Department 21, Royal College of Art.

Among the year end shows that I visited in a rather happenstance manner this summer, the one I found most stimulating was that of the Royal College of Art in London. Off to the side of the exhibition space was what looked like an outdoor seminar room which was, in fact, a self-built outside deck and the “exhibition space” of Department 21, where a series of free lectures and workshops took place concomitantly with the show. An entirely student-run initiative, Department 21 was started to promote new models of art and design education and interdisciplinarity. Its name plays on the fact that are 20 existing departments at the Royal College.

Throughout the year, the founders took over a temporarily vacant space at the college where students were assigned studio space regardless of their departmental affiliations and where a series of lectures, seminars, critiques and presentations were developed. They also published a small book to recount the project.

In their own words: “Department 21 appropriated institutional territory to explore alternative models of education and to create a new kind of conceptual and social space. […] Department 21 adopted a radical strategy towards a broader definition of education, of practice and of disciplinarity. As an autonomous space, it encouraged a greater critical awareness of the students’ role within the institution.” (Polly Hunter, Bianca Elzenbaumer and Fabio Franz edited, Department 21, London, June 2010)

Francesca

PS Also, on the topic of design education, you might be interested in reading my short interview on Ecouterre on teaching sustainable fashion.

Photos by Megan MacMurray

Fashion Projects readers might be familiar with Giana Gonzalez, an interaction designer and artist who seeks to hack into the fashion system. I had interviewed her back in 2006 about her Hacking Couture workshops. Results from her workshops given in New York, Chicago, California and Istanbul are on view now at Eyebeam as part of the exhibition Re:Group: Beyond Models of Consensus.

Giana and I will be giving a FREE workshop this coming Wednesday, July 14th, at Eyebeam using the hacking methodology Giana has created. Only this time, instead of trying to hack the code of fashion brands, we are setting our sights a bit higher – we aim to hack into the sustainable fashion movement. In fact, we know that ultimately, a hack into sustainable fashion is really about hacking the entire fashion system…something we are very excited to try. Please do attend if you can, as we cannot do this alone.

Of course, we will be posting the code we develop on the Fashion Code Wiki.

More images from the Re:Group: Beyond Models of Consensus exhibition after the jump.

Sarah Scaturro
Read the rest of this entry »

Dancers from San Francisco nightclub Forbidden City, backstage 1950

Fashion Projects is pleased to help spread the word about an exhibition that Minh-ha and Mimi over at ThreadBared are mounting. I’ve been working a bit with Minh-ha on how to go about organizing such an unprecedented exhibition as “An Other Fashion: Claiming America Through Dress” and am very excited to see what the outcome is.

Besides this exhibition being groundbreaking due to its topic, it is also on the cutting-edge through its use of crowdsourcing. One of the main difficulties is that the type of material they want to show has not typically been collected or exhibited by museums, and thus they are actively seeking contributions for objects to display. It is us, the public, who will help shape the outcome of this exhibition. Please pass this exhibition call on to others out there…

Sarah Scaturro
Read the rest of this entry »

Martin Margiela, Spring/Summer 1990

It was interesting to notice the challenges and the rewards of the process. One of the main challenges consisted in the fact that incorporating sustainability in fashion demands a radical re-thinking of systems of consumption, distribution and production, so much so that the very topic of sustainable fashion can be in and of itself rather controversial and, in some sense oppositional to traditional fashion education.

What was perhaps most rewarding was to notice students’ imaginative incorporation of sustainable practices in their own work. (This was a theoretical/historical class, so the work was produced within the context of their studio classes.) For instance, the work of Seung Yeon Jee, which was based on her research in Kurt Schwitters’s collage techniques incorporated notions of modularity within her work, and as she herself noted promoted a level of participation from the consumer in the design process. Through complex pattern-making techniques Jee created garments which could be worn in a number of different ways—all of which were at the same time experimental, functional and visually engaging.

