Hacking 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

Gone Green Long Ago

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

All photos courtesy of the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology.

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.

Left: roller-printed cotton dress, circa 1821; right: jacquard-woven silk dress, circa 1830

The Fashion and Textile History Gallery is a wonderful idea in theory (to present fashion in a chronological order around a certain theme using MFIT collections), but seems like it would be very challenging in practice, particularly with its rigid structure and requirement that all objects be from your collections. What were some of the challenges you faced in trying to mount this exhibition?

The gallery can pose a curatorial challenge. In many cases, the 18th and 19th centuries are the more difficult time periods to cover. Surprisingly, in this case, it was significantly easier because of the range of subjects we explore in the exhibition – industrialization, synthetic dyes, and innovative modes of repurposing textiles.

We also needed to acquire contemporary sustainable garments, which required careful consideration as to which pieces we’d like represented not only in the exhibition but also in the museum’s permanent collection. We are very pleased with the selected objects and are grateful to the designers for their positive responses and generosity.

Since all of the garments shown in the gallery must be from the Museum’s collection, I noticed that you acquired quite a number for this exhibition. How many did you acquire? What were your favorite acquisitions?

We acquired 25 new pieces – 7 are accessories, the rest are costume. We are so pleased with everything we have acquired, it’s nearly impossible to choose a favorite. We have wanted to collect Natalie Chanin’s work for some time. We also learned so much from working directly with many of the designers, like John Patrick, who are very committed to sustainable fashion. We also love the Carlos Miele Fuxico gown.

We are pleased to have featured a number of local companies, like Bodkin, naturevsfuture, and Costello Tagliapietra. The museum's Deputy Director Patricia Mears featured Costello Tagliapietra in her recent exhibition – American Beauty: Aesthetics and Innovation in Fashion – and we are thrilled to now have their work represented in our permanent collection.

Carlos Miele, Fuxico gown, Spring 2008

Of the six themes that you identified within the ecofashion movement, did any resonate personally with you? Did you split the choosing of objects by themes or type of objects, or did you choose everything together?

Repurposing. This theme has such deep roots in the history of fashion, and it was amazing to see the ingenuity with which people have reinvented extant pieces. It also was interesting to see the degree to which value is placed on textile objects throughout history and how consumption patterns have changed.

We conferred on every object chosen to ensure the most cohesive selection possible.

I noticed that you placed Stella McCartney’s garments prominently at the opening of the exhibition and that the theme “treatment of animals” was identified often throughout the Gallery. Your label copy also leaned towards an anti-cruelty stance. What are your thoughts on the contemporary use of fur, feathers and leather in fashion?

As curators, we try not to inject personal opinion into our exhibitions. We didn’t intend to pass judgment on those who wear fur, feathers, and leather, but we did want to make our visitors aware of how those materials might be sourced and produced. We hope that our exhibition provokes thought on the production of all types of materials, including various types of fabric. Overall, our aim is to make people think about the origins of all the clothing they wear.

In the contemporary fashion section, there are three examples of garments by British designers Ciel (Sarah Ratty), Enamore (Jennifer Ambrose), and Rebecca Early. You also mention the writings of Sandy Black, a professor at the London College of Fashion. Do you think there is a difference in the way that sustainable fashion is approached and understood in the UK and the USA?

The approach to or understanding of sustainable fashion in the UK and the US is quite similar – these designers are all creative, compassionate people who strive to make a difference in some way. What we found most interesting in the selection of contemporary fashion overall – regardless of nationality – was the difference in approach to eco-friendly design. These differences are readily apparent among the three examples you cited: Sarah Ratty’s dress utilizes the increasingly popular eco-fabric lyocell, Jennifer Ambrose repurposes vintage fabric, and Rebecca Earley’s secondhand shirt is “upcycled.” We found the various approaches to sustainable design to be fascinating, and we tried to express to our visitors that there is no one way to be “eco.”

You broach the idea of slow fashion through your theme “quality of craftsmanship.” Do you think that slow fashion as a movement will catch on? Were you tempted to acquire a fast fashion garment to use as a counterpoint to the quality of craftsmanship thread?

Slow fashion has many positive points. In some ways, the slow fashion movement is reintroducing high levels of craftsmanship and quality that the average consumer has rarely seen, simply because fast fashion is so much more prevalent. Slow fashion is often more expensive by necessity, but we hope that people will realize its benefit as an investment purchase – something that could become an integral part of their wardrobe for many years. Since the average person is so familiar with fast fashion, we didn’t feel it necessary to include something to counterpoint good quality. We also don’t want anyone to feel bad about what they choose to wear – we simply want to educate our viewers about the benefits of more thoughtful consumerism.

NOIR, multilayered evening gown, Illuminati II cotton and silver studded leather, Fall 2010, Denmark, gift of Noir/In Darkness All Colors Agree.

