Fashion Thinking: Creative Approaches to the Design Process

On occasion of her new book on fashion design education, Fashion Thinking: Creative Approaches to the Design Process (AVA, February 2013), Fiona Dieffenbacher--director of the BFA in Fashion Design at Parsons the New School for Design--reflects on new and exciting approaches to fashion education:

by Fiona Dieffenbacher

The main question to be asked of fashion education today is “Are we training students to design clothes or to create fashion?” To be makers, creators, or both?” At Parsons The New School for Design we have re-approached our curriculum to address these questions, which has led to innovative, new pathways for our students to develop as designers.

In order to understand the difference between the spheres of making and creating fashion, we have focused on design thinking as a method of envisioning a reality that does not yet exist, and as a means for achieving innovation. Fashion thinking involves harnessing the vast array of skills at the designer’s disposal, while embracing the chaos of the process itself. This might include upending traditional approaches or reapporpriating them to unearth new ways of creating and making clothes.

“Fashion Thinking: Creative Approaches to the Design Process” highlights the work of nine students, documenting their responses to a variety of design briefs and their process: from idea to concept and design. These projects demonstrate that there are multiple entry points into that process and a million ways out. In between there are some consistent doors that each designer will go through (albeit in varying orders) and there are consistent tools they will utilize to accomplish the end result, but the rest is up for grabs. Emerging designers must learn to develop both their own personal philosophy of design and a particular way of working, which involves taking ownership of the process itself.

Traditionally, fashion design texts have tended to suggest a “one-size-fits-all” approach to the design process: research – sketch – flat-pattern – drape – fabrication – make. While this order works for many designers, and are essential building blocks of the design process, this does not work for all. At Parsons we have developed a curriculum that encourages a variety of approaches to design versus heralding a formulaic method. If we persist in training fashion students to design via a process that is rote and mundane, we have missed the point entirely.

Not everyone begins with a sketch; indeed some don’t sketch at all. Isabel Toledo is one such example, “I don’t start new things at the sketch pad or the drawing board. For me, fashion design begins at the sewing machine and the pattern-making table. I know that I am creating a design when I make things with my hands, giving them form and shape, often inventing new techniques to fold and manipulate cloth as I experiment with my designs and perfect them over time.”[1]

Dissatisfaction with a particular way of working can also lead to a breakthrough in the design process and this was true for Rei Kawakubo, two years before her first presentation in Paris in 1979. “I decided to start from zero, from nothing, to do things that have not been done before, things with a strong image.” Speaking of her decision, Harold Koda commented on her process, “…‘to start from zero’… has become a constant of her design process. Season after season, collection after collection, Kawakubo obliterates her past… Liberated from the rules of construction, she pursues her essentially intuitive and reactive solutions, which often result in forms that violate the very fundamentals of apparel.”[2]

In the BFA Fashion Design program here at Parsons, we have witnessed a distinct shift away from a right/wrong philosophy of teaching toward a more problem-based approach to learning. A student-centric model now exists where the fundamentals of design, construction, digital and drawing are taught in tandem with a full roster of studio electives and liberal arts that students select from a wide variety of options open to them across our university, The New School. Students learn traditional techniques and immediately apply them within the context of their own approach to design. In doing so they begin to articulate their own aesthetic and visual vocabulary from the outset of their experience in the program. Additionally, students are now encouraged to develop a central body of work that is re-contextualized across their suite of electives, which informs their work in new ways.

There is no “right” way to approach design; there are no “wrong” turns. Everything matters. Designers are problem-solvers and problems present challenges that often lead to creative solutions that could not have been conceived of any other way. Within the unpredictability of the process ‘mistakes’ transform into new ideas, yielding fresh concepts that drive silhouette and form forward. Innovation happens on the heels of error in the midst of chaos and complexity.

Jie Li, "Knitting and Pleating".

