Sustainable Exchange

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.

Susan Cianciolo, Sketchbooks, Details

Eko-Lab Installation

Eco Chic: Towards Sustainable Swedish Fashion

Julian Red. Photo: Mikael Schultz @ Swedish Institute

by Francesca Granata

The Eco-Chic: Towards Sustainable Swedish Fashion Exhibition at the Scandinavia House opened with an interesting panel discussion including Marcus Bergman (managing director of Ecocotton, a pioneer in organic cotton production), Sass Brown (a professor at the Fashion Institute of Technology whose research focuses on women’s cooperatives in Latin America) and Karin Stenmar (a founder of the Swedish eco-fashion company Dem Collective). It was moderated by Hazel Clark, Dean of the School of Art and Design History and Theory at Parsons, who has a longstanding interest in slow fashion and the secondhand clothing trade.

Organized as a roundtable discussion, it covered the difficulty in sourcing sustainable material, partially attributed to the lack of innovation in the textiles industry, the need for living wages and the development of women’s cooperatives. Bodkin tied her interest in eco-fashion to her interest in Swedish Modernism and a drive towards functionality in clothing. However, it was interesting to hear how, according to Bergman, the ethos of Swedish design “of functionality and honesty in design” did not sufficiently enter the realm of fashion, due to the fact that fashion/textiles studies developed separately from other branches of design, at least in Sweden. The need for a new fashion design education was thus addressed to allow for the development of more aware designers. Also mentioned was the need for mass-market companies to join the conversation. According to Brown, this is actually occurring: As an example she mentioned Wal-Mart’s commitment to transitional cotton—a company which seemed odd to bring up due to their long-standing history of labour exploitation.

Clark asked about the creation of memories and narratives through clothes, something that Stenmar’s company, Dem Collective, addressed by having buyers record the life of their clothes in a project called One in a Thousand Jeans. This reminded me of an evocative and inspiring project I had been meaning to write about by a Dutch designer Ruby Hoette—Worn Relics—which involves the recording of the life story of one’s favourite piece of clothes.

The exhibition, shows the diversity of design comprising Swedish eco fashion, and proves a real commitment on the part of Sweden and the Swedish design community to the search for sustainable solutions for the fashion industry. It remains open through August 21.

The Concise Dictionary of Dress

Pretentious 4, photo by Julian Abrams.

The exhibition "The Concise History of Dress" recently opened at the Blythe House—the V&A repository for their reserve collections of furniture, textiles, dress, ceramics, jewellery and fine arts. Commissioned by Artangel, the exhibition is curated by fashion curator Judith Clark and the psychoanalyst Adam Phillips.

The exhibition consists of an hour long tour through the building and re-describes clothing in terms of anxiety, wish and desire, as a series of definitions created by Phillips and accompanying installations designed and assembled by Clark:

"Phillips’ definitions for words commonly associated with fashion and appearance – such as armoured, conformist, essential, provocative – were paired with eleven installations created by Clark on a walk through this vast building, from its rooftop to an underground coal bunker. "

We have yet to visit the exhibition, but it does sound both evocative and innovative in its curatorial and display choices, so it's certainly not to be missed. It is also accompanied by a book, with photographs by Norbert Schoerner.

Conformist-3. Both Images: The Concise Dictionary of Dress Judith Clark and Adam Phillips. Commissioned and produced by Artangel in collaboration with the Victoria and Albert Museum. Photo: Julian Abrams.

Conference Review: Finding Our fashion Footing

by Marco Pecorari

What is the Future of Fashion studies? If one year ago affirmed fashion scholars met in Warwick to find an answer (McNeil 2010), “Finding Our Fashion Footing” was the occasion for Phd students to discuss their research future as a possible answer to such challenging question.

Organized the last 19th March by the research students at London College of Fashion and the Center for Fashion Studies – Stockholm University, this first International Fashion Phd workshop was hosted by LCF. The presentation of each project was the occasion to discuss, problematize and individualize personal experiences, methodological issues and future research connections. As the title of the meeting suggests, it was also an opportunity for placing each individual work in a global geography of Fashion research.

The one-day meeting started with a session on Style and Youth Culture that saw the presentation of "The Indie Project: style and youth culture in London" by Rachel Lifter. Her research cuts across three diverse trajectories: the London fashion environment, theoretical style's approaches and contemporary youth culture. Despite the diverse disciplinarian affiliation, Lifter's use of Foucault's discourse is shared by Pecorari's Phd that aims to argument an archeology of the fashion discursive formation on contemporary ephemera through three different but generative dimensions of such discourse: academia, museum and designers.