Now that you’ve explored the historic and current state of eco-fashion, where do you think the future of eco-fashion will lead us? Are you more hopeful or less after having gone through this experience?

We’ve received a very enthusiastic response to the exhibition from the contemporary designers who participated, from the media, and from our visitors, which makes us very hopeful about the future of eco-fashion. Since eco-fashion – at least as we perceive it – can be approached in so many ways, any designer or consumer who becomes more conscious of where their clothing comes from – and acts on it – can make an impact. Additionally, many of the designers we worked with emphasized that they want consumers to first see their clothing as chic and fashionable – only later discovering that it is also sustainable. We feel that this “fashion first” attitude is important, and will help to move the eco-fashion movement forward.

The exhibition is open until November 13, 2010.

MFIT
Seventh Avenue at 27 Street
New York City 10001-5992
Information: 212 217.4558
Tues – Fri Noon – 8pm
Saturday 10am – 5pm
Closed Sundays, Mondays, and legal holidays.

Sarah Scaturro

Fashion Projects #3: Experiments in Fashion Curation—An Interview with Judith Clark

by Sarah Scaturro

Ruben Toledo Drawing for the Simonetta Exhibition at Palazzo Pitti.

I first encountered Judith Clark’s work through a 2004/5 exhibition at the ModeMuseum in Antwerp called “Malign Muses: When Fashion Turns Back” (later titled “Spectres: When Fashion Turns Back,” when it traveled to the Victoria &Albert Museum). The exhibition was essentially a series of probing conversations about the relationship of fashion with history that took place between Clark and fashion theorist Caroline Evans. Clark has been experimenting with curating and displaying costume since she opened the Judith Clark Costume Gallery in 1997. She is now a joint London College of Fashion/Victoria and Albert Research Fellow.

Fashion Projects : One particularly powerful vignette in the “Malign Muses” exhibition was titled “Locking In and Out,” which manifested in horizontally rotating cogs on which the dressed mannequins were secured. As the cogs literally locked in and out of each other echoing the cyclical nature of fashion, the garments were forced in and out of proximity with others – a fleeting closeness that automatically imposed new relationships between the clothing. Were you surprised at some of the relationships and insights that were realized through this seemingly randommechanism?

Judith Clark: There is of course always a difference between the design and the effect when it is built in the exhibition space. There are also, importantly, the references and associations that the visitor brings to any installation and as you suggest cogs have many powerful connotations. I felt that in a way the “Locking In and Out” section could lend itself to many interpretations– cogs in a fashion machine, or the powerful association between objects through simple proximity, the alienation when this is ‘unlocked’, the endlessness of the fashion cycle, and the odd number three. There could have been any number of cogs and indeed a fanciful first design draft had hundreds of cogs intersecting, which would have further illustrated that all dresses are in some way related to all other dresses, but happen to come into contact only if a trend manipulates the relationship.

Spectres: When Fashion Turns Back. Installation Shot, Victoria and Albert Museum.

FP: In an essay for the book MoMu Backstage, you write, “Historical reference in dress has never been about evolution, continuity. There are other ways of plotting this. In dress, surfaces float free of their histories.” This statement seems to dispute the chronological display methodology that is often apparent in museum exhibitions. Do you think the most effective interpretations of dress dispense with chronology and literalism? What should we be looking for when seeking patterns and relationships in fashion?

JC: I’m not sure that I would dispense with chronological display as it does represent one important story and it does represent evolution from a designer’s point of view. I think the problem with it is that it presents inspiration as linear. What interest me are the other patterns at play. This is why I was so fascinated by Caroline Evans’s book Fashion at the Edge. It was because she was describing inspiration and historical reference in different spatial terms: labyrinthine, as leaps into the past (“tigersprung”) etc. I thought these might be clues to curating a different kind of story. I now get my students to read a piece of theory in three-dimensions, which means reading fashion theory looking out for spatial metaphors, and sketch what shapes come into their heads— these are rarely straight lines.

FP: Exhibitions inherently rely on effective collaborations like the one between you and Caroline Evans. Is it the essentially collaborative nature of the exhibition process that draws you? Who would you most want to collaborate with, and why?

JC: I have had wonderful experiences collaborating on exhibitions and continue to repeat collaborations and conversations with the same people. Some of those conversations date back to the opening of the gallery ten years ago. Usually I am the one who “picks up the phone,” so to speak, and invites people to work on projects, once I have an idea of how the material might be themed, and what the scope is. I have been lucky that I have worked on projects with some research funding attached—so, for example, I could afford to invite the architect Yuri Avvakumov from Moscow to come to London and discuss “Malign Muses” with me. That is a rare luxury.

Anna Piaggi, "Fashion-ology" Exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Installation Shot.

FP: Your 2006 exhibition on Anna Piaggi at the V&A titled “Fashion-ology” celebrated the process of fashion more so than the actual realization of clothing. On a parallel line, do you find the process of developing exhibitions or the final outcome to be more inspirational? When you conceptualize an exhibition, are you first intrigued by certain objects, or with a specific question and theme?

