Virgin Knitters at the Textile Arts Center

Hall's father first scarf.

The Textile Arts Center, the founders of which were recently interviewed by Sarah Scaturro in Fashion Projects, is hosting a collaborative exhibition by Kimberly Ellen Hall titled "Virgin Knitters."

The exhibition is the documentation of a project started in 2007 for which Hall taught a number of people how to knit in exchange for their first project, a scarf. The project was inspired by the Buddhist notion of Wabi-Sabi, which can be partially understood as the appreciation of something specifically because of its imperfections.

That is how Hall explains the project:

"The virgin-knit scarves have both an emotional and aesthetic appeal. A virgin-knit scarf draws in the wearer through the knowledge that the knitter worked hard making it, while the aesthetic appeal stems from the ideas embodied in Wabi-Sabi, a Japanese concept of beauty. The idea that there is beauty and power in an object that is not precision made or the result of years of experience seems an important one today. It's easy to agree that everything is mass-produced, cheaply/quickly made these days, etc.—an antidote to that can be found in craft. But we often find at the other end of the spectrum is artisanal and labored handwork that can be a put-off when deciding to learn to make something for the first time."

Kimberly Ellen Hall is an artist and designer with an interest in the intangible qualities of textiles. She holds an MA in textiles from Central Saint Martins in London, and has designed on both sides of the Atlantic from Hussein Chalayan to Coach.

For more information on the exhibition and the accompanying programming, among which is a lecture by Sabrine Gschwandtner on November 11th please visit the Textiles Arts Center site

Kimberly Ellen Hall, Virgin Knitters Exhibition at the Textile Arts Center

IXEL MODA 2010: A Sustainable Fashion Conference in Cartagena, Colombia

Work by the Colombian Slow Fashion Designer Juliana Correa of ONA

I was recently invited to speak at IXEL MODA—a conference on Latin American fashion that takes place each year in Cartagena, Colombia and was co-funded by Erika Rohenes Weber and Danilo Cañizares.

The conference had both an academic and a business and development component. The academic side of the conference, which was organized by the Latin American fashion scholar Regina Root, focused on the theme of sustainability—a particularly interesting theme in the context of Colombia’s ongoing environmental and social problems.

Departing from her historical studies in Argentinean fashion, which were discussed in her recent book Couture and Consensus, Root discussed the need for inclusiveness in developing the country’s fashion system. Marsha Dickson, who is also U.S.-based, spoke about ethical fashion and social responsibility and the phenomenon of Fair Trade, as well as the difficulty of defining the terms. Arturo Tejada spoke on the importance of fashion education in the promotion of sustainability within the fashion industries. Kathia Castilho, from the Universidade Anhembi Morumbi as well as the editor of the Brazilian fashion journal dObra[s] spoke on fashion and language, while I spoke on the phenomenon of slow fashion, tying it to earlier experimental fashion movements and, in particular, deconstruction fashion.

Also of interest were presentations by Laura Novik, who spoke on sustainability and slow fashion in the context of Chilean fashion, which she promotes through her organization Raizdiseno, as well as the Brazilian journalist and academic Carol Garcia, who traced the tension between globalization and authenticity by following the permutation of Latin American symbols historically and cross-culturally. Garcia wrote a book on the topic titled “Moda Brasil: Fragmentos de um Vestir Tropical” (Fashion Brazil: Fragments of a Tropical Way of Dressing), San Paulo: Anhembi Morumbi Editor, 2001, which unfortunately has not yet being translated into English.

Work by the Colombian Slow Fashion Designer Juliana Correa of ONA

The event also showcased Colombian designers, some of whom fall within the slow fashion movement. Of particular relevance is the work of Alfonso Mendoza, whose jewelry is based on the region’s Afro-Caribbean heritage and includes local artisanal craft and fibers, as well as the experimental work of slow fashion designer Juliana Correa of ONA.

Another aspect of the conference discussed the need for a greater development of Colombian fashion both as actual industry and image industry and included a number of government officials, particularly ones connected to Inexmoda the Colombian Institute for exports and fashion. The intermingling of business and government officials alongside academic discussions made for interesting exchanges of ideas across what is generally an often strict divide based on—at least, in this case—the false assumption that the former might not be interested in academic discourse.

Francesca Granata

Fashion and the Humanities: Exploring New Angles

by Rizvana Bradley

I am currently completing my sixth year of Ph.D. work in the Literature Program at Duke University, and am working to develop a variety of critical approaches to theorizing fashion and the body. I have taught courses at Duke that are intended to enable students to recognize how various literary, filmic and artistic texts continue to richly shape fashion culture, and highlight the complex theoretical and social issues contemporary fashion thematizes.

