An award-winning British-Kenyan artist, whose work is currently on show at Cooper Gallery, Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, is to showcase her fashion label at an independent design market at V&A Dundee this week.
Grace Ndiritu’s fashion label, the world's first ‘Pay What You Can’ fashion brand, will feature at the Tea Green Festive Design Market as her major solo exhibition at Cooper Gallery, DJCAD, continues to draw audiences across the city.
The artist, filmmaker and writer is bringing her radical fashion and economic project COVERSLUT© to the market on Sunday 30 November 2025, with a range of t-shirts and bags. The three-day event, featuring nearly 70 independent designers, runs from Friday 28 to Sunday 30 November 2025, 10am until 5pm.
All items will be sold strictly on a ‘Pay What You Can’ basis, and every piece is hand-printed and/or hand-dyed and either machine-sewn or hand-sewn. Students from Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design will staff the stall throughout the weekend, connecting the artist’s work with Dundee’s next generation of designers and makers.
This year’s Tea Green festive design market kicks off on Colour Friday, an annual nationwide movement encouraging shoppers to support independent businesses rather than engage in Black Friday consumerism.
Founded in Dundee 11 years ago by Joanne MacFadyen, Tea Green Events champions mindful shopping and celebrates the creativity of makers across Scotland. The V&A Dundee event forms part of a broader programme taking place at Aberdeen Art Gallery, Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, The Burrell Collection, National Galleries Scotland: Portrait in Edinburgh, and Bowhouse in the East Neuk of Fife.
Grace said, “Super excited that COVERSLUT©, the world's first Pay What You Can fashion label, joins such an excellent cohort of creative talent from across Scotland for this year's Tea Green Market at V&A Dundee.”
Ndiritu’s presence at Tea Green coincides with her major solo exhibition, Grace Ndiritu: Compassionate Rebels in Action, at Cooper Gallery, DJCAD, open until 13 December, Tuesday to Saturday, 12–5pm.
The free exhibition brings together a new photographic installation, a hand-painted text mural, large-scale circular printed textiles, moving image works, selected garments from COVERSLUT©, and Ndiritu’s essays on art, life and politics alongside her new publication Glossary For Art and Action.
Sophia Yarding Hao, Director and Principal Curator of Cooper Gallery, University of Dundee, added, “It is thrilling to see such a brilliant cross-city collaboration featuring Grace Ndiritu’s radical fashion brand and alternative economic model COVERSLUT© in the Tea Green market at V&A Dundee whilst her major solo contemporary art exhibition is on show at Cooper Gallery, marking the fifth and final iteration of The Ignorant Art School, a project addressing the stakes of art education today.”
Founded in 2016, COVERSLUT© is Ndiritu’s radical fashion and research venture that integrates Capitalist, ‘Pay What You Can’ and ethical/environmental strategies while tackling issues of race, gender and class politics.
The project’s name reclaims the 17th-century term “coverslut” - an apron worn to hide the dirty clothes of kitchen maids - and reinvents its double meaning to critique how major corporations co-opt youth culture and sell it back to young people through branding and logos. COVERSLUT©, by contrast, aims to reclaim and return youth culture to the young.
For more information about Tea Green Events, visit www.teagreen.co.uk.
Full details of Grace Ndiritu: Compassionate Rebels in Action are available at https://www.dundee.ac.uk/events/ignorant-art-school-sit-5-grace-ndiritu
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Tea Green Events Joanne MacFadyen
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