Poised between introspection and collectivity, between artistic expression and attention to everyday life, Sarah Bowyer leads to Dressing the Future 2025 a vision that transforms the creative act into a bridge between people. A nomadic artist by biography and sensibility, Bowyer has made cultural contamination a lens through which to explore identity, boundaries and encounters. His WEAR_ART workshop is born precisely from this fertile tension: a discarded overcoat becomes a shared canvas, a place for mutual listening, a living organism that changes thanks to everyone's contributions.
In his approach, art is never superficial, but rather an opportunity for rebirth: an invitation to “wear” what normally remains hidden — emotions, memories, visions — and transform it into a gesture of collective harmony. Through pictorial recycling and co-creation, Bowyer overturns traditional production logic and suggests a future in which objects regain their uniqueness, sentimental value and authenticity.
With his presence, Dressing the Future is enriched by a perspective that combines technique, introspection and imagination, inviting participants to rediscover fashion as a language, a relationship and a practice of mutual care. An experience that not only transforms a garment, but also teaches the beauty of creating together.
The title of your project combines two worlds — “wear” and “art” — almost suggesting that art can be worn. What does “wearing” a work of art mean to you?
I have always worked on the individual, their inner and outer worlds, searching for that boundary between the private and the collective. For me, wearing art means expressing the introspective. It therefore becomes a portal for deep sharing with others and thus for union between human beings, but also for defining the self within the multitude.
How has your nomadic experience among different cultures influenced your vision for this project?
In a crowd, it is certainly important to be aware of your own size and limitations, and this is possible by broadening your knowledge of the cultural and social differences in the world. There is a lot of Eastern culture in my work, even though I had an Italian mother, an English father and an American grandfather. Being a nomad has made me a guest and a witness, allowing me to devise a project that, through listening, finds a multifaceted version of the world and of creation.
In Dressing the Future Art meets sustainability. In your opinion, can art really contribute to changing the way we produce, consume and inhabit the world?
Absolutely! Applied art enriches consumer objects, making them unique and immortal, avoiding capitalist recycling in favour of ecological recycling. It is also an excellent opportunity to fall in love with your own objects, giving them emotional value and thus contributing to your mental and physical well-being.
The final result is an overcoat displayed as a “visual manifesto of working together”. How do you imagine the public will perceive this hybrid work, halfway between art and fashion?
The act of producing live together, each contributing something of themselves but with extreme sensitivity to cohesion between the parties, thus seeking harmony, not only visual in the final product, will highlight in real time the human capacity to coexist in harmony. The idea that the result is wearable makes it a futuristic manifesto that declares an evolutionary social intent, produced by creating together, replacing the production chain.
A project for the future
I have been working for some time on an immersive project to be visited with Oculus, which represents a birth, the birth of the user himself, consisting of a journey full of archetypes, inside a body, until reaching the womb, and then being born (or reborn, or remembering having done so). Here too, the central theme is the inside and the outside. As with Wear Art, the reception of external stimuli leads back to an individual and multifaceted self, overturning the concept. The Wear Art workshops will also focus on the interpretation of the self and others because art is communication, therefore listening, and the future holds new possibilities for collective consciousness. The experience will be dedicated to understanding techniques and materials but also to developing personal and shareable taste.
What skills do you think young designers should develop — or what “toolbox” should they build — to approach your area of expertise, as a representative of one of the possible sectors and fields of application of their future professions?
Transforming and customising any garment or accessory is a complete profession, perfectly in line with a future that is increasingly focused on recycling and environmental sustainability. High-quality fabric dyes (such as Deka), specific for silk or faux leather, as well as decorative elements and the use of embroidery and stencils, become the toolbox for creating wonders. Once you have acquired technical and artistic sensitivity in the use of these tools, those with vision and content can develop original collections and fill shops with unique, designer garments. A touch of determination and patience, combined with communication and marketing skills, can transform a passion into a lifelong profession.