JC: I am definitely more interested in process, though I care about the final outcome a lot. It is the bit most people like reading about which is why I am keen to document process in the accompanying exhibition catalogues.

In terms of how I work, I think all of the things you mention appear more or less simultaneously: objects, theme and narrative questions. Then you start testing the different assumptions: questions such as, How many objects exist to illustrate a theme, or is it just the one piece you fell in love with? And then there is the important issue of the enfolding space. I have recently both curated and designed exhibitions so the installation evolves as the objects appear. I do a lot of sketching. I am more of an exhibition designer than a dress historian.

FP: I love your statement, “Anthropomorphic imagination makes clothes magical.” What is it about clothing that can make us instinctually feel an imagined closeness, or parallel existence, as if we somehow understand its previous life?

JC: We dream and imagine stories that are inhabited by clothed people. The stories are powerful because of their associations, not factual accuracy. I think one of the most compelling things for me about Anna Piaggi is her firm belief in this, a fact that has underwritten her collages. She is insistently not a historian, even though her familiarity with the history of dress is vast, but she knows clothes according to her dream-work, her tales. That is why she wears precious vintage dresses. She appropriates the spirit of their previous owners.

FP: It seems that many museums will not show, or even collect, garments that are stained, damaged or heavily distressed (at least not without much restoration). Do you think the effects of age can be a desirable or value-added quality within an exhibition setting? Have you ever experimented in ways to reveal a garment’s personal history?

JC: Not really, but I think it is a very interesting issue. Amy de la Haye is the person who, I think, speaks most interestingly about this subject. In curating the Street Style exhibition at the V&A, she brought these issues into the museum, as in what to do with biker boots? There are clearly many issues where curatorial interest and conservation integrity are and will be at odds.

FP: As the human form has changed over fashion history, it can be a challenge to find the right kind of mannequin (i.e. body type) in order to accurately display a garment. With this in mind, in past exhibitions you have developed specific mannequins in order to realize your vision. Have you ever been tempted to dispense with the human body entirely? Is it even possible to divorce clothing from the body?

JC: I love the fact that the garment is linked so inescapably to the body. I think when the mannequin is invisible, it is the most noteworthy thing about the exhibition—everyone is looking for the body. The clothes will always represent its essential scale and proportions, if they are wearable, which is what I work with mostly. I am also interested in working with conservation constraints and so I have been working with archive mannequins and superimposed ‘prosthetics’ onto these that in some way represent or extend the theme of whatever is being exhibited. I have commissioned the avant-garde jeweler Naomi Filmer to work on these.

A recent example was to punctuate the exhibition dedicated to the designer Simonetta with particular poses and gestures. It seemed essential to have her in the exhibition and she had a particular pose—raised chin, cigarette. It starts at the research phase—I am looking at all these photocopies of Simonetta, thinking, There is her pose again, and then think, How does this get to be in the exhibition?

Simonetta Exhibition at Palazzo Pitti.

FP: I work towards the ethical preservation of textiles and costume in an exhibition setting – a role that inherently leads to limitations and compromises on visual display methods. As a curator working within a museum setting, how do you circumvent such limitations? Do you think that preventive conservation requirements negatively affect the dynamic potential of displays? Did you concern yourself with conservation techniques when you had your gallery? Do you think that exhibition display could be an acceptable occurrence in the “life” of the garment? (Therefore, whatever happens is somehow excusable?)

JC: No, I don’t think anything is excusable for dynamic display. I think part of the interest in this subject for me are precisely the limitations as I said about the mannequins. The clothes are often valuable objects, and certainly fragile and I hope that I manage to work around the brief. The cogs in Malign Muses were set at a conservation-appropriate speed. The mannequin prosthetics didn’t touch the garments. I think people perhaps underestimate my concern about the objects.

FP: Focusing on experimental exhibition techniques, the Judith Clark Costume Gallery succeeded in pushing the field of fashion curation forward through, as you have said, “creating a new grammar, new patterns of time and reference.” Now that the gallery no longer exists, are there any other museums or galleries adopting experimental or innovative approaches to the exhibition of dress? Where do you see the field of fashion curation heading within the next 10 to 20 years?

JC: I’m not sure. I think that the conversations are much more fluid about this subject. We are debating it now. I am working freelance a lot and so importing my attitude to fashion curation to a number of places. I worked at Palazzo Pitti last year and this year I am doing a project for the Boijmans van Beuningen museum. My gallery has downsized to a workshop (to build miniature exhibitions) and hopefully a website for hypothetical exhibitions. I have two small children and so what I think I am doing tomorrow quickly becomes next month.

