Jackets of the World - a presentation by Stephen Scourfield

EGWA presents our first exciting talk for 2025 - Stephen Scourfield (a committed hand sewer since childhood) shares his interest in textiles and discusses his Jackets of the World project

Date: Thursday 20 March 2025

Time: 10am

Venue:  Guild House, 565 Canning Highway, Alfred Cove.

Cost: $25.00, includes morning tea

Stephen Scourfield is the Travel Editor of The West Australian, Sunday Times, Seven West Media’s travel digital publishing, and the author of more than 10 books. He has twice been voted Australia’s Best Travel Writer, and has been awarded the United Nations Media Award, and the WA Premier’s Award for Fiction for one of his novels.

Stephen has been a committed hand sewer since childhood, with an interest in textiles.

He says: “My grandmother was a talented, old-school English seamstress, and my mother had a natural talent for putting fabrics together and making. I learnt to sew as a child. Taking this long interest into my work as a travelling writer has opened up some of the best stories I’ve been privileged to tell…"

Stephen describes how his experiences combining travel and textiles include:

• In Kenya, a handful of women started a textile business, which has now grown to employ more than 200 women, and support a school and pay teachers.
• In Myanmar, there is the story of lotus fibre fabric. In Uzbekistan there is a textile made only to wrap the morning bread to take home.
• In Tibet, I bought a modern bangdian (a traditional apron worn by women over a black skirt) for a jacket, but also a very old one with a unique pattern from a sale of deceased persons’ clothes at the Tashi Lhunpo monastery, founded in 1447 by the 1st Dalai Lama.
• In Morocco, I tracked down the cactus fibre fabric traditionally favoured by nomadic Burber people, as it is light and fire retardant.”

Stephen has combined all this by personally hand sewing textiles onto denim jackets — one jacket for each country. He recently displayed more than 70 of his favourites in a Jackets of the World Exhibition.

For this event, Stephen will talk about the textiles, the stories they open up, and how his Jackets of the World project has started and grown.

He will bring along jackets and fabrics, for attendees to see, touch and feel the fabrics of the world — including the Tibetan bangdian, Uzbekistan bread textile and others mentioned here.