Fashion as Collective Action
Angel Chang’s NYFW presentation, February 2007. Photo: Erique Zhang.
In February 2007, as a freshman in art school, I began interning for fashion designer Angel Chang. Angel had opened her business in 2006 and quickly gained attention as an up-and-coming designer for her innovative use of “smart textiles,” which included raincoats with built-in LED lights, garments with functional play/pause buttons embroidered on the sleeves, and self-heating fabrics. Since her company was new, she did not have any full-time employees yet; she relied on a small team of interns and freelance pattern makers and sewers. As such, we were often the only two people in the studio, which was located somewhere on the ambiguous boundary between Chinatown and SoHo in downtown Manhattan.
One day as we were working, Angel asked me if I watched Project Runway. Like many other young people at the time, I had been inspired by Project Runway to explore the fashion industry as a potential career: in 2006, the New York Times credited the show with popularizing the fashion design department at the Parsons School of Design. [1] Although I was not studying fashion design, I hoped that gaining experience through unpaid internships would supplement my art education (after all, I figured, Angel also did not have a formal degree in fashion design).
I responded that I did.
“I would never go on Project Runway,” Angel replied. “It makes people think all fashion designers do is sit around sewing all day. That’s not what it’s really like!”
Ironically, Angel would later appear as a contestant on The Fashion Show, which replaced Project Runway on Bravo following its controversial move to Lifetime. However, that conversation stuck with me. Because of my limited exposure to the fashion industry, I did think that being a fashion designer entailed “sitting around sewing all day.” This image was further cemented in my mind by the fact that many of the biggest fashion houses all bore the name of an individual: Christian Dior, Coco Chanel, Gianni Versace. But as an intern, I learned that that was not true. In fact, I rarely saw Angel sewing at all while I interned for her. What I learned was that the work of a fashion designer is much more complex. It involves what sociologist Howard Becker refers to as “collective action.” [2] Here, Becker argues that artistic production requires not just a singular artist, but an entire network of actors involved. Similarly, fashion production relies not just on the fashion designer, but also on a team of people: patternmakers, cutters, sewers, not to mention accountants, lawyers, administrators, and so on.
Christian Lacroix’s Fall 2009 Haute Couture collection.
In May 2009, it was announced that haute couture house Christian Lacroix had filed for court protection from creditors [3]—essentially, the house was on the verge of bankruptcy. This announcement laid bare several uncomfortable truths about the fashion industry. For one, the fashion industry had to reckon with the fact that prestige did not necessarily indicate profit. Being designated an official haute couture house by the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture, of course, is simultaneously one of the highest marks of legitimation in the Western fashion industry as well as one of the most exclusive, and thus most prestigious, designations.
Despite the prestige afforded by attaining haute couture status, however, Lacroix’s fall helped to bring to public attention what many in the fashion industry already knew: that haute couture is generally not profitable. The exclusive nature of haute couture in fact works against its profitability: few can afford to purchase haute couture, and besides, even if more people could afford it, there are allegedly rules limiting how many pieces a house can even sell. [4] The reality is that fashion houses simply cannot rely on haute couture sales alone; in fact, their haute couture arms often cause them to lose money. Sociologist and former model Ashley Mears found that a similar relationship exists in the adjacent modeling industry: namely, that high-end, editorial jobs bring models and modeling agencies prestige, but do not pay well. [5]
Moreover, the Chambre Syndicale also dictates a minimum number of workers a house must employ to qualify for membership. Thus, being designated an haute couture house also implicitly signals how many employees at a minimum that company must employ. With this in mind, we begin to see how the myth of the grand couturier toiling away alone in their atelier — an image promoted by popular media depictions of the fashion industry, such as in Project Runway, where contestants are tasked with realizing entire looks on their own — masks reality that the fashion industry relies on collective action.
As I alluded to earlier, the fact that many fashion houses bear the names of their founders furthers this mythology. This is even more evident when that namesake is still alive and attached to the brand, as was the case of Christian Lacroix, who was the director of his brand when the 2009 bankruptcy was announced. Thus, Christian Lacroix the person became inextricable from Christian Lacroix the company: the two became one and the same. At the same time, the announcement brought public attention to the work that happens behind the scenes to make fashion happen. In Sarah Mower’s review of Lacroix’s fall/winter 2009-2010 haute couture collection, for example, she writes:
It was one of the most poignant and emotionally fraught haute couture shows ever: a collection produced on a shoestring at the last minute, and only made possible by the collective will and donated time and skills of the seamstresses, embroiderers, jewelers, milliners, and shoemakers loyal to Christian Lacroix.[6]
While Mowers acknowledges the different actors who made the collection possible, by writing that they “donated” their time to Christian Lacroix (the man or the brand?), her portrayal of collective action here elides the labor relations between who performs the manual labor of bringing a collection to life and who gets credit. That these artisans were left anonymous and uncompensated, and further praised because they provided free labor to Lacroix, raises serious questions about the nature of artistic work and collective action.
