Charlotte Gentry

Charlotte Gentry began her UTS fashion journey with an interest in fashion photography and ended it with a commitment to sustainable design. 

An honours-year student in the UTS Bachelor of Design in Fashion and Textiles, she was initially fascinated by the extent to which visual images shaped the world that she lived in. 

“Images are a fetish of my generation — images surround us. We’re always taking images, we’re always in images, and then in fashion, specifically, garments often become images themselves,” she says.

“My storytelling of the experience of making garments is very intertwined with the fashion image itself, which separates me as a designer because I have that at the forefront rather than the more tacit principles of garments themselves.” 

In her final-year project, exhibited as part of the UTS Fashion & Textiles Honours 2024 Graduate Showcase, Charlotte's storytelling appeared very literally. Her 6-look collection featured a series of fabrications in which images were digitally printed, UV printed, and knitted directly into her designs. She used a wide variety of fabrics, including an extensive range of knit meterage supplied through her sponsorship with Calcoup Knitwear.

“The work fuses the fashion image with fashion. There are really huge garments where the image is stretched over the pieces, and others that play with motion and stillness to echo the characteristics of photos. I also work with shadows and layers,” she says.

Towards sustainable fashion

As Charlotte’s design perspective developed, so too did her interest in sustainable fashion. Initially, she says, she had no idea she was entering one of the biggest polluting industries in the world. 

At UTS, the impacts of the global fashion system aren’t just a footnote to the Fashion and Textiles course — they’re also an opportunity for students to reflect on their creative practice and to explore new avenues to upend traditional design and production processes. 

Even from first semester of first year, we were so encouraged to think about the impact of our practice on the planet. 

In one subject, students were asked to purchase and deconstruct two second-hand shirts and create a new garment out of them. The project provided both a creative challenge and an opportunity for students to consider how they approached their future work. 

For Charlotte, who had previously only worked with store-bought fabrics, it was a lightbulb moment. Not only do she and all her peers now routinely use repurposed fabrics in their work, but the way she thinks about the materiality of her work has been entirely transformed.

My collection now is all natural fibres. I think UTS has really instilled in us how harmful synthetic fabrics are. It’s a no-brainer not to use them.

An evolving design perspective 

Previously, she says, her approach revolved around an initial idea that she’d sketch out by hand and then painstakingly bring to life. After four years of study, she has a completely different approach that starts with the story she wants to tell. The end result is often a complete surprise, she says, but is more closely aligned with her overarching design vision. 

“Along the way, I’ve learnt how important it is to have a story and to engage with a long process of thinking — this is my concept, then I’m going to drape on the mannequin and put different fabrics together, and I just let the idea unfold,” says Charlotte, who will be looking to gain further experience in the fashion industry once her degree is finished.  

“At the beginning, it was stressful when teachers would say, ‘Don’t design something; you need to see how it unfolds over the semester’. But now it’s such a distinct practice, and it’s really rewarding to see it come together slowly rather than being tied to an initial idea."

You can view more of Charlotte's work on her Instagram here.