Below you can find a description of the class. I would love to hear any feedback by fashion educators and anyone interested in the topic of incorporating sustainability in fashion and design education

Read the rest of this entry »

The exhibition Fashion At The Time Of Fascism – Italian Modernist Lifestyle 1922-1943 examines the relation between fashion, modernism and Fascism and will be on view through June 18. Although, not off the beaten path geographically, as it is in London, the exhibition is housed within a smaller and relatively new venue, the Fashion Space Gallery at the London College of Fashion.

The exhibition is curated by the Italian scholars Mario Lupano and Alessandra Vaccari and it is based on their honominous book. It is, in fact, described as a visual essay. (For those who miss the exhibition, the book, which is described in a New Yorker review as “handsome,” can be easily found in Italian and English.)

Like the book, the exhibition, which is comprised of a range of media from actual garments to fashion and film magazines, is organized around four main concepts: Measurement, Model, Mark and Parade. Those are described in the literature accompanying the exhibition as follows:

Read the rest of this entry »

Left to right: Martin Margiela, jacket repurposed from vintage scarves, Spring 1992; Martin Margiela, socks, partially constructed sweater, and completed sweater, early 1990s; XULY.Bët, recycled ensemble, Fall 1994

Fashion Projects is very pleased to present an interview with the curators of Eco-Fashion: Going Green, currently on view in the Fashion and Textile History Gallery of the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology. Jennifer Farley and Colleen Hill have thoughtfully, and at times provocatively, organized an enlightening and entertaining exhibition about eco-fashion, tracing the movement back over 200 years. The show is based around six themes: fiber origins, labor practices, the re-purposing and recycling of materials, quality of craftsmanship, textile dyeing and production, and the treatment of animals.

This exhibition importantly fulfills a gap in scholarship available about the eco-fashion movement. Recent exhibitions like the one that Francesca Granata and I co-curated at Pratt Manhattan Gallery, Ethics + Aesthetics = Sustainable Fashion, surveyed and tried to make sense of the movement as it exists today, seeking to suggest ways to balance aesthetic needs with environmental stability. However, Farley and Hill have taken a different course. They have used a tough mandate – to chronologically tell the history of fashion over the past two centuries using only the MFIT collection – and ingeniously exposed the ways in which sustainability and fashion have always been intertwined. There are some very special things in the exhibition – besides an arsenic-dyed dress, there is a rare cape made from exotic bird feathers, a man’s dressing coat made from a patch-work quilt, and an electric blue fringed cellophane cape from Parisian couturier Lucien Lelong. I wish there would have been some examples of 19th century aesthetic dress, like a robe Jane Morris might have worn, but given the tight constraints of the gallery and the six themes, such a garment doesn’t really fit in. For any fashion student or scholar who is interested in sustainability (which is hopefully all of you) this exhibition should be a requirement.

Farley and Hill graciously took a moment out of their day to answer the following questions for Fashion Projects:

Fashion Projects: As you mention in your essay for the exhibition, recently there seems to be a critical mass of exhibitions and writings on the current status of sustainable fashion, but relatively little on its history. What made you both decide to tackle this incredibly important gap in scholarship? Was there anything surprising that you learned?

Jennifer Farley and Colleen Hill: Our general interest in the topic started with the small selection of eco-fashion included in The Museum at FIT exhibition Fashion & Politics (July – November 2009). We discovered that the approaches to eco-design are very diverse, and we began thinking that those varied points of view would be interesting to explore in a historical context. When we intensively researched contemporary eco-fashion, we were surprised to discover very little discussion of fashion’s impact on the environment prior to the 1960s and 1970s. We thought the Museum at FIT’s Fashion & Textile History Gallery, which traces the history of fashion from the 18th century to the present, would lend itself perfectly to an evaluation of the topic.

In researching this topic, we delved into topics ranging from the science of synthetics to mechanization of production to labor regulations. Researching these often very technical subjects helped us to look at fashion from another perspective. We learned that synthetics can have merit in terms of production (i.e. using less water) and recyclability.

We knew the dangers of chemicals, such as chromium used in leather production, but were surprised to discover that the use of large amounts of salt, a seemingly innocuous substance, can also be an environmental concern.