“It would be impossible for one person to perform every task necessary to produce a single fashion collection in a sustainable way. At the same time, however, we still tend to conflate entire companies with a single creative genius, producing the image of the celebrity fashion designer. ”
As an avid YouTube watcher and self-proclaimed fashionista, I have noticed an emergent genre of “savoir-faire” videos hosted on corporate fashion accounts such as Chanel and Dior’s official YouTube channels. While at first blush, these videos may seem to share some lineage with DIY tutorial videos — after all, both genres are concerned with how things are made — the purpose of these savoir-faire videos is quite different. While DIY videos are ostensibly produced with the goal of showing how everyday people are capable of making things, savoir-faire videos show the opposite: that the objects being made here require the skillful knowledge of a team of trained artisans.
While I cannot be sure of the exact origin of these savoir-faire videos with conducting further archival research, an early example from 2011, titled “Miss Dior – Savoir Faire,” shows the construction of an alligator skin handbag. Playing like an advertisement, the video has an energetic soundtrack amidst shots of models carrying different handbags (not the handbag that is supposed to be the star), closeups of the various design elements and hardware used to construct the bag, and quick cuts moving between different points in the construction process. The video is set in a nondescript, dark room, with a spotlight on the artisan’s worktable. The artisan is anonymous, but the low camera angle emphasizes their skillful hands.
This video is notable for several reasons. First, it uses the aesthetic language of high-end advertisements. The camera focuses on the luxuriousness of the materials and the footage is lit in a way that calls to mind an exclusive, high-end retail environment. The quick cuts add a sense of action and excitement — and, no doubt, also work to obscure the actual steps involved in the handbag’s construction. Most tellingly, the video ends on a shot of the handbag rotating on a pedestal, reminiscent of high-end retail displays. Moreover, the video makes sure that we never clearly see the person constructing the bag. Their face is never shown, except in blurred shots from behind. By obscuring their face, the camerawork makes us believe that a single anonymous worker is building the handbag from start to finish, further perpetuating the mythology of the lone creative genius.
On the other hand, “CHANEL Haute Couture Fall-Winter 2012/13 – Know How” appears to show a more honest portrayal of the haute couture atelier at work. We are first greeted with a title and exterior shot telling us that we are at the ateliers couture on Rue Cambon. We move inside, where we see a more realistically cluttered and well-lit studio space and many different hands working on many different garments. However, while this video seems to show the reality of the haute couture atelier more accurately, the workers’ identities are still obscured; most of the faces are cropped so we cannot see them clearly. Thus, while this video does more to show the collective action involved in constructing an haute couture collection, it still fails to give proper credit to the nameless workers involved.
While Dior’s savoir faire videos have increasingly featured more interactions with named employees, most notably creative director Maria Grazia Chiuri, Chanel’s have consistently kept workers anonymous for the most part. One notable exception is “Making-of the Fall-Winter 2016/17 Haute Couture CHANEL Collection,” wherein we are introduced to Mesdames Olivia and Cécile, the premières of the atelier flou (i.e., the heads of the atelier that focuses on “soft” garments such as gowns), and Mesdames Jacqueline and Josette, the premières of the atelier tailleur (i.e., the atelier that focuses on tailored garments such as suits). Of course, that it was this video wherein we are finally given names is no mistake. The collection featured in this video was an homage to the workers: the runway set was transformed into the atelier, decorated with worktables, half-draped dress forms, and real-life petits mains (literally “small hands,” i.e., atelier workers) working in the background.
The fashion press praised the runway show, writing that it “celebrate[d] the people who make [fashion] happen—the atelier” [7] and that it “[made] for a moving moment of appreciation.” [8] Karl Lagerfeld was quoted as saying, “[the atelier employees] like the idea that they could see the show for once […] Plus, I thought it was a modern idea that they should participate, so that people pay attention to them because the craftsmanship is so unbelievable.” [9] Sarah Mower wrote, “In the old days, Coco Chanel invited her audience to shows in her house, but this time the house came to the audience.” [10] By lauding the runway show as a celebration of the skillful craftsmanship that goes into the production of haute couture, by extension, a celebration of the people who “make fashion happen,” these reviews acknowledge that fashion is not created by an individual creative genius working alone.
“I want to ask us to reimagine what fashion as collective action might mean if it were not driven primarily by profit, but rather by the debts we owe to the people involved in its production. ”
However, Lagerfeld’s quote, where he claims that one of his goals was to allow his employees to watch the show. Seemingly benevolent, this quote belies more insidious dynamics at work. Largerfeld’s quote here highlights, in Marxist terms, the alienation of the petits mains from the product of their labor, in this case, the runway show, although we might also think about how garment workers are often undercompensated for their work and cannot afford to purchase the designer goods they create. In a way, being “celebrated” by the fashion press essentially becomes a neoliberal form of compensation for the petits mains. Moreover, they are seen working in the background, even though Lagerfeld claimed he wanted to allow them to watch the show. We see, then, how their labor becomes a spectacle, with little apparent increase in any material compensation.
