Nonhuman animals captured on fashion pages, cut loose.
While nonhuman animals are vastly present on fashion pages, their effective transformation into garments and stereotypical representations simultaneously erases them as actual beings with lives of their own. Part of a western human-centric cultural paradigm, this invisibility directly affects our behaviour towards nonhuman animals. As such fashion and its media carries and surfaces ethical implications regarding nonhuman animals.
Fashion M̶a̶g̶a̶z̶i̶n̶e̶s̶ menageries – Nonhuman animals captured on fashion pages, cut loose, explores the relation between humans and nonhuman animals in fashion, using a fashion magazine as a starting point. It spotlights the nonhuman animals present and/or disrupt the human-centric narrative of the fashion magazine. This works exist in workshop-form and as a publication (upcoming).
The issue, Ru(s)sh Unity, is the result of a workshop at University of Technology Sydney, with fashion and visual communication students as part of the exhibition “No place for mannequins: Remaking the fashion archive” curated by Ricarda Bigolin and Todd Robinson. Each participant responded to a fashion page of their choice from the magazine Russh (November 2025).
– With contributions by: Amina Adjis, Fiona Andrews, Audrey Bollington, Allegra Cooke, Nathalie Doyle, Ella Dunnallen, Piper Finnegan, Alanna Frawley, Siddharth Ghosh, Danielle Goodrick, Molly Hall, Jasper King, Jade Leaman, Jacqueline Lee, Madeline Macleod, Sienna Martin, Emily Ooi, Maia Stratos, Jocelyn Vo, Ruby Wright.
– With support by Ella Cutler (graphic design), Jacob Hirsh (printing) and Todd Robinson (coordination and support).
– Design of the bookmark: Ella Cutler. www.ellacutler.work
Supported by: The research trip to Sydney and Melbourne under which the workshop took place was supported by ArtEZ Fashion Professorship, ArtEZ MA Critical Fashion Practices, Creative Industries Fund NL, Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) and University of Technology Sydney (UTS) Gallery.
As a visitor to UTS and Sydney, I acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders as the Traditional Owners and Custodians of the land and its knowledges. Acknowledging the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, upon whose ancestral lands this work was undertaken. Paying respect to the Elders both past, present and emerging. Always was, always will be.