I think the ”where is it going” question is interesting in relation to what you asked earlier about conservation. These restrictions will not alter and I think it a case of carefully going back to basics and thinking: What can we do with a dress, a plinth, a mannequin and a spot light? Small changes are interesting in my opinion. I think there is also a “virtual” exhibition debate, which appears a lot in our students’work and a restlessness about exhibitions that don’t move. There isn’t enough drama it would seem. I think if it is virtual then it can be wholeheartedly so – i.e. the installation may as well be “hypothetically” on Mars.

FP: Drawing from your statement “Fashion and academia have been uneasy bedfellows,” do you think fashion exhibitions must be grounded in scholarly research in order to be effective? Is there any value in exhibitions that emphasize an entertainment factor?

JC: I think as long as curators don’t lose their nerve about their original idea for an exhibition it is usually OK. The problem is when the sponsor takes over the power. That is revolting. But to make an exhibition popular—why not? I think exhibitions that are based on scholarly research often are just more coherent – the curator has more material to fall back on.

Clark's Sketches and Notes for the Simonetta Exhibition

FP: You state in Backstage that you are interested in “the relationship between curating and digression, in the connections made by the visitors who stray.” Pursuing a similar question, curators Harold Koda and Andrew Bolton of the Costume Institute introduced their exhibition “blog.mode: addressing fashion” by writing that in “opening a dialogue with visitors to the exhibition and to the blog, the curators hope to expand their own views and further the practice of fashion interpretation and connoisseurship.” The main premise of their exhibition seeks to garner feedback from their public through the vehicle of blog commenting. Do you think this is an effective platform to study this idea of digression? Are there any other ways that you can think of?

JC: I think it is an interesting approach – I had an exhibition at the gallery called “Captions” where I exhibited one dress and nailed captions to the wall and printed a sheet where visitors could come and write their alternative captions. Some were great, some were really dreadful and pointless. My favorite was written by Caroline Evans’s daughter Caitlin. She wrote a story about the princess who wore the gown and I often think about it. I think the same has happened with the Met blog—it is very hit and miss. It is a fabulous project to do at the Met given their position, because they have a chance to have responses on such a huge scale. I think people are not very articulate about their experiences of exhibitions and so it is difficult to get the account that we might like back from the visitors.

I think it would be interesting to have an exhibition where the curator could totally digress—literally one story become another during the exhibition. But it would be considered so indulgent, I don’t have the courage to do it.

Judith Clark can be found at http://www.judithclarkcostume.com.

Fashion as Expanded Practice: An Interview with Shelley Fox

by Francesca Granata

From Fashion Projects #3

The work of New York-based British designer Shelly Fox came to prominence shortly after her graduation from the famed Central Saint Martins MA in 1996. Her beautifully- crafted “scorched felt” pieces, which made up her graduation collection, were promptly acquired by Liberty, the London department store known for championing independent designers.

Initially known for her textile experimentation and innovative pattern-cutting techniques, Fox eventually began to expand her practice into installation and film, at first in conjunction with her fashion presentations and later—as she became a research fellow at Central Saint Martins and ceased to produce seasonal collections—as stand-alone research projects.

What characterizes the various permutations of her work is an attention to the materiality of the fabric and garments she creates. This often leads her to explore the connections between clothes, memory and history—an exploration which is backed by extensive research in archives and collections. Perhaps counterintuitively, she combines this interest in the physicality of the clothes with an engagement with a variety of media. Partially thanks to her numerous collaborations, she has expanded her practice into film, sound installations, photography and, through a project she produced together with SHOWstudio in 2002, digital media. This multimedia aspect of her work is matched by a multi-sensorial one, as the sound and smell of the clothes and the fabric often play an important role in her work.

Fox has recently been appointed Donna Karan Professor of Fashion and chair of the soon-to-be-launched MFA program in Fashion Design and Society at Parsons. This has prompted her move to New York, where she plans to convey this expansive idea of what it means to be a fashion designer to her students.

I met with Fox in the West Village coffee shop to discuss her past and present work.

FP: Were you trained in fashion or textile design and did you train at Central Saint Martins?

SF: My training originated in fashion from the very beginning, even back to the point that I learned to sew by making my own clothes. I learned through old dressmaking patterns, and it helped me understand construction and the order in which a garment goes together. So I was trained in fashion, making and cutting and I jumped around a bit in the way I went through my education. I did a 2 year foundation course in addition to a 1 year technical pattern cutting course in Croydon. Then I went to Middlesex to do a BA in fashion but left half way through the 1st year. Finally, I went to Central Saint Martins, where I pursued a textiles design degree. I specialized in knitwear, and from there I had a year out, where I went to worked for a designer, Joe Casely-Hayford and then I went back to do the MA program at Saint Martins, which was womenswear/knitwear I graduated from the MA in 1996.

FP: Was it already a well-known program?

