Caryn Franklin
Caryn Franklin MBE, MSc (Psyche) MBPsS – former fashion editor and co-editor of i-D Magazine and prime-time BBC TV Clothes Show presenter throughout the eighties and nineties, is a multi-platform broadcaster, fashion and identity commentator and activist.
In over 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 and MPs; the latter involved steering groups for two successive Government Ministers of Equality: Lynne Featherstone and Jo Swinson.
A writer for numerous magazines, newspapers, and websites, having authored five books including a novel, Caryn is also co-creator of groundbreaking campaigns – co-chair Fashion Targets Breast Cancer 1996 – 2021; also, the multi-award-winning All Walks Beyond the Catwalk 2009 – 2015, which helped trigger mass challenge to fashion’s unachievable body and beauty ideals.
In 2014 Caryn consulted with the Advertising Standards Authority, to help overturn the objectification of women in advertising. In 2017 she 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, her latest (audio) book SKEWED: Decoding Media Bias (2022) is co-written and narrated with Professor Keon West. It tackles identity bias through current race, gender, sexuality, age, and appearance beliefs. It’s available from Spotify/Audible/Audiobooks.com/Google Books/Apple Books/Kobo and Spotify
A council member of FACE: Fashion and the Arts Creating Equity, Caryn 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.
Image credit: Michelle Beatty
