Fashion-able. Hacktivism and engaged fashion design (original) (raw)

Fashion Activism through Participatory Design

2013

"This study investigates the activism in the field of clothing design and fashion through selected findings from a case study exploring the possibilities to activate consumers in the field of fashion. The main research question: 'Does participatory design process and consumer’s own activity open opportunities to behavioural change?' will be elaborated. Does the ‘do-it-yourself’ aspect and own achievement change consumers attitude towards fashion and clothing? Is it possible to create person-product attachment through ‘do-it-yourself’ process? An experimental participatory fashion workshop which was held in Helsinki during the summer of 2012 will build the base for this case study. The workshop participants were working with the half-way design approach. We are starting from the question of how to express and fulfil consumer needs for personal representation and identification, the goal of the workshop was to raise awareness, motivate and enable a change in consumer behaviour towards a skilful making and understanding of the products. Personal interviews and questionnaires during this workshop build the source for exploring the main question, whether participation within the design process can change the consumer behaviour. Furthermore, a follow up questionnaire will evaluate the users’ appreciation of the created product, questioning whether the personal engagement and identification with the product will result in a closer emotional person-product attachment and thus supports a longer lifespan of the product. The paper concludes with a discussion on the workshop results and the opportunities to encourage sustainable fashion consumption through fashion activism. "

Re-Making Clothing, Re-Making Worlds: On Crip Fashion Hacking

Social Sciences

This article explores how Disabled people’s fashion hacking practices re-make worlds by expanding fashion design processes, fostering relationships, and welcoming-in desire for Disability. We share research from the second phase of our project, Cripping Masculinity, where we developed fashion hacking workshops with D/disabled, D/deaf and Mad men and masculine non-binary people. In these workshops, participants worked in collaboration with fashion researchers and students to alter, embellish, and recreate their existing garments to support their physical, emotional, and spiritual needs. We explore how our workshops heeded the principles of Disability Justice by centring flexibility of time, collective access, interdependence, and desire for intersectional Disabled embodiments. By exploring the relationships formed and clothing made in these workshops, we articulate a framework for crip fashion hacking that reclaims design from the values of the market-driven fashion industry and towa...

Wear, repair and remake: the evolution of fashion practice by design

Through my post-graduate, fashion practice-based research project, The Living Wardrobe, I have become increasingly interested in garment design that specifically facilitates future alteration and modification. There is potential for such a simple design approach to encourage habits of reduced consumption when garments are kept in use by adapting to wearers’ changing needs. Once a common provision in garments, the capacity for alteration is largely missing from contemporary women’s wear. The economies of mass production reduce seam allowances to the minimum required for assembly while complex industrial construction methods deter intervention. At the same time, the practical skills of repair and alteration are rarely learnt anymore. So passive has fashion consumption become and so disposable are the products that a dropped hem, ripped seam or missing button usually consigns a garment to the (charity) bin and justifies another trip to the boutiques. In an attempt to disrupt this cycle, my research looks at design strategies with the potential to re-engage the wearer in habits of wear, repair and remake. Designing garments with the adaptability required for prolonged, active use enables garments to better keep up with the times, changing style (not merely fit) over time. This approach to product longevity considers the use of the garment across multiple lifetimes, acknowledging that a garment may have several sequential owners. Through a discussion of recently developed garment prototypes, this paper will outline the challenges I have encountered in designing garments to actively engage consumers in this cycle of wear repair and remake. These challenges range from the practical, technical and the aesthetic, to considerations of participatory design strategies, consumer education, design authorship and alternative models of fashion production and consumption. This discussion further considers the impact of this research on my fashion practice. The Living Wardrobe aims to be a fashion practice that accepts responsibility for the design agency of the garments it creates. Remaking my practice to this end has fundamentally shifted how I approach design development, fashion production and communication, suggesting a new model of fashion design practice for sustainability.

