Zowie Broach: A dedicated leader of fashion

“Being head of fashion is a responsibility and privilege and it keeps you alive and vibrant,” says Zowie Broach. “Teaching is an exchange, and when you see someone grow and begin to build confidence – that is really exciting and amazing.”

Broach is a powerful educator with more than a decade’s experience teaching on both sides of the Atlantic. Her MA students are some of the world’s brightest and best, the graduates much sought after internationally in the industry. As well, she is an artist, designer and cofounder of the avant-garde fashion label Boudicca, which is known for its originality and craftsmanship.

Broach has made her mark since taking charge of the fashion department at London’s Royal College of Art more than two years ago. She pushes students to their limits and puts all of them in womenswear, menswear and accessories across the two years into one interdisciplinary studio to reflect similar merging in the fashion industry.

She believes that the first year should be “playful and exploratory”, and has organised a week called “Talk, Debate, Draw”. The students attend two morning lectures with guests from fields such as neuroscience, philosophy, technology, performance, gaming and gender studies.

“And then they draw all afternoon. It opens up their imagination and it is about creating a conversation. And they might work with another programme like engineering, fine art, textiles or industrial projects. The graduate fashion show this year was freer and less conventional, with just one telling look from each student.”

‘Fantastic’ Irish student

One of Broach’s current students is Michael Stewart from Co Clare, a talented graduate of LSAD who is the recipient of a bursary from the Laura Ashley Foundation of €18,000 to cover his fees and a further €15,000 bursary from Kildare Village for materials and living expenses. This has enabled Stewart to pursue a master’s in which the high fees can deter many potential applicants.

“He is a fantastic student,” says Broach of Stewart when we meet in the RCA’s Darwin Building in Kensington Gore, beside the Royal Albert Hall. “Completely dedicated, and is he maximising his time here. He has a lovely spiritual side, and the Irish landscape is hugely important to him. Its shape and form is the way he sees the shape of the body. He struggles in London with city noise and concrete.”

Stewart says that applicants are chosen not just for their exceptional work but also for their openness to new thinking and ideas.

The RCA courses, as Broach reluctantly concurs, are expensive and she believes that more national and international scholarships should be available to gifted students unable to afford the fees.

“Education is a business these days,” she says. “But it is incredibly important not just for the individual but for culture. I think that is precious and that it’s important to support diversity. If you have your fees and living arrangements cared for, you can focus on your work.

“What is important is to make sure that when students are here that they gain a real depth and experience and develop their own individuality and a strong point of view. They have to be open to society and its issues as well as material and finish.”

Whirlwind of ideas

Broach is a firecracker, passionate and voluble. Her whirlwind of ideas – on the changing role of teachers, on the structures of the fashion industry, on popular culture, on expression through dress – is exhilarating.

I ask what she is reading at the moment, and she rattles off a list: Mark Fisher's Ghosts of My Life, a radical exploration of contemporary culture; Nicolas Bourriaud's The ExForm, on the dynamics of ideology; Neil Stephenson's The Diamond Age, a post-cyberpunk novel dealing with themes of education, social class and ethnicity; and Dostoyevsky's The Gambler.

Surprisingly, for one so attuned to being sharp to contemporary life and the cut and paste age, Broach eschews social media.

“I feel the screen is making everything flat. It connects, but there has to be the experience of life, and the sensual and sensory sides of our lives are very important. I did not enter the addiction and don’t feel the need for it. It is a great communication tool, but it is not for me.”

She lives in the middle of the countryside in Kent with her partner, Brian Kirby (cofounder of Boudicca). Her unusual first name goes back to when she was 11 and living living in Plymouth, where some young French visitors introduced her to the late David Bowie via Aladdin Sane. She became besotted with the singer – to the point of later changing the spelling of her name from Zoe.

Her visit to Ireland on October 14th will be only her second time in this country. In the early 1990s, she spent some time as a stylist for Pringle, the Scottish knitwear company, and came to Killarney for a fashion shoot on a golf course. She vividly recalls a model being photographed in a little black sweater and a billowing red skirt.

The skirt, however, kept deflating, so Broach had to climb underneath and fan it out with her arms. “To this day,” she says, “I always smile when I see that picture.”.

Rather than fabric, this visit should fan out ideas.

Zowie Broach will give Q&A at Kildare Village for Irish fashion graduates, students, industry and media on October 14th. The event will be hosted by brand consultant Paula Reed.