SF: Yes, Alexander McQueen had graduated from the program in 1992. New people were coming out and it was building a crescendo…

As soon as I left Central Saint Martins, Liberty (in London) wanted to buy my collection. I had already been offered a job in Italy in Rimini to work in knitwear, but I was in my late 20s by that point and didn’t want to live in a seaside town in the middle of nowhere, so I decided to go with Liberty and do my own thing in the way I knew how with very little experience. From there I started my own label, but I didn’t start presenting to the public in terms of a catwalk show or installation until my fourth and fifth collection, which was in ’98/’99.

FP: Did your career in teaching start later?

SF: Since I was getting press, people were inviting me to do guest lectures. In 2000, I was invited by Central Saint Martins to be a Research Fellow without really knowing what that meant and what that was, because practice-based research wasn’t really discussed to the extent it is now. Both Central Saint Martins and the London College of Fashion have been building their research so much in the last years, especially in fashion and textiles. There are a lot of critical thinkers and historians but practice based research has only been recently acknowledged in a serious way.

FP: A couple of years ago, I was teaching at Goldsmiths in what was then the textiles BA, and the students were the first ones to explain to me in detail the techniques that you used in your work. Your work seems to have a patina. It seems to be artificially aged insofar that you “torch sequins” and “scorch felt.” How did you come to these techniques?

SF: I used to teach textile students at Goldsmiths. The scorching of the felt came about in my first collection, which was the MA graduation collection in 1996. I was working with a lot of John Smedley yarn and it was knitted on an industrial circle knitting machine and felted through a domestic washing machine. And then I would have it pressed and what happened one day is that it got stuck in the machine and started to scorch. I realized there was a way of controlling the heat, so that’s how I developed that collection. It was almost by an accident. But when that happened, it changed the entire collection in terms of pattern cutting-ideas as well as the physical fabric, because I could engineer and highlight where darting and construction lines were by partially locking out a specific section from the heat so that an exact shape would be left, almost like an X-ray. I could create patterns on the fabric by scorching it in and burning it in and there was a way of controlling that.

FP: Was there something in particular that attracted you to the process?

SF: There was a particularly smell to the collection, which was really interesting. I used to get told off by the technicians because of the smell it used to create in the print studio, but I had to keep doing it to get the whole collection done. It wasn’t really burning, it was more of a fine scorch—It looked beautiful and there was something to do with the smell of the project that I really enjoyed.

FP: And were “the torched sequins” developed in the same collection or was it the later? Was it important to you that both gave an idea of the passage of time?

SF: The sequins were developed 4 years later, in 2000. To be honest, the passage of time wasn’t necessarily my main concern with those two collections. I did something else which related more directly to that concept in 2004. I did a scarf project which was called “Fashion and Modernity.” I worked really close with the fashion theorist Caroline Evans on it, as she was in charge of the larger project funded by the Arts Humanities Research Council, which was called “Fashion and Modernity.” There was much more of a memory idea in that one. It started with about 200 scarves, again still loom felted. They were made because I had become obsessed with photography, and in particular carte de vista from the 19th century. Those little photographs from when society first started to be photographed. I had found them in a flea market, and was intrigued by the fact that people’s family boxes of photographs end up in the market stands. There was a real fascination with the histories of the people in the photographs. I would keep asking myself: “Who are they? What do they do? I wonder if their granddaughter is still alive. Did they have children or not?”

FP: Did you use the carte de vista in tandem with the scarf for the “Fashion and Modernity” project?

SF: Yes, we had two hundred scarves of about 9 or 8 different colors. We drew around one of the cards to get an idea of the size and from that template we put it over the scarf, And we found this paste, which bleaches the color from the scarf and would leave a trace of the card. It’s similar to when you have an old picture on the wall and you remove it, there is a trace of what was left. We attached one card per scarf and we actually ended up giving the scarves away…

FP: And you did so to local merchants?

SF: Yes, the project had to be in and around the area of Charing Cross Road in London [where Central Saint Martins is located]. At the same time as part of the same project, Alistair O’Neil was curating a photography exhibition on Charing Cross Road and Caroline Evans was doing her work about it. I worked with Time Out for the project. We handpicked 23 independent stores in and around Charing Cross Road. It had to do with the fact that Soho (in London) is trying to hang on—maybe not successfully—to the idea of being a village within the city, so it was about preserving your favorite stores: your favorite café, your favorite grocer or fish and chips shops, whatever they might be. I picked those particular stores because of their independent feel and because they had their own identity. They were not like any high street stores in England, which tend to be very similar.

FP: It’s mainly chains..

SF: Yes, it’s all chains, and they are crucifying all the neighborhood stores up and down the country. We chose stores listed in Time Out and we asked each store to give a number of scarves away to any costumer they wanted to…

FP So they also got to pick their favorite costumers?

