Dr Deborah Wills-Ives is an early-career fashion academic and researcher at RMIT University, based in Melbourne / Naarm. Her work sits at the intersection of the evolution of fashion design education and studio pedagogy, with a particular focus on how designing and making fashion are taught, valued, and understood over time. 

Deborah’s doctoral thesis, Fashion in Fields, examined the professionalisation of fashion curriculum across art, trade, and domestic economy education fields in Australia from 1889 to 1999, with particular attention to women’s work and the evolution of fashion design education. Drawing extensively on RMIT’s institutional archives, she analyses historical fashion and dress curricula to inform contemporary approaches to teaching fashion. Projects such as Fashion Formations: 1940s Pattern Making and her ongoing work with the Lorna Clarke Collection bridge archival garments and workbooks with current pattern-cutting and design studio practices. 

She is a lecturer in the School of Fashion & Textiles and lead investigator on a pilot study examining sustainable fashion practices in the secondary school curriculum. This research direction sits within the Making Fashion Change group in the WEFT Research Centre at RMIT. 

As a studio-based educator in the Bachelor of Fashion (Design), Deborah integrates slow design principles into her teaching, often beginning with discarded garments and textile waste. Her creative practice is grounded in making and explores dynamic tensions between hand and machine-made processes, and between the roles of designer and maker. Through this work she develops methodologies for sustainable and critically engaged fashion design education that connect historical insight, material experimentation, and contemporary industry realities. Her studio is located within walking distance of Flinders Lane, where she began her career and has continued to develop her practice over three decades.