1920s actress Minnie Maddern Fiske’s anti-fur stance was also a bit of a revelation. Celebrity activism has become common, but it was amazing to find that such a well-known actress (in her day) had taken a public position more than 90 years ago.
Read the rest of this entry »

There seems to be a critical mass forming around the topic of sustainability in fashion here in New York, but one aspect that perhaps goes under reported in favour of coverage of design strategies is that of alternative business models that promote sustainability in fashion.

One of our favourite examples is the newly launched reFASHIONer. Started by journalist, and high-fashion aficionado Kate Sekules, it is a curated swap site for designers’ fashion, ranging from Comme des Garçons to Dries Van Noten. Allowing people to swap what tend to be long-lasting pieces in the first place, reFASHIONer allows them to extend their clothes’ lifecycle and renew their wardrobe in a sustainable way.

Despite its high fashion bent, the site is quite unpretentious and user-friendly and also taps into our interest in fashion and memory as it allows people to tell the story of their clothes right before they part with them.

Below is a brief interview with reFASHIONer founder Kate Sekules.

I was wondering how and why you started reFASHIONer?
I was editor-in-chief of Culture+Travel magazine when they folded it… Saw the writing on the wall–death of the magazine business. And I thought, I do like turnover in my closet, and I love the designers I love. And I’m lacking a paycheck for said designers, not to mention an office to dress for every day. So I thought: swap meet. And when it was impossible to get my fancy-wardrobe friends in a room at the same time, I got to thinking… And realized there’s no such thing as curated swapping online. How did I start? By making it up as I go! Starting a year ago, with a great deal of figuring out the system.

Read the rest of this entry »

New York-based Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts (VLA) recently announced a four-part workshop series focusing on social and legal issues in the fashion industry. The first segment in the series, Social & Legal Issues in Fashion Series: Ethical and Sustainable Practices, explores both the sociology of the fashion industry and legal issues that surround trademarks and counterfeits. It takes place Tuesday, June 15th, 6:00-8:00 pm.

Other topics include: human rights issues, sustainable manufacturing, repurposed goods, and a movement towards “local fashion.” The workshop will be taught by VLA’s executive director, Elena M. Paul, Esq., and Anna Akbari, Ph.D.

Click here to register, or for more information, call Joni Todd at 212.319.2787 x10, or e-mail her at jtodd [at] vlany [dot] org.

Kim Burgas

Natalie Chanin, founder and designer of Alabama Chanin, will give a talk tonight at the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum. Chanin’s company is an integral part of the burgeoning slow fashion movement. I had the opportunity to help out with the recent teen Design Directions stitching workshop here at the museum that she taught – rather than being at “work”, I found myself lulled into a peaceful state as I stiched my own fabric while listening to her kind, insightful words. I can say with certainty that this talk is not to be missed!

Details:
Alabama Chanin: American Fashion
Wednesday, May 19, 2010 | 6:30 – 8:00pm
Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, 2 East 91st Street
Students are FREE, others: $10
Register HERE
Galleries will be open before hand for a private viewing of the new Triennial exhibition.

Sarah Scaturro

.
Crochet Workshop

This past weekend the exhibition cum workshop “Sustainable Exchange: Methods and Practices for Collaborative Partnerships took place at TODA, a design studio in Tribeca. Curated by Megan Howard in collaboration with Rachel Littenberg-Weisberg (both study Integrated Design at Parson), the exhibition included the experimental eco designer Susan Cianciolo, the collective Eko-Lab, and the jewelry company Black Sheep and Prodigal Sons, which creates beautifully unsettling pieces using repurposed materials. The exhibition design was completed by the talented design team from the interior design graduate program at the Pratt Institute under the supervision of design director Jon Otis. The exhibition structure was, in fact, made of repurposed material from the exhibition “Ethics + Aesthetics,” that Sarah and I curated this past Fall at Pratt.

Particularly interesting was the focus on process, participation and collaboration underscored by the exhibition design, which allowed people to interact with the clothes and furniture and leaf through sketchbook. The interactive nature of the exhibition was also underscored by the rather impromptu performances, which took place during the exhibition opening, as well as several workshops, which covered experimental crochet techniques, natural dying processes, organic cooking and collage-making, which took place throughout the weekend.

Read the rest of this entry »