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[1] “Roots of Style, Weaving Together Life, Love, and Fashion” by Isabel Toledo

[2] “ReFusing Fashion: Rei Kawakubo,” MOCAD [Museum of Contemporary Art], Detroit, Exhibition catalogue, March 2008

Fiona Dieffenbacher is Assistant Professor and Director of the BFA Fashion Design program at Parsons The New School for Design. An alumna of the program, Dieffenbacher has served as a faculty member since 2005. Prior to being appointed director of the BFA program, she served as the director of external partnerships for the School of Fashion, where she oversaw projects with Coach, Louis Vuitton, MCM, Swarovski, LVMH and others. In her current role, Dieffenbacher has led the program though the development and implementation of a new curriculum. Dieffenbacherholds an undergraduate degree in Fashion and Textiles from the University of Ulster in the UK. At Parsons, she was the recipient of a Designer of The Year Award (1993). In 1998, she launched a ready-to-wear label Fiona Walker, which was shown at Mercedes Benz Fashion Week and sold at select retailers in the U.S and internationally. The collection was featured in WWD, The New York Times, New York Magazine, Harpers Bazaar, Lucky, and Cosmopolitan

Designing the Second Skin: The Work of Giorgio di Sant' Angelo 1971-1991

by Francesca Granata Veruschka wearing Giorgio di Sant'Angelo, Vogue 1972, Photo: Richard Avedon

As part of my newish position at Parsons, I taught one of the most interesting and stimulating classes I have ever taught. For a course I developed, called Fashion Curation, graduate students from various programs--Fashion Studies, History of Decorative Arts and Design and MA in Architecture--curated an exhibition of the work of the late Italian-Argentinean designer Giorgio di Sant' Angelo in the Parsons Gallery at 66 Fifth Avenue, which is due to open December 4th. Focusing on his use of innovative stretch fabric, "Designing the Second Skin" is the first exhibition of the work of Giorgio di Sant'Angelo in New York. A special thanks goes to Martin Price, di Sant' Angelo's partner and collaborator, as well as to Tae Smith.

Below is the press release and a sneak preview of some of the garments that will be on view:

On Tuesday, December 4, the opening reception for "Designing the Second Skin: The Work of Giorgio di Sant’Angelo 1971-1991" will be held from 6 to 8 PM at the Aronoson Gallery on 66 Fifth Avenue. The exhibition is curated by graduate students in the MA Fashion Studies, MA in the History of Decorative Arts and Design, and Master of Architecture program at Parsons under the supervision of faculty member Francesca Granata. The exhibit will be on view until Friday, December 14.

Parsons presents the first New York exhibition of the work of designer Giorgio di Sant’Angelo, an innovative Italian-born American designer from the 1960s through 1980s who explored the ways in which garments truly become the wearer’s second skin. Playing with texture, transparency, and newly discovered fabric technology, Sant’Angelo examined the relationship between exposure and concealment. A highlight from the exhibition is a nude sequined jumpsuit worn by Naomi Campbell and featured in an editorial shoot for Harper’s Bazaar in 1991.

The works on view are drawn from the Parsons Fashion Archive—a collection of nearly 10,000 garments, including a number of pieces donated to Parsons by the Costume Institute at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Sant’Angelo works were originally donated to the Met by Parsons faculty member Martin Price, Sant-Angelo’s design assistant and partner, who has been an instrumental force in keeping Sant’Angelo’s spirit alive. Event Details:

Designing the Second Skin: Giorgio di Sant’Angelo 1971-1991 Dates: Tuesday, December 4 to Friday, December 14 Opening Reception: Tuesday, December 4 from 6 to 8 PM Gallery Hours: Open daily from 12 to 6 PM, open until 8 PM on Thursday Location: Parsons The New School for Design, Arnold and Sheila Aronson Galleries, Sheila C. Johnson Design Center, 66 Fifth Avenue Admission: Free and Open to the Public. Wine and Hors d’oeuvres will be served.