Dries Van Noten, Press Release, Autumn/Winter 1999/2000 (pertaining to the PhD Research of Marco Pecorari)

In the same section, Promoting Designer Identity, Maria Sacchetti presented her analysis of the minimal aesthetic through a case study of the flagship store of Helmut Lang, showing how the retail space embodied in tandem the principles of the architect and the fashion designer’s aesthetic. Presentations proceeded with a section dedicated to Swedish Fashion History. Hanne Eide introduced the case of Augusta Lundin problematizing the Swedish translation of French fashion couture in the first part of the last century. In the same section Ulrika Berglund questioned how haute couture was interpreted within a social democratic country as Sweden (1930-1960), investigating the formation of a Swedish national identity far before the advent of the mass-market.

In the afternoon the section dedicated to Contemporary Fashion Media and Trends was opened by Jessica Conrah's "MTV- Fashion, Technology and Music Videos: The 1980s through a Critical and Phenomenological Approach." Conrah presented the case of MTV, reading it as a an important visual medium for fashion, style and image creation as well as a distribution site for advertising and consumer goods. Successively Ane Lynge Jorlén discussed her research on Contemporary Fashion Niche Magazine, such as Self Service, Ten, A Magazine.... Illustrating the production and consumption of such fundamental independent media, Lynge Jorlén addressed a fundamental fashion phenomenon that academic studies have neglected until now. The last presentation of this section was Chitra Buckley's "In-season Fashion Trend Information: implications for decision-making in own brand fashion retailers operating in the UK." Buckley examined the interaction in retail buying teams, during the processes of analyzing fashion change and developing clothing collections in the fast-moving, high street context.

The last session was dedicated to Gender Ambiguity and hosted the paper by Geraldine Biddle-Perry and Philip Walkander. Biddle-Perry presented the development and adoption of new forms of outdoor recreational leisure clothing in the aftermath of the First World War. Warkander examines his research, "Looking Queer," that concerns materiality, queer theory, issues of agency and power regulations. Working with 'queer' informants, Warkander aims to study aesthetics created in opposition with normative expectations, analyzing how looks and styles are produced, maintained, questioned or supported.

A final and fertile discussion pointed out a common will for fashion fashion research to move beyond those approaches that inevitable forced fashion within pre-fixed theoretical cages, claiming for an academic recognition but, too often, mortifying the phenomenon. The perspectives seem to change: from a pre-existing theory applied to fashion to a theory of fashion. However we must remember that this change has been initiated by fashion scholars' works which have opened academics doors to a discussion on fashion and on a theory of fashion. These fundamental interventions formed Phd students' disciplinarian awareness in recognizing their selves as Fashion Phds rather than sociologists, art historians, anthropologists... Despite this strong affiliation, a mutual difficulty emerged in defining fashion as a discipline or a field of research, testifying a common need for a terminological clarity reachable through the discussion of the past, present and future of study fashion. “Finding Our Fashion Footing” was an important step in this direction and the forthcoming related publication will contribute to formulate new scenarios.

Acknowledgment The author would like to thank: London College of Fashion, and in particular Ane Lynge Jorlén, Geraldine Biddle-Perry and Rachel Lifter, for the organization and for hosting the Phd group of the Centre for Fashion Studies (Stockholm University); and Philip Warkander for having contributed to the realization of this important dialogue.

References McNeil, Peter. 2010. “Conference Report: 'The Future of Fashion Studies'” Fashion Theory 14 (1): 105-110.

Fashion Projects Launch/Screening Event!

Boudicca, Film Still, Essay, 2009

The M.A. Fashion Studies At Parsons The New School for Design presents:

A screening to celebrate the new issue of Fashion Projects. The screening features a range of short experimental films on the topic of fashion and memory--the topic of the new issue. They include films by the British-based fashion design duo Boudicca, Dutch photographer Erwin Olaf, designer Shelley Fox, and fashion photographer Laura Sciacovelli. The screening is curated by Tamsen Schwartzman and Francesca Granata.

The screening will take place Friday the 23rd of April at 6 pm in the Wollman Hall, 65 West 12th Street. (PS: It will start promptly!). A reception will follow the screening.

The event is free and open to the public. Below is the official flyer: Feel free to circulate it.

SP10 PDF Fashion Projects

SP10 PDF Fashion Projects Event Invite