistic practice of multilayered language installations
- 9 Dec 2023
- Who are you wearing?
- 15 Nov 2023
- Acts of wearing
- 19 Jul 2023
- Navigating the Social and the Commercial: Marketing Fashion-Based Social Enterprise
- 19 Aug 2022
- Time-Images and Digital Fashion Sculpture: Investigating the In-Between Image in Fashion
- 4 Aug 2020
- Memories through Miniature Garments Re-enlivening Historical Australian Fashion Practice
- 1 Nov 2018
- Mode and Mode: Tactics for Publishing Fashion in the Margins
- 31 Aug 2018
- Wearing Fashion Images. Reimagining Fashion Images Through Material and Participatory Fashion Practices.
- 8 Feb 2018
- Embracing mindfulness: Enriching slow fashion for human and environmental wellbeing
- 1 Mar 2017
- Fashion Communication and Ageist Sentiment in the Australian Fashion Industry
- 2 Jun 2016
- Intra-active Fashion
- 30 Jul 2015
- Invitation to the Party: Lively Exhibition-Making for Unruly Fashion Practice
- 12 Sep 2014
Teaching interests
Supervisor projects:
Current:
Hanka Van Der Voet, PhD (Fashion and Textiles), ONE PUBLISHES TO FIND COMRADES: Critical Fashion Publishing, Publishing Critical Fashion Practice
Shona Stark, PhD (Architecture and Design) Language and love as performative and participatory practice within exhibition, public and introspective space
Femke De Vries, PhD (Fashion and Textiles), Who are you wearing?
Lucia Cuba Oroza, PhD (Fashion and Textiles), Acts of wearing
Amanda Nichols, PhD (Fashion and Textiles), 'Repeat, Replay: Replicating methods from the past to inform contemporary fashion and costume practices'
Kate Meakin, PhD (Fashion and Textiles), 'Front, back and side effects - the art of framing fashion'
Completed:
Jon Hewit, (PhD) (Media and Communications), Navigating the Social and the Commercial: Marketing Fashion-Based Social Enterprise
Alex Kirwood, M Des (Fashion & Textiles), (Key)framing fashion.
Remie Cibis, PhD (Fashion and Textiles), 'Fashionable Looks: Image, Garment, Wearer'.
Mathew Linde, PhD (Fashion and Textiles), 'Invitation to the Party: Lively Exhibition-Making for Unruly Fashion Practice'.
Thomas McEvoy, M Des (Fashion & Textiles), 'Memories through Miniature Garments: Re-enlivening Historical Australian Fashion Practice'.
Laura Gardner, PhD (Fashion and Textiles), 'Mode and mode: tactics for publishing fashion in the margins'.
Hayley Thompson, M Des (Fashion & Textiles), 'Embracing mindfulness: Enriching slow fashion for human and environmental wellbeing'.
Programs:
PhD (Fashion and Textiles)
M Des (Fashion and Textiles)
Master of Fashion (Design)
Bachelor of Fashion (Design) (Honours)
Research interests
Bigolin’s research explores various aspects of the social, cultural, ethical and political context of fashion production and consumption with a focus on practice research. Ricarda has collaborated as PI on numerous research collaborations with the Swedish School of Textiles funded Swedish Research Council and Vinnova. The includes developing a range of design methods that highlight materials reuse, body, performance and material reuse and upcyling for fashion design. Alongside this Ricarda maintains a rigorous practice as D&K with core collaborator Chantal Kirby, that present their practice research regularly in exhibitions, performances, films and publications internationally.
Research and Supervision Keywords
Critical and Expanded Fashion Practice, Wearing and Performing Fashion, Material Reuse and Upcycling, Fashion Design Methods, Fashion Image and Writing, Outlier Fashion and Dress Practices, Fashion Garments, Materials and Use, Historical Dress and Archive Practices
