The Bristol fashion zine proving there’s Star Potential beyond the M4

Of all the lessons a teacher can pass down to a student, taste is perhaps the most nebulous. “Something that is perhaps even more interesting and useful is teaching someone to identify what ‘good taste’ and subsequently ‘bad taste’ is to them,” Dean Davies, a senior lecturer in fashion communication at Bristol UWE says. “They learn to operate within either one and challenge what ‘good taste’ and ‘bad taste’ is or could be. I adopt the John Waters school of thought – that to understand ‘bad taste’, one must first have very ‘good taste’.” It tracks, then, that Davies’ latest project should include photos of street-cast models in St Patrick’s Day bonnets and Claire’s Accessories tiaras standing outside pebbledash housing estates on the outskirts of Gloucestershire. 

Made in conjunction with 19 students, the Star Potential photobook was born from the need to provide students with real-life experience within the creative industries. “I recognise each student’s talent and perspective and wanted to cultivate that within a project that positioned myself and students as equal collaborators,” Davies, whose portraiture runs the gamut of Versace, Stella McCartney, and AnOther Magazine explains. “I was excited by the possibilities of bringing the students into my visual world, and them bringing me into theirs.” With limited budgets, students rifled through charity shops and their own grandparents' wardrobes to bring 19 distinct stories to life. There are disaffected prom queens with skunk-stripe extensions, not-so-sensible businessmen in skirts made from upcycled ties, and tacky fab queers in plaid miniskirts and Crocs. 

It’s as if each student saw the most unusual person in their local village and attempted to conjure their spirit in clothing, with most of the models being cast from within their own families. “The subject matter and references that informed the project were broad, with students exploring heritage, queerness, and gender nonconformity alongside punks, cowboys, cricket players, and early 2000s pop stars.” The throughline is Davies’ photographic style: nostalgic and unvarnished documents of regional kids on the crest of adulthood. “I was born and raised in Birkenhead, a working-class town in Merseyside,” he says. “It’s a large part of my identity and has informed how I view and capture the world. I gradually started to expand my work to feature other towns, cities and their inhabitants, whilst always looking for something relatable to my own experiences. I don’t feel as interested or as inspired when shooting anywhere else.” 

Davies’ personal approach to image-making – autobiographical, urban, familiar – is expanded across four short films, which evoke home videos and old-school documentaries and Effy Stonem fancams. But at the core of Star Potential, and Davies’ teaching, is an understanding that fashion exists outside of the M4. “There are naturally more opportunities in London due to it being a fashion capital,” he says. “But something that needs to be addressed is the narrative that London universities are ‘the best’, or ‘have the best students’, which is completely untrue and unhelpful. Fashion media has a job to do in being more active in featuring the work of fashion institutions across the UK, and not just one London institution. There is a real need for outsider voices in the fashion and creative industries.”

Star Potential is available to purchase here.