Innovative Exhibition Design Strategies for Cristóbal Balenciaga and Comme des Garçons at Musée Galliera

by Ingrid Mida

Balenciaga Cape du soir, 1963 and Collier c.1895

There couldn’t be a more unlikely exhibition venue than Aux Docks - cité de la Mode et du Design in Paris. At the other end of town from Musée Galliera's permanent home, which is currently under renovation, this temporary venue sits in a gritty industrial part of town overlooking the river Seine.  This contemporary space has exposed  concrete walls, punctuated by industrial pipes and has been the temporary home for the musée Galliera  exhibition of Cristóbal Balenciaga, collectionneur de modes and Comme des Garçons White Drama. Two adjacent long and narrow rooms served as the exhibition space. Bringing fashion into these blank, cold, industrial boxes must have been a curatorial challenge, since there is an apparent lack of temperature and humidity controls as well as absence of hangable wall space. Nevertheless, Olivier Saillard and his team of the Gallieria rose to the challenge with display techniques that are as innovative as they are creative and the result are two tightly curated exhibitions featuring selected works of two notable designers - Cristóbal Balenciaga, collectionneur de modes and Comme des Garçons White Drama.

Balenciaga Installation Shot by Ingrid Mida

In the first room, Cristóbal Balenciaga's personal archive of historical garments, print material and other artifacts is presented beside selected examples of his work. This personal archive was recently donated to the museum and  includes a range of items from the nineteenth century such as dresses, collars, corsets, shawls, mantles, capes, as well as fashion plates, books and journals. Set alongside Balenciaga's design work, the reinterpretation of fashion history for design inspiration is made evident. Key to the creation of this link is the innovative display techniques, incorporating modular drawers with clear protective insets, which sit underneath cube-like metal vitrines. The drawers are stacked in fixed position, but open, suggesting links between adjacent pieces. For example, beaded and embroidered black capes and mantalets from the late nineteenth century are shown alongside a Balenciaga cape du soir from 1960, and a 1945 jacquette de soir. The shapes, colours and beading techniques are remarkably similar, and creating links through time and history. Although there is minimal text, none is needed; the objects speak for themselves.

Balenciaga Exhibition, Installation Shot by Ingrid Mida

What I found startling about this exhibition is not the link of inspiration with creative result, but rather the creativity of display. Clothing is not only shown on conventional mannequins, but also presented in clear plexi-topped drawers, as flat storage in clear boxes, or hanging from padded hangers. The flat display in clear boxes offers a contemporary solution for delicate historic garments that might otherwise never be put on display, as well as circumventing the need for custom mannequins. The modular metal units have a slightly mirror like quality that creates a ghost-like reflection of the backs of the garments, as well as creating synchronicity with the industrial setting of the venue.

Comme des Garcons White Drama, Installation Shot by Ingrid Mida

The adjacent room presents Comme des Garçons White Drama an exhibition of thirty white garments by Rei Kawakubo in futuristic white plastic bubbles. Whether these bubbles were designed protect the garments from pollution or for artistic effect, the choice was an inspired one. Within the bubbles, between three to six blank-faced white mannequins wear white garments. Devoid of colour, except for a few pieces with hand-painted graffiti, the focus is on the sculptural elements created by draping, folding, sculpting, and crinoline-like additions to the forms.

Comme des Garçons Installation Shot by Ingrid Mida

Although Rei Kawakubo denies that what she creates is art, these garments are wearable art. With protuberances of crinoline-like skirt structures, webs of crochet, or bags of flowers, these pieces might be wearable, but not for by anyone with a wallflower personality. Donning such a garment would be suggestive of performance art. Adding to this impression of fashion as art are the unique headdresses “worn” by the mannequins. Created out of disparate materials, ranging from what looks like could be white steel wool, pillowcases or spray on Styrofoam, these headdresses act as sculptural elements unto themselves. The overall effect is futuristic and surreal.

