ESAP students participate in workshop with Susan Marshall

Under the title “Material Afterlives: Metamorphosis as a Creative Method,” the workshop led by costume designer and creator Susan Marshall provided students at the Escola Superior Artística do Porto (ESAP) with the opportunity to explore the idea of reuse and reconstruction as a methodological tool for creative experimentation.

Through deconstruction, reinterpretation, and recombination, participants transformed discarded materials into hybrid structures that interacted with the body in space, reflecting on sustainability as both a practical necessity and a political stance within contemporary creative production.

Susan Marshall is a costume designer and a professor of Fashion History at FIT (Fashion Institute of Technology) and within the Design Department at Politecnico di Milano. She teaches Costume Design at AFOL Moda Milano, as well as internationally.

As a costume designer, she has worked for Teater Asterions Hus in Copenhagen, La Dual Band in Milan, and for the prison theater companies San Vittore Globe Theatre and PuntoZero in Milan. She is a member of the steering group for Critical Costume and has contributed to various journals and books in the fields of fashion and costume. Her book, Insubordinate Costume: Inspiring Performance, was published by Routledge in 2024.

https://www.susanmarshall.info

Photo credits: Susan Marshall.