The Nettle Dress + Youth panel with textile artist - Fashion in Film Festival 2025
Running time: 68 mins
Genre:
Release Date: 21/05/2025
Textile artist Allan Brown finds a way through grief by locally foraging for nettle, processing the fibres, hand-spinning and weaving them, and then cutting and sewing the coarse fabric into a dress. This seven-year project, poignantly documented through Dylan Howitt’s lens, enables Brown to find solace in the changing seasons, to slow down his mind through the repetitive and embodied nature of craftsmanship, and to ‘change something ugly and painful into something beautiful and protective.’ A labour of love, The Nettle Dress reminds us that a return to slow methods of production and reconnection to nature can be healing for both the planet and humans alike.
UK, 2023. Dir. Dylan Howitt, 68min, English
About the festival:
Fashion in Film Festival 2025 presents GROUNDED, a major UK-wide season exploring the relationship between fashion and nature through the lens of cinema. Spanning the late 19th century to present day, the programme examines fashion’s role as simultaneously a barrier and a connecting tissue between humans and the natural world. With over 80 titles including rare screenings and UK premieres, GROUNDED presents diverse narratives addressing ecological and geopolitical concerns while exploring imaginative spaces of poetry, comedy, beauty, joy, horror, and transgression. fashioninfilm.com