Balenciaga Installation Shot by Ingrid Mida

Some have argued that fashion becomes art when it is presented inside the context of a museum. In absence of conventional museum space, the curatorial team of the Galliera has used innovative presentation techniques within an industrial space that redefines exhibition design strategy. A pristine white box is no longer a prerequisite and in fact, it seems that embracing the challenges of unlikely and difficult spaces can offer opportunities for curatorial and exhibition design innovation.

This exhibition ends on October 7, 2012. For more information, visit 

http://www.paris.fr/loisirs/musee-galliera/exposition/

Interview with Sass Brown: Fashion + Sustainability – Lines of Research Series

by Mae Colburn

Sass Brown's first book, Eco Fashion, published by Laurence King Publishers in 2010.

Sass Brown likens her work to that of a fashion curator, one that looks beyond aesthetics and into the realm of ethics and ideas.  Her book, website, and blog feature designers from around the globe who unite fashion and ecology in thoughtful, innovative ways.  Brown entered this line of inquiry after years working as a designer in mainstream fashion, a background that gives her a unique perspective on the distinct qualities, and currency of ecological ideas within the fashion sector and valuable insight into the role of fashion education within the broader global information network that supports, and defines sustainable fashion today.

Mae Colburn: To begin, how do you interpret this word – sustainability?

Sass Brown: Well, sustainability has a defined meaning that you can look up in the dictionary: not depleting, not polluting, not taking away what you can’t get back.  Where it gets muddy is when you start putting it in different silos such as sustainable fashion or sustainable lifestyles – that’s where it starts to get more interpretive and where words like eco or green are much more broadly used because they have less defined meanings.

MC: I’m sure this thought process informed the title of your first book, Eco Fashion.

SB: (laughs) To some extent, yes.  I actually wanted it to be called Sustainable Fashion but my publishers fought me on that one because they felt that sustainability wasn’t a completely understood term.  Plus, my publisher is British, but [the book] was distributed in the U.S. and also translated into Italian and Spanish, so they felt eco was an easier term for people to grasp on to, and in fact it’s actually more correct than my initial title.

MC: Both your book and your website highlight the work of a wide variety of designers working in eco fashion.  How do you go about conducting your research?

SB: Well, when I first started this research years ago, one of the nicest surprises was that eco designers would give me all of the contact information for their biggest competitors, because they supported them, too.  It’s a very collaborative industry. […] People want to share because they believe in the development this area of design – and that’s dependent upon all of us understanding and knowing and sharing resources.  It’s not like the mainstream fashion industry where everybody jealously guards their contacts and knowledge.

A screen shot from Sass Brown's website.

MC: You research and write, but you also lecture and teach workshops on fashion and sustainability.  Could you elaborate on the role of information sharing within this movement, and specifically your own role in shaping this dialogue?

SB: I think information sharing is absolutely vital and that my role, or what I see as my role, is to research, share, and collaborate on that information.  Designers in the industry and students who are currently studying to graduate and move into the industry need to see concrete examples of what is being done, how it’s being done, and who is doing it.  I focus equally on fashion as I do on ecology.  I’m not interested in writing about the next beige t-shirt – whether it’s being produced ecologically, fair trade, or what.  There are enough people already doing that.  Fashion is a world of inspiration and aspiration and I think it’s incredibly valuable to inspire designers about what’s possible.  One of the best ways of doing that is showing some of the best aesthetic examples of what’s being done with sustainability, ecology, and design.

I’ve been described as a curator by several people and that’s probably more accurate than anything because I really am curating already existing content rather than developing my own; I might be rewording and rewriting and collating it in different ways, but I'm working with things that have already being done.  I think that’s actually quite a good description of what I do, especially in certain digital media like Facebook, or Twitter, or Pinterest, or StumbleUpon, or any number of other areas.  It really is about collating and collecting and disseminating.

MC: This is something I’ve thought about quite a bit – this question of how specialized knowledge about production, consumption, and so on, can be translated to a broader public in a way that seems relevant.

