Manchester Fashion Week comes to Castlefield Gallery this September

9 – 20 September 2026

This September, INTERWOVEN brings artists, makers, educators and communities together to explore how Manchester’s textile heritage can help shape a more connected and sustainable future for fashion.

Manchester changed the world through textiles. The mills, makers and innovators of the North transformed how cloth was produced, traded and worn around the world. Today, that history presents a new challenge: how do we reimagine fashion for the next generation?

Presented by the Northern Fashion Collective as part of Manchester Fashion Week, INTERWOVEN explores the idea that the future of fashion will not be shaped by one discipline or one voice, but through collaboration – between people, places, materials and generations.

At the heart of the exhibition is The Universal Tee of Life, a large-scale community installation created by hundreds of young people from primary and secondary schools across Greater Manchester with Stitched Up CIC. Transforming donated T-shirts into individual textile artworks, participants have expressed their hopes and visions for the future, bringing them together as a powerful symbol of creativity and collective action.

INTERWOVEN also presents excerpts from three exhibitions originally shown as part of British Textile Biennial 2025, each asking us to think differently about where our clothes come from and the materials we use. The Materials Library explores natural fibres, regenerative resources and next-generation materials, while The Synthetic Revolution traces the cultural and environmental history of synthetic textiles and their continuing impact on our lives, economies and environment. Woven Worlds brings another perspective through a distinctive fashion collection created by Godfrey Katende of IGC Fashion, Uganda, in collaboration with Salford Slow Fashion. Born from a shared commitment to ethical textiles, the collection considers the colonial legacies of the textile industry and how they continue to shape fashion today.

The exhibition is accompanied by Will-of-the-Wisp, a new short film commission by Manchester artists Pippa Eason and Nick Booton. Through intimate documentation of makers, materials and landscapes, the film reflects on attention, care and interdependence, asking us to rediscover our relationships with the natural world, with one another and with the craft that connects them.

Together, these projects look backwards and forwards: from Manchester’s role in the history of global textile production to the materials, relationships and collective action that could define its future.

INTERWOVEN: runs from 9 – 20 September 2026. Presented by the Northern Fashion Collective as part of Manchester Fashion Week, in collaboration with Castlefield Gallery, British Textile Biennial and Manchester artists Pippa Eason and Nick Booton.

We look forward to welcoming visitors to the Gallery as part of Manchester Fashion Week 2026.

Image:

Woven Worlds – Godfrey Katende x Salford Slow Fashion, Photos – Matt Savage