SF: Yes, or they found a way of choosing them. This great independent cinema in Soho called Curzon told me later on that a guy had lost his house keys at the cinema, and so he went back to the cinema to the lost and found, where they gave him the key, as well as one of my scarves. From then on, they decided that every first customer of the day who went to lost and found would get a scarf. They started their own stories. Each store started to do its own thing, which was quite interesting

FP: So in a way you were combining these random people’s memories with the histories of local merchants in Soho …

SF: Yes, and inside the packet we put together a questionnaire for the people to answer, through email or with a pre-stamped envelope, and it would ask questions like: “How would you like to be remembered?” “What do you think of these photo cards being on the scarf?” “What’s your reaction to it?” “Do you carry photographs of friends, family, lovers around with you?”

FP: Did you actually get some of the questionnaire back?

SF: Yes, we got loads. Some people were really upset by the whole situation. They were freaked out by it, “No, I wouldn’t want to be remembered in this way.” And other people went to the other extreme. One girl wrote an entire essay on the characters in the photograph, sort of like a play…

FP: So it became this participatory project in a way! Going back in time a bit, you also did a collection and a presentation at the ICA in 2002, which was based on family portraits, but, in that case, your own family portrait?

SF: That collection (collection no. 14) started with me going into a shop, in Spitalfields, where I found folded napkins which were exquisite. They were second hand and what attracted me to them was the way they were starched and folded, in a very pristine way, suggesting a very upstairs/downstairs old country house linen cupboard. And there were also pillow cases and table cloths. I bought them all and they sat on my desk for six weeks before I really knew what I was going to do with them. Later, I found out that the napkins were from the Concorde, so they were the exquisite napkins you would have got when you flew on the Concorde. I developed the actual collection based on the napkins and the pillowcases. I used the actual napkins to develop a series of dresses. The way they folded and twisted from the neck informed how the entire collection was developed.

Originally the collection was to be shown in Paris and it never happened because my backer pulled the support 4 days before the show. We were already working with SHOWstudio, with the idea of live footage from the catwalk, so we opted for a film instead. The starting point for the film were the photographs of Mike Disfarmer—an American photographer who recorded towns around Arkansas in the early ’40s. Many of them were images of families, of brothers and sisters. Everyone in the picture is interconnected and there is always someone who seems like they didn’t want to be in the shot, or in that very family. So we framed the shoot around the idea of Disfarmer’s family photographs and in the beginning of the film we included my family photographs, my partner Ross’ family photographs and those of Scanner —who did the sound—and D-Fuse, who did the projections for the show. We all included our family’s photographs and built the beginning of the film around that.

FP: Your work also seems to be about materiality as opposed to just images. A lot of fashion companies are very image driven and there is less attention paid to the physicality of the clothes. So I guess your approach is counter to the majority of what fashion is now…What is interesting to me in the way you use memory and the past is how it counteracts this notion that fashion is always forward driven. To some extent, I relate your approach to the new interest in slow fashion and sustainability. Your work is, of course, limited production and there are countless stories and narratives surrounding these very carefully crafted garments. I was thinking about this in relation to your work overall and your installation at Belsay in particular, where you staffed the walls of a room with bales and bales of fabric. Those made me think of over-production, they reminded me of mounts of discarded fabric…?

SF: The Fashion at Belsay project was also very much about memory. I think what was interesting about that is that a number of British fashion designers were given a brief from the English heritage to work around the history of the house: a 18th century Mansion in Northumbria. I worked with the telephone room and study, which were next door to each other and tried to evoke the memories of people who had been living in the house—and particularly those working in it—by padding the walls with “fresh white laundry.” This came about by a donation of laundry, bedding, uniforms, and quilting from a recycling company.

As I planned the project and researched where to get the clothes and fabric from, I was introduced to somebody at Saint Martins, whose father owned a factory in the East End of London. They recycled textiles and clothing—from hotels, restaurants, public service uniforms—for reused businesses around the world. They export a huge container a week out of the factory to Africa, Poland, and other places, where they have business set up on the back of all the clothing that we don’t want. And that’s just one reused business servicing just one small section of England. When I was building the installation, I asked them to send me anything white, and when the installation was finished it all went back, so there was no waste!

FP: Besides the Belsay project, did you work with used clothes or fabric?

SF: I recently did that with my last project, which I have just completed and shown at the ICA. It was titled The Fat Map Collection and it was part of the Nobel Textiles Project. I was paired with Peter Mansfield, a scientist who, together with a German scholar, invented the MRI scanner. They received a Nobel Prize for it. So I interviewed him about his work and then I met with a professor at a medical research council, who was working with the concept of fat scanning which measured fat in the body. He was looking at internal and external fat and the dangers of internal fat. He was examining the fact that body size doesn’t always prove health as often thin people can have internal fat which is the most dangerous. At the same time, I was looking at images from Walker Evans, from the 1930s, from the Depression. The photos got me thinking about the process of clothes-making and the way people used to make their own clothes as opposed to buying them ready-made, and the way clothes would be passed on and adapted to different bodies. It reminded me how I started by making my own clothes. So I was interested in using found clothes from the ’30s and ’40s, as my starting point for the project and went to upstate New York to buy them.