SB: Well, I think most of the issue is that most of the specialized information comes from activistic circles and is accessed by those who are interested, as opposed to being disseminated to everyone whether they’re interested or not.  It hasn’t gotten to a level where the average person on the street is aware of Labour Behind the Label or the Clean Clothes Campaign, or any number of other advocacy bodies who police or certify the fair trade or sustainability of our industry.  Digital media and blogs are beginning to bridge the gap, whether it’s my blog or blogs like EcoSalon or Ecouterre, which aim for a more fun, cool, interesting notion of ecology as opposed to a grassroots, hardcore, tree-hugging ecology, which I think is still very foreign to a lot of people and off-putting in a lot of cases.

MC: Do you have any last thoughts about education, information sharing, and sustainability?

SB: As I said, I think that having multiple channels is really important, whether it’s the structured educational field through curriculum and classes, or personally-motivated websites and blogs, or activistic and certification bodies who really get down to the nitty-gritty of who is doing what, how, when, and where.  I think it’s really vital that there are lots of different perspectives and different voices.  That’s the only way we can reach the broad variety of people out there.  It’s never one-size-fits-all.

Sass Brown is Acting Assistant Dean for the School of Art and Design at F.I.T. and former Director of F.I.T.’s study abroad program in Florence.

Mae Colburn is an independent textile researcher based in New York City.

Interview with Laura Sansone: Fashion + Sustainability – Lines of Research Series

by Mae Colburn

One of Sansone's two Textile Labs, which she carts to greenmarkets in and around New York City.

Laura Sansone readily acknowledges that she comes from a “crafty background.”  She received her B.A. from the Philadelphia College of Art and her M.A. From Cranbrook Academy of Fine Art (both in Fiber).  Now, at Parsons' School for Design Strategies, she teaches spinning and dying, organizes field trips to fiber farms Upstate, and takes students to greenmarkets in and around New York City as part of her mobile Textile Lab. For Sansone, “crafty” means more than technically adept or playfully skillful; it signifies a thoughtful, soulful, tactile appreciation of material productivity.

Mae Colburn: I’d like to begin by asking you about your relationship to this word, sustainability.

Laura Sansone: When I think of sustainability, I don’t just think of environmental issues.  I think of the socioeconomic aspects of sustainability, and how to enrich communities through material production.  Also, looking at who is making the work and where the materials originate.  It’s really about designing with transparency, about realizing the interconnectedness of products and systems, and finding alternatives to commercial production.  I think one way to do that is to think about things in a decentralized way, in a way that’s more local, so that communities are more in control of production and consumption.

MC: Could you describe how you arrived at this interpretation?

LS: I started becoming interested in sustainability when I moved to the Hudson Valley in 2003.  My partner and I bought an apple orchard up there, and our neighbor, a local farmer, started farming our land and selling at greenmarkets here in the City.  So I started to realize how these resources in Upstate find their way to the City, and the importance of venues like greenmarkets.  That’s when I began thinking of ways of linking the things that I do [with fiber] to farming.

I was working with Tyvec at the time, so I was already interested in no-waste production.  It’s a recyclable polyethelene material with many applications (envelopes, hazmat suits, even high fashion back in the 1960’s in sort of a playful way).  I was sending my cutoffs back to Tyveck for recycling, and asking consumers to do the same. The products folded up into envelopes so they could be sent back to be recycled.  So I was already thinking along those lines.  Once I moved [to the Hudson Valley], I decided I had to go beyond that and try to use natural materials so that everything could be composted.  That’s when I started working with organic cottons and natural dyes and that led me to investigate local materials.  That’s when I realized that there were fiber farms right up there in the Hudson Valley, and a really active fiber community.

"Paper Wear," Sansone's line of recyclable Tyvec clothing.

