Caryn Franklin MBE

Fashion and style guru

Caryn Franklin MBE, MSc (Psyche) MBPsS - former fashion editor and co-editor of i-D Magazine and prime-time BBC TV presenter throughout the eighties and nineties, is a multi-platform broadcaster, fashion and identity commentator and activist.

In four decades of practice Caryn has explored the politics of image and self-esteem through commercial, educational and activist positions. Projects have involved international design talent and everyday users of fashion as well as refugees in battle zones, workers in free-trade-zone slums, mental-health and body-image experts, MP's and sat on steering groups for two successive Government Ministers of Equality: Lynne Featherstone and Jo Swinson.

She takes a keen interest in sustainability both material and emotional. She is vocal about fashion's treatment of garment workers and has engaged with makers in other parts of the world including visiting Rana Plaza survivors in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

She has written for numerous magazines, newspapers and websites, produced non-fiction books and a novel, authored many TV shows and documentaries on fashion and co-created groundbreaking campaigns such Fashion Targets Breast Cancer and the multi-award-winning All Walks Beyond the Catwalk, which triggered mass challenge to fashion’s unachievable body and beauty ideals.

Consulting with the Advertising Standards Authority, Caryn has helped overturn the objectification of women in advertising and was instrumental in exposing one of fashion's many predators: photographer Terry Richardson.

In recent years and with an MSc in applied psychology, specialising in selfhood, gender, objectification, inclusivity and bias, Caryn also consults with commercial brands, corporate leadership initiatives as well as progressive educational institutions internationally. She is a visiting lecturer, holding both honorary fellowship and honorary doctorate posts, and is visiting professor at Kingston School of Art.

A member of FACE: Fashion Academics Creating Equality, Caryn also pursues the accelerated recruitment and progression of Black and Brown academics as well as the centring of Black style and culture, to educational course and module evaluation metrics.

Her latest project in production: SKEWED, is a pop-cultural audio book with Goldsmiths Social Psychologist, Dr. Keon West tackling identity bias through current race, gender, sexuality, age and appearance beliefs.  

See more on www.franklinonfashion.com

IG: @franklinonfashion