Robert Ott

Biography

Robert Ott is Professor in the School of Fashion at Toronto Metropolitan University. As Associate Dean, Strategic Projects in The Creative School, he developed and leads the Creative Entrepreneurship Hub, launched in August 2024, providing a space helping Creative students turn their passions into a successful career in the creative and cultural sectors. Creative enterprise is not only about business and entrepreneurship. Creative enterprise is a mindset students need from day one. It is about creative thinking, problem-solving, and making things happen, in and outside of the classroom. 

As Vice Dean of The Creative School | Cairo, he oversaw the launch of media and design undergraduate programs in the New Administrative Capital, Egypt, in 2022.

He was Chair of Image Arts from 2019-2022 and Chair of Fashion from 2008-2018.

Further, he is the founding Director of the Fashion Zone, Joe Fresh Centre of Fashion Innovation, and The Suzanne Rogers Fashion Institute.

Robert’s research focuses on fashion systems, which are mechanisms for the production and consumption of clothing. These systems change continually to adapt to changes in production technologies and consumer tastes and several systems operate at any one time. While the prevailing contemporary fashion system is structured around mass production, its manufacturing techniques are increasingly coming under scrutiny as working conditions and environmental effects are considered exploitative and unsustainable. Furthermore, contemporary fashion systems have largely displaced traditional fashion systems that rely on the handcrafting of one-of-a-kind artefacts.  Recently, however, craftsmanship is seemingly enjoying a small but evident resurgence and creating a new fashion system.

In an ethnography of tailors and shoemakers he investigates the notion of craftship to understand what embodied skills, materials, and tools inform contemporary practices of craftsmanship. This study provides a perspective on how the body and materials interrelate, how work is organized, and what factors influence the making of bespoke artefacts. The project is extending to look at craftship practices in Egypt, North Africa, and the Middle East. 

He is recognized for his extensive senior management experience with women’s wear market leader The Jones Group where he held a series of progressively responsible executive roles since he first joined the firm in 1990. Robert was responsible for directing product research, development and production; supporting marketing activities; developing and overseeing an international business model; and re-evaluating the strategic positioning of corporate brands and licences in Canada, including Jones New York, Anne Klein, Lauren Ralph Lauren, and Nine West.

Select Publications

Ott, R. (2018). “The cordwainer’s lair: contingency in bespoke shoemaking” in Bell, E., Mangia, G., Taylor, S. and Toraldo, M. (eds) The organization of craft work: identities, meanings, and materiality. Routledge.