The intention was to use myself as a subject, I would be fat-scanned and then I would be put through a 6 month exercise regime and then be rescanned at intervals throughout the project. I would work through the project with found vintage clothes. It was suggested that I use volunteers and I reluctantly did because I was just moving to New York. But it didn’t really work, as it was really hard to make sure that they would stick to the regime and they didn’t so I ended up using the scan images as an idea and I started to work with the vintage garments. I placed them on contemporary mannequins and began taking them apart. I removed sections of panels within the dresses, as they were too small to fit onto the contemporary standard model-size mannequin. The idea was based around the changing body, which would be put through an exercise regime and the changing of clothing that passed through generations.

FP: Were they supposed to fit you?

SF: Yes, that was my intention to make it based on me, because there is an emotional way you feel when you wear certain garments. I used to wear clothes from the ’30s and ’40s all the time when I was about 20, because I was smaller then, and they would hang on me in a particular way. Now, if I try and wear them it’s much different: the waist lane changes and it has do with the way your body changes when you get older, so I wanted to realign them to my memory of how I remembered wearing them … I hope to re-visit the project again but approaching it differently using my own body scans over a period of time.

FP: You mentioned smell being important to your designs, which is quite unusual. Most people don’t connect fashion with the sense of smell, but rather think of it primarily in visual terms. I also realized that sound seemed central to a number of your presentations and films. Your collaborations with the sound artist Scanner seems really important to you. So I wanted to ask you about the multimedia aspect, or better multisensorial aspect, of your work…

SF: We first started thinking about sound when we did our first installation at a store called Joseph, which was a sound installation. It was an empty store and we took it over for fashion week. It was for the Autumn/Winter 1998 collection—the Braille collection which used Braille markings on the wool used to construct the clothes.

Three season later for Spring/Summer 2000, we produced a collection around the Morse code. We took a quote by Nietzsche and we typed in our Morse code translator which would convert it into dot dash visuals and into the sound it would make, so we used the visuals for the clothing and then we used the sound for the room.

FP: So in a way the clothes carried sound in them via the Morse code…

SF: Yes, but it wasn’t necessarily obvious to people watching them.

Later, I worked with Scanner for the Belsay project. It was a visual and a sound piece. The sound was the interviews of the servants that worked there in the 1930s and ’40s. We did some research with the English heritage and they pulled the sound archives of the interviews they did when they bought this particular house in Belsay

They had bought the house in the early 1980s and it had dry rot, which meant that it would get eaten from the inside and eventually collapse. So they had to go in and save it, which they did. At that point, they started to look at the architecture of the building and began to wonder why certain things like staircases had been moved etc. The only people who would know these intimate details about the house were the servants who had worked there. So they interviewed them all and they had to do it quickly because they were quite elderly. Some of them lived in the local area—they had been young girls who went into service into these big old houses. Ultimately for the purpose of the project, Scanner worked with the interviews and developed a sound piece which incorporated snippets of their voices telling their personal stories.

Collecting Fashion

Valierie Steele and Antonio Marras

We are pleased to announce a new regular contributor to Fashion Projects: Marco Pecori, a PhD Candidate at the Centre for Fashion Studies at Stockholm University, who has written extensively for a range of publications in Italy and abroad. Marco will contribute a series of round table discussions that bring together academics, designers and curators in order to ignite a conversation between theory and practice and to explore issues salient to contemporary fashion. The first one, on the topic of fashion museums, was originally published in Italian in Wit Magazine.

Collecting Fashion By Marco Pecorari

Fashion as ephemeral artwork is daily narrated in temporary exhibitions. As hosting institutions, museums have started questioning the way they react to this new dimension within the museum. Collecting dress is already a duty of ethnographic and decorative arts museums. But at the same time, these institutions are conceiving dress as social testimony, or serial object. In these museological contexts, the dress is hardly ever contextualized in its visual process of creation that coincides with a representation of contemporary fashion. In order to explore this topic more in depth, we talked to the curator Amy de la Haye, the Director of the Museum at FIT Valerie Steele, the director of the Galleria del Costume, Caterina Chiarelli and with fashion designers, Agatha Ruiz de la Prada and Antonio Marras.

Marco Pecorari: First of all, thanks for participating. Let’s start with an ‘easy’ issue: what’s the difference between fashion and costume? fashion museum and costume museum?

Agatha Ruiz de la Prada: We had to face this issue with Madrid’s costume museum when we propose to call it ‘Costume Museum’ but I guess, a fashion museum should cover more than mechanics and elements of fashion, such as representing fashion’s relation to society. Antonio Marras: In my opinion, the gap is huge. Costume is identified as obsolete, retro and not contemporary. Fashion is escaping from this. Wrongly. Personally I love visiting costume museums. Caterina Chiarelli: I love costume museums, too. But I think we should delimit costume museum to an ethnographic field, based more on the study of dress as a tradition than on its changing nature. Amy de la Haye: Traditionally collections of dress and fashion were generically described as ‘costume’, a term that could embrace different kind of dress. It was inclusive. Fashion and the museum were not paired explicitly until the early 1970s when the V&A (London) and the Costume Institute at the Met (New York) started to actively embrace contemporary fashion. However, the terminology of museum collections and institutions has only started to change very recently to more accurately reflect the type of garments housed/exhibited and, where appropriate, to reflect growing interests in fashion and attract wider audiences.

