New fashion designer-in residence: Melanie Read

Melanie Read at the RE-DESIGNING WASTE: Pocket Politics Workshop, presented as part of Melbourne Fashion Festival’s Independent Programme

Melanie Read is an Australian fashion practitioner whose research-driven practice combines speculative design, sustainable systems, and experimental textile development. Her work explores how materials and making processes can shape alternative futures—social, ecological, and industrial—through a deep engagement with local contexts and global challenges.

Melanie Read holds a Honours degree of Fashion (Design) from RMIT University in Melbourne, where she supports the Fashion Design program as a technical assistant in garment construction and machine training.
She is the founder of Future Archive, is a Naarm/Melbourne based Fashion practice tackling textile waste issues through research led design.

For the whole month of July 2025, Melanie Read is in residence at Lottozero, where she continues working on her long-term project Future Archive. During her time in Prato, Read will investigate the city’s historic textile industry with a particular focus on the recycled wool supply chain, one of the oldest and most advanced circular economies in the world.

Engaging directly with local material flows, and industrial processes, and working in the Lottozero lab, Read will explore how design can act as a critical tool to map, question, and reimagine the systems that underpin textile production. Her process will include on-site research, sampling, and material prototyping using reclaimed and regenerated fibers sourced from within the Prato district and beyond.