Senior Lecturer in Fashion Design at Nottingham Trent University, Lee Mattocks is a designer, maker and researcher exploring emotional durability, material culture and more sustainable relationships with clothing. His practice brings together wardrobe studies, creative pattern cutting, leather craftsmanship and research-informed teaching to investigate how garments acquire meaning, change through use and become worth keeping.
RESEARCH PROJECT · WARDROBE STUDIES
Welcome to Our Wardrobe explores the stories people attach to their clothes, and why some garments remain part of our lives long after their initial purchase.
Through participant wardrobe studies, garment narratives and design research, the project examines memory, identity, relationships and emotional durability. Each garment offers a different account of what makes clothing worth keeping.
These individual stories inform a wider investigation into fashion, longevity and the possibilities of designing for lasting attachment.
Welcome to Our Wardrobe · An ongoing wardrobe study
GARMENT STORIES
Garments photographed with excerpts from participants' own accounts.
One trouser. Designed for more of your day.
The All Day Trouser is the first garment developed through Welcome to Our Wardrobe. Designed to move across different activities, occasions and environments, it explores whether greater versatility can help us wear our clothes more often and keep them for longer.
Rather than beginning with a seasonal trend, the trouser has evolved through making, wearing, testing and remaking. Its adjustable fit, relaxed silhouette and considered construction are designed around comfort, movement, durability and repeated wear.
The aim is not to create the perfect trouser. It is to create a garment capable of becoming part of everyday life — worn often, lived in, aged, repaired and associated with the memories we make while wearing it.
Designed for all day.
Built for longer.
Made to make memories in.
Wardrobes contain memories, routines, identities, places and experiences. Welcome to Our Wardrobe studies the garments people already value and retain, asking what their lives can teach us about designing for repeated wear, attachment and longevity.
The All Day Trouser brings that research into practice: wardrobe research → design → making → wear → reflection → redesign.
For now, the project is deliberately focused on a single garment. The All Day Trouser will be developed slowly through prototypes, wear, observation and continued research rather than expanded into a conventional seasonal collection.
Focusing on one trouser allows the project to ask deeper questions about versatility, construction, durability, emotional attachment and what happens to a garment over time.
Less about producing more. More about understanding what makes one garment worth keeping.
Follow the development of The All Day Trouser alongside wardrobe studies, emotional durability, wear research, prototypes and work in progress.
Let's see what stays.
RESEARCH · KNOWLEDGE EXCHANGE · EDUCATION
From independent leather craftsmanship to research-informed teaching, industry collaboration and new approaches to material longevity.
My practice in leather spans the design and manufacture of accessories, material experimentation and specialist teaching. Working with industry partners, including British micro-tannery Billy Tannery, I explore how traditional material knowledge can inform contemporary fashion design and education.
Following earlier Leathersellers-funded masterclasses, an £80,000 award from The Leathersellers’ Foundation supports a four-year programme of specialist leather education, student workshops and the sharing of material expertise. The programme creates opportunities to connect industry knowledge, teaching and future research into leather, sustainability, patina and emotional durability.
A four-year investment in specialist masterclasses, knowledge exchange and research-informed teaching at Nottingham Trent University.
A close study of grain, surface and construction: material qualities that inform both making and research.
Specialist practical teaching supports the transfer of leatherworking knowledge through direct experience.
Developing leather goods brings pattern cutting, construction, material selection and finish into conversation.
Workshops connect technical expertise, academic practice and shared learning.
Garment outcomes explore how leather can be incorporated into contemporary menswear.
Lee's independent leatherworking practice was featured on BBC Bargain Hunt, filmed in Nottingham.
Handmade leather accessories form part of a longer trajectory of craft, design and material experimentation.
The opening slide uses a typographic title while the official Leathersellers’ Foundation logo is being sourced and approved.
WELCOME TO OUR WARDROBE
STORIES FROM THE PROJECT()
Research, making, garments and the ideas developing through Welcome to Our Wardrobe.