Agatha Ruiz de la Prada and Amy de la Hay

MP: so that’s also a commercial side… Valerie Steele: Yes. But I use the word “fashion” rather than “costume” because I want to emphasize that even in the past, people wore fashion – not fancy-dress costumes. The word “costume” should be restricted to theatrical/film costume or folk costume. The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) is a fashion museum – meaning that we look at fashion, not as “art” (like in an art museum, where they tend to focus just on haute couture) or “history” (like a history museum, where clothing is used to document or illustrate other aspects of the past) but as a legitimate type of design that has both artistic and historical elements – and that has its own history. CC: Very true. In my opinion, a fashion museum should exhibit the changing of this type of design, with more freedom.

MP: What kind of restrictions could a fashion museum have? VS: There are restrictions on conservation and exposition of dress, and also from fashion designers and the fashion system in general….

MP: What kind of links should we have between fashion museums and the fashion system? ARP: A museum is a place for exhibiting art, creativity, whereas the fashion commercial machine has to deal with money and productions… VS: I don’t agree… I think that a fashion museum is a part of the fashion system. Fashion designers know that the museum is a medium (like runway, the fashion magazine and the department store) that presents fashion to the public. Therefore, designers seek to control exhibitions of their work: here’s one restriction which doesn’t have to be accepted by curators.

MP: An example is the one with Lagerfeld and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in which case Lagerfeld’s interference caused the exhibition to be cancelled

AM: I’m a fashion designer and I would never dare to interfere in the interpretation of my work. I would put my self in the curator’s hands. I would consider it an honour. dlH: It’s understandable. Designers in turn recognize that having their work represented in a museum collection provides cultural cachet today and will ensure their place in history in the future. But it’s not only that. Sometimes there are amazing connections made. When he had just launched his own label in London, John Galliano studied an 18th century man’s coat in the collection and presented his interpretation to the Collection as a gift. When fashion looks to history, the Museum can become especially relevant. AM: Definitely. “fashion people” have very little memory and they don’t look at the past as much as they should, and museums could help close this gap, if they could provide an easy access…

MP: Many museums are starting to catalogue on line their collections, which would make for a lot easier access and would also be helpful in terms of conservation. AM: Great. I think it would also be important to create a close relation between fashion designers factories and museums, in order to catalogue the most significant clothes, which are being produced. Just think about what we could have done in Italy: from Albino or Capucci to the first Max Mara and Romeo Gigli… CC: Sure, we should promote this collaboration but we need also to be careful to not get too involved. The museum could end up becoming a company’s archive.

MP: Could fashion museums represent the new step in museology or influence it? A new form of museum? dlH: We have to say two things about this. First, as we have trends in fashion there are also trends in fashion curation and in curation in general. Fashion curation has to be analyzed because it can be seen as an important step for the role of curators in museum. Second, we have to underline that fashion is one of the most immediately accessible of all museum collections. When I worked at the V&A I used to say that you could find your way to the Dress Gallery (which at the time showed a chronology of western fashion) blindfolded as it was the noisiest – everyone, all ages and both genders, had something to say and felt confident to express an opinion. Clothing of all types is inextricably entwined with our biographies and we leave imprints on the clothes we wear. VS: It’s true, but I also think that it’s too soon to know what fashion museums will ultimately contribute to museology as a whole. But we must strive to move beyond designer hagiography and crowd-pleasing displays of “pretty” dresses worn by celebrities. CC: I do believe that a fashion museum is inherently different and has great potentials for the future of museums. It is a dynamic museum.

Amy de la Haye is reader in Fashion Curation and Material Culture London College of Fashion.Joint Course Director (with Judith Clark) M.A. Fashion Curation, London College of Fashion. Formerly Curator of 20th Century Dress at the Victoria & Albert Museum (1991-1999). She will publish a book (co-curated with Judith Clark) on Curating Fashion for Yale University Press.

Valerie Steele Ph.D., (Yale University) is Director and Chief Curator of The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT)

Caterina Chiarelli is Director of the Galleria del Costume – Palazzo Pitti di Firenze.

Antonio Marras is the designer of his own brand Antonio Marras and Artistic Director of Maison Kenzo

Agatha Ruiz de la Prada is a Madrid-base fashion designer

Marco Pecorari is completing his Phd in Contemporary Fashion Theory at the Centre for Fashion Studies - Stockholm University - with a thesis entitled "The Show is not Enough: new trajectories for reading contemporary fashion". He writes for several fashion, arts and cultural independent magazines.