Years ago, everybody had a spinning wheel in their house, and a loom.  Families and villages were really self-sufficient, and while I’m not saying that that [model] is the answer to our global problems, I do find that handcrafting is a way to bring people together.  There’s this cohesive nature to it, a real social connection that transcends age, gender, race, economic status.  It’s amazing.  That’s what I find when I take the Textile Lab out to greenmarkets.  Everybody has a story about something that their mother used to knit, or all the yarn they have in their basement, or about how they’re addicted to crocheting.  It’s an activity that reminds people of their past.  It excites people.  Maybe production can happen on a smaller scale, and maybe it can be supported by communities.  You know, there’s a certain social importance to being able to produce as a culture, and I find it problematic when a culture stops being productive in a material way.

MC: It seems like every decade experiences a resurgence of craft in some form or another.  How would you characterize what we’re experiencing today?

LS: Bauhaus was all about that.  Arts and Crafts was all about that.  There are these movements in art and design that have to do with seeing an imbalance and searching for a more assertive equilibrium among producers and the way things are made.   It does happen frequently and it’s mostly this convergence, these moments in history where craft and design and art converge; right now we’re at this point where there’s a convergence.  I call it vernacular craft.  That is, more like folk crafts, where designers are really lifting folk methods and adapting them, using them in their designs.

MC: Could you describe the Textile Lab in a bit more detail?  You’ve got a cart…

LS: Yes, a cart, and there’s a shelf that comes out in the back and a stove that sits on top.  Inside, we have all of our equipment to make dyes: pots, a scale, and a blender to make paste.

MC: What do you do about electricity?

LS: When we bring it to the park, farmer Joe (the farmer who farms on my property) brings a generator for us and sometimes we can plug it in at an outlet in the park, so we find a way.

I have another lab that I received funding for from City Atlas, a project with City University of New York and  Artist as Citizen, a smaller one.  I spent a good deal of last spring, summer and even fall taking the smaller lab to neighborhood greenmarkets all over the City.  That one has gas burners.

The Textile Lab dyepot with sunflowers (above) and stick spinning with local wool (below).

MC: There’s something I really love about your Textile Lab idea, especially in the context of education.  You’re teaching students these techniques, then taking students with you to greenmarkets around the city where they teach these techniques to the public.  It’s almost viral.

LS: This stuff happens online all the time; there are even social networking sites specifically on handcrafting, like Ravelry.  But there’s a social component to going out and making it happen in an organic context like New York City, especially a place like Union Square where people are constantly coming and going.  People stop and talk to you, trade stories, share knowledge.  We bring the Lab out to the Union Square greenmarket and students just lure people in.  Once we had a hearing impaired group come up to the Lab.  So there I was trying to explain what we were doing, pointing to things, flailing around, and then all of a sudden one of my students walks up and starts signing.  She knew Sign.  I was so happy.  We had another woman come over, she was from Algeria and she didn’t speak a lot of English, but we gave her a drop spindle.  It was a top whirl spindle, and she was trying to spin with it, but we could tell she wasn’t that happy with what we’d handed her.  Then we realized she was actually used to using a bottom whirl spindle, the kind that you spin near the ground.  We also had a guy from Tibet come up and show the students how to spin on a stick, just a stick, probably like he’d been taught as a boy.  Children also come over, especially at Union Square because they have all sorts of educational programs.  It’s wonderful, a really nice inclusive moment for everyone.

MC: What would you like to see markets like this become five, ten years down the line?

LS: In my world, I would love to see the market become more than just a greenmarket.  To become more like a real marketplace, selling fabric, and handmade shoes, handmade kitchenware, a place of real material commerce in the sense of material goods (not just consumable produce).  The market is becoming that way to a certain degree.  Something really natural happens there where there’s this sort of bartering that occurs, and I think that’s so important.  Like, “I have this, you have that, let’s trade” (the farmer does that with us, he gives us food and farms our land, he brings us bread from a guy at the market who he trades with).  You have to produce in order to engage in that sort of economy, but again, a productive culture is a strong culture so it goes hand in hand.

Laura Sansone is an artist, designer, and adjunct professor at Parsons the New School for Design's School for Design Strategies.

Mae Colburn is an independent textile researcher based in New York City.