Having greatly admired the academic work coming out of Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, I was excited to introduce students at Duke to the field now referred to as critical fashion studies. Initially I was at a loss as to how to design such a course, as some four years ago there was nothing like the CSM model being taught in US universities. Typically courses would mention fashion incidentally, or as an object of inquiry. With respect to the latter approach, fashion is constructed either purely as an anthropological object, proposing an analysis of historical dress, or as a sociological phenomenon, providing a detailed account of subcultural styles, for example. I knew that content-wise, the course I wanted to develop would incorporate the best of these strategies, but be less a fashion history course. I was most interested in concentrating on aesthetics, and spotlighting the visionary photography and runway productions happening in fashion since the late 1980s.

From the start it was evident that students had little exposure to an international fashion culture, the richness and eclecticism of various fashion figures, image-makers, entrepreneurs and designers. The courses challenged them to think about designers’ creative efforts in refreshing new ways. The first course, “Contemporary Fashion: Image, Object, Idea,” I taught once. I then taught a course entitled, “Fashion, Literature and the Avant-Garde,” twice. The final course, “Art, Media and the Body,” placed fashion in dialogue with the contemporary arts more broadly. All of these courses include fashion in the context of discussions about contemporary artistic practices that are currently provoking key concerns in the humanities, specifically questions of discourse, identity, representation and subjectivity, as well as certain questions about aesthetics, materiality and difference. Students learn that some of the most innovative fashion designers explore these themes in complex, beautiful and challenging ways. For this reason, the readings for the courses draw from different disciplines, among them, philosophy, critical theory, science studies, and feminist theory.

Hussein Chalayan, Vogue, December 2008

Fashion does not exist in a vacuum, but is an art form that reflects socio-cultural mores, fears, anxieties and desires. Students are incredibly responsive to the visual material, and are required to analyze various collections by looking at detailed shots of garments, videos of runway shows, and interviews with designers. Key contemporary designers are examined against a backdrop of critical theory, feminist thought, history and philosophy. Students learn to approach fashion design with a critical (sometimes skeptical) eye and interpret the spectacle of a runway show or photographic image by relating the garments on models to such themes as trauma, modernity, gender, death and technology.

Collectively as a class, we explore the idea that the spirit of the avant-garde in fashion, runs parallel to the spirit of the artistic avant-garde in many ways, chief among them a resistance to representation, evident in a general turn toward abstraction. Increasingly fashion is partially turning away from the literal, from the tangible, and towards the ephemeral, the emotive and the affective. Students are encouraged to use a range of philosophical and critical themes to question the normative body, the virtual and figural construction of the body in time and space, and the bodily production of affect and sensation.

Studying designers as theatrical as John Galliano and Alexander McQueen, with the minimalist sensibilities of Yohji Yamamoto and Rick Owens, the different body experiments of Gareth Pugh and Walter van Beirendonck, and technological innovations of Hussein Chalayan, students were able to draw their own conclusions about today’s design practitioners, who seem to not only be working and making, but also thinking at the fringes of disciplines and design philosophies in order to expand the cultural scope of fashion today.

Elisava: Fashion, Film and Performance

Papabygote, Elisava, 2010

Another end of the year show which I visited in July was organized in conjunction with the graduation of the masters students in fashion design at Elisava, a school of design in Barcelona. It was great to witness the experimental and imaginative projects completed by the graduating class. In a testament to the multi-media nature of fashion today, the students were recquired to complete a collection, stage a performance to present their collection and produce a short video showcasing their work and the concepts behind it. Also in the spirit of collaborations, the majority of the students worked in pairs or more for the completion of the work—a system that brilliantly debunks the outdated notion of the “genius” artist (and by extension designer) for the more realistic idea of collaborative work.

The program is directed by Beatriu Malaret and Toni Miró; the year-end presentation was attended by Diana Pernet, the Parisian fashion critic and video journalist. Through Pernet, I learned that a number of different tutors from various disciplines work at Elisava (for instance, Alex Murray-Leslie of Chicks on Speed). This is probably one of the reasons for the experimental and innovative nature of the work.

One of my favourite pieces was the film and collection by Papabygote. Their short is witty and subtle and reminded me of the work of David Bestué and Marc Vives, the brilliant video artist duo, also from Barcelona.

Francesca

Fuzz &, Elisava 2010

Royal College of Art: Department 21

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.