That fashion is produced by large teams of people working together should be no mystery—after all, it would be impossible for one person to perform every task necessary to produce a single fashion collection in a sustainable way. At the same time, however, we still tend to conflate entire companies with a single creative genius, producing the image of the celebrity fashion designer. Even when the fashion press acknowledges the amount of labor that happens behind the scenes, as the example of Lacroix’s bankruptcy and Chanel’s atelier runway show reveal, these discourses continue to rely on a superficial understanding of collective action and labor.
By the time Angel appeared on and lost The Fashion Show, I had largely lost touch with her — this happened several years after I had already ended my internship, after all. I followed her career casually, seeing updates here and there on social media. In the past couple years, however, I have become increasingly intrigued with the direction she’s taken her collection. No longer is her brand about finding the most innovative ways to incorporate technology into fashion. Instead, she has gone the complete opposite direction: studying traditional textile production techniques with the Miao and Dong ethnic groups in Guizhou, China. [11]
Angel Chang’s NYFW presentation, February 2007. Photo: Erique Zhang.
Angel’s personal Instagram account has become a testament to this traditional knowledge, showing the process of growing and harvesting cotton, spinning the cotton fibers into yarns, weaving the yarns into fabric, and dyeing the fabric with indigo using traditional resist dyeing techniques. Interspersed with images of everyday life in Guizhou, we see the local artisans at work, their faces beaming with pride as they get to pass on their knowledge. And Angel herself has taken an active role not just in shining a spotlight on these artisans’ skill, but also in helping to bring this knowledge to the local younger generation. [12]
I am not suggesting here that working with local indigenous communities to learn traditional textile production is a panacea for all of the fashion industry’s labor and sustainability issues, although I would encourage more fashion designers to do it anyway. Nor do I mean to imply that Angel’s partnership with the local Miao and Dong communities in Guizhou should be held as a shining example of how to do it right. Rather, the reason I end with this example, other than to provide a nice bookend to my introductory vignette, is to think about what collective action might look like if we foreground an ethics of care.
What might it look like to engage in a caring relationship with local artisans, one that is not governed by a capitalist employer-employee power dynamic, but rather shows deep respect for indigenous knowledge? How might we redirect resources in a way that helps to build better infrastructures for these communities, rather than exploiting them and their land? What can we learn about fashion and collective action if we compare Angel’s slow fashion practices with the high-speed demands of the consumerist fashion industry? After all, she began studying with the Miao and Dong in 2009 and only released her debut collection for sale in 2020.
Characterizing fashion as collective action highlights not just how many people are involved in its production, but also the complex and pivotal roles that each actor plays in making sure everything runs smoothly. However, I want to ask us to reimagine what fashion as collective action might mean if it were not driven primarily by profit, but rather by the debts we owe to the people involved in its production. Eleven years is a long time to work on a single collection and I am not suggesting that the fashion industry slow down to that pace, especially given the consumers’ demands for a constantly new and changing market. But the fact that Angel has spent that long learning from and working alongside the experts asks us to think about fashion in different terms: not in terms of speed, exploitation, and profit, but rather in terms of care, respect, and responsibility.
Notes
[1] Eric Wilson, “Project Parsons: Fashion School as Star,” New York Times, April 20, 2006, https://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/20/fashion/thursdaystyles/project-parsons-fashion-school-as-star.html.
[2] Howard Becker, “Art as Collective Action,” American Sociological Review 39, no. 6 (December 1974): 767-776.
[3] Suzy Menkes, “Lacroix Files for Bankruptcy,” New York Times, May 28, 2009, https://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/29/business/global/29lacroix.html.
[4] Landon Peoples, “Me, Paris, & the $100K Dress,” Refinery29, July 16, 2018, https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2018/07/203471/haute-couture-paris-fashion-schiaparelli-design-history.
[5] Ashley Mears, Pricing Beauty: The Making of a Fashion Model (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2011).
[6] Sarah Mowers, “Fall 2009 Couture: Christian Lacroix,” Vogue, July 6, 2009, https://www.vogue.com/fashion-shows/fall-2009-couture/christian-lacroix.
[7] Bridget Foley, “Chanel Couture Fall 2016,” WWD, July 5, 2016, https://wwd.com/runway/fall-couture-2016/paris/chanel/review/.
[8] Long Nguyen, “Chanel Honors Its Atelier at the Fall Couture Show,” Fashionista, July 5, 2016, https://fashionista.com/2016/07/chanel-couture-fall-2016.
[9] Foley, “Chanel Couture Fall 2016.”
[10] Sarah Mower, “Fall 2016 Couture: Chanel,” Vogue, July 5, 2016. https://www.vogue.com/fashion-shows/fall-2016-couture/chanel.
[11] Liza Foreman, “Inspiration from China’s Villages,” New York Times, November 21, 2013, https://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/22/fashion/Designer-Inspired-by-Chinas-Villages.html.
[12] Angel Chang (@angelchang), “Spent the day training sewers in our workshop at the Tang’an Dong Eco Museum…,” Instagram photo, December 12, 2017, https://www.instagram.com/p/BcmZYg4lrsq/.