A deconstructive system: fashion

Deconstruction in fashion is described as the making of incomplete and destroyed pieces of clothing. This process results in an endless creation with flavors from past, present and future. Besides being a stance of anti-fashion, deconstruction is a way of theorizing fashion as a system. In this paper, I argue that fashion, as a whole, is deconstruction. Firstly, fashion deconstructs itself so as to reconstruct and become fashionable again. Secondly, just like deconstruction, fashion does not create but reinterprets designs from past, present and future possibilities and lastly, this interpretive innovation process remains unfinished-forever recycling itself. This paper has two parts. First, it describes the contextual field of deconstructive fashion in theoretical terms. Deconstruction involves distorting conventional meaning patterns. Coined by the French philosopher Jacques Derrida, deconstruction is described as a term in his book Of Grammatology in 1967. Fashion was first named as deconstruction by the 'fashion writers following the Deconstructivist Architecture exhibition in 1988 at MOMA' (Gill, 1998). Second, the paper looks at the practice of deconstructive fashion through the work of a key designer of this method Hussein Chalayan. Chalayan made his appearance in the fashion scene in 1990s and marked this decade with his edgy and deconstructive designs. Chalayan's deconstructive memory dress from his collection Echoform (A/W 99-00) shows the deconstructive nature of fashion. Fashion's deconstructive operational mechanism is exemplified in Chalayan's denim made memory dress. Baring the suggestion of past time, the design of this garment repeats itself in its similar replications with slight differences, marking out the elements of fashion's own system: an annihilation of itself so as to be recreated, repetition with touches of minor differences (innovation), a constantly recycled nostalgia both in materials and designs and endless meaning and interpretation possibilities.

Collectively Altering Fashion | MFA THESIS

In today's fashion world, trends die almost as soon as they are born—creating a fast fashion system that equally requires both production and consumption to speed up. The result is an unsustainable industry, in social, environmental, and economic terms, that thrives on the exploitation of people and places. The work in this MFA thesis brings attention to contemporary fashion relations through a focus on garment consumption and production processes in the context of a globalized society. At the same time, this thesis explores ways that North American fashion designers can cultivate ethical and reciprocal collaborations with artisans around the world. Additionally, it questions our current fashion education system and calls for further implementation of critical pedagogies within fashion courses that will foster responsible, collaborative design. Design, art, and anthropological methods are integral components to this socially sustainable approach to fashion. In response to this thesis, I curated my own solo exhibition in March of 2015 in order to visually articulate the critical fashion themes I concluded from the research. As I did with this thesis, I began the exhibition by problematizing fast fashion and the current paradigm in terms of garment production, consumption, and disposal. This led me to offer a contributing solution centered in implementing a slow fashion model that grants artisans partnership opportunities with American fashion designers and brands. Due to the newness of the topic, I conducted exploratory research to analyze the contemporary artisan fashion movement within America. This allowed me to identify how designer and artisan collaborations can successfully cultivate opportunities and gains for both parties when considering anthropological methodologies.

Deconstruction - Fashion Theory 2nd Year

LISOF 2nd Year Fashion Theory , 2014

This paper aims to explore the ways in which deconstructionist designers Clive Rundle and Maison Martin Margiela share similar aspects of design work while blurring the lines of masculinity and femininity, whilst opposing traditional authoritarian structures. The designers’ use deconstruction elements as a vehicle for post-modern ideals, conceptual design and reinvented marketing processes. Their understanding of deconstruction philosophy allows them to unpack complex concepts such as recycling, tailor’s trace, anonymity and theoretical dress. The semiotic analysis will attempt to display how Clive Rundle’s A/W 2007 collection and Martin Maison Margiela’s A/W 2000 collections display the ethics of deconstruction by using this form of design as a dialectical device between consumer and garment-maker. In using the definition of deconstruction, this paper will be able to construct a basis for the semiotic analysis of both designer collections and prove similarities and differences in their deconstruction capabilities.