Notes on Fashion Constellations: blueprints towards expanding fashion practice

Apr 22

Apr 22 Notes on Fashion Constellations: blueprints towards expanding fashion practice

The following notes recount a series of gatherings and conversations about a collective learning project that’s facilitated by Katherine May and Ruby Hoette. These notes reflect the multiple voices that have participated in and contributed to the ongoing project: Ruby Hoette, Sarah Pennigton, Georgina Hapgood, Go Tiara, Dorit Young, Fabienne Gassman, Ingrid Thomas, Danshu Zhao. With thanks to Alexandra Lychgina for Graphic Design.

*Katherine May - Fashion Constellations: blueprints towards expanding fashion practice*

We meet on the green in a heatwave.

“We” are Dorit, Ingrid, Fabienne, Danshu, Go, Georgina, Sasha, Sarah, Ruby, and Katherine. We are tutors and students and graduates gathering together.

Sort-of quilts are laid out on the green, like blankets. They are documents from a collective project that Ruby and I facilitate each year at Goldsmiths University. The project, Fashion Constellations, is designed as a way to get to know each other and as a way to begin conversations on the fashion system. There is one piece from each academic year, and we gather together to reflect on them.

They are made from blue jeans where stitches have been undone and then the unstitched garment pieces have been reassembled and brought together again into sort-of quilts, sort-of garments, and a sort-of tent. They are documents from tuning in activity, an activity that allows for introductions and space for conversations and readings about the fashion system, about slowness and resistance.

These sort-of pieces are not complete artifacts or products, but they capture a series of responses. They are process-documents, of sorts. Where material traces are connected to the thoughts we had.

What might documentation mean really? Is it something that lasts forever? Or is it something that you just capture for a moment? Is it collective or is it to be held by one person?

These pieces here have been made in an intimate context and any form of documentation feels sensitive and perhaps is not always appropriate. By inviting different year groups together and having reflective conversations together, we can look at what we’ve done with some distance. The Fashion Constellations project is quite a complicated process to document fully, due to the nature and importance of each person's experience. Gathering together on the green is not an attempt to document the project fully, but a way to gather some responses. It collects parts of what has happened, simultaneously documenting and adding to the ongoing project.

It’s also a coming together of our (Katherine’s and Ruby’s) practices – quilting workshops and unpicking (undoing) the seams in clothes as a metaphor for unpicking the fashion system.

There are memories of feeling uneasy, of negotiating how to restitch and where? What about neartness and different aesthetics? Where should I sit? There are smiles and laughter. I can recognize people through seeing the different stitches.

I remember having more time to spend on this activity. I remember the enjoyment felt through slowing down and sticking to the activity week after week. It was also daunting sometimes - Is it ok to sit quietly and unpick together? Is that enough as a tutor?

We share that sometimes unpicking feels unproductive and a bit boring. It can remind students of doing ‘bad work’ that had to be undone. Undoing someone else’s labor brings up a complexity of feelings and a sense of togetherness expands beyond the group to other people in the fashion system - the makers of the clothes. In other fashion contexts unpicking garments could mean lower wages, in factories where fast work is essential. One year a group timed how long it took to undo a pair of jeans in comparison to making them. They described one group member as an Olympian in her unpicking ability and speed. Turns out that in Russia she always had to unpick the old to make the new.

Someone recalls undoing the woven fabric, they didn’t want to unpick a garment. How far do you unpick? In knitting for example you’d unravel back to a ball of wool, then to a sheep?

There is an agreement that the fashion system needs to be taken apart. There is a question about how to resist the need to ’solve’ the problem of the fashion system and at the same time resist that system? These ethical questions are overwhelming, they can feel harsh, but the act of unpicking and reassembling together "steadies you”.

I do a reading from John Berger’s book, The Shape of a Pocket. The text speaks of resistance and of making pockets of space to do and think beyond the cultural norm, a place for subversion. Perhaps through this project we have made a pocket of resistance? A space where people can question things or ask questions of each other, or have conversations that are not necessarily about making concrete statements or kind of presenting their position or opinion on something. It's not about finding answers. But rather about trying to find as many different perspectives as you can to see the complexity of something.

In creative education value is often placed on being an individual designer, having a personal signature and autonomy, and society recognises that narrative. It’s perhaps more difficult or challenging to move into a mindset where the work is shared and where individuality is less important.

As we unpick and reverse the garment manufacturing we undo linear fashion teaching and use unmaking as a mode of production and as a way of producing knowledge. This allows people to engage with the materiality of fashion even if they haven’t had traditional sewing or pattern making training.

The process that the project facilitates is very much about being physically present, making relationships, and working together. It cultivates an attitude towards doing and exploring, whilst also making space for doubt, contradiction and not knowing. It helps us to reflect that a garment itself is produced through collaboration, though the connections between people may not be made or made visible.

Over the years the way the students rejoined the unpicked loose garment pieces started to move away from flat quilted forms, to forms that related more to the body - quilts - to - tent - to - jacket.

So, the students and graduates were invited to design a loose template in the form of a garment for future students. Template ideas were collected through a cyanotype process that used unpicked denim pieces to make blue garment imprints on pattern cutting paper - a blueprint of sorts.

In dressmaking a pattern is a blueprint, or a set of basic instructions to make a garment. From one dressmaking pattern, many different garments can be constructed through edits, fabric choice, sizing etc. You begin with a basic framework, and develop it in your own way to make something unique.

What is a template here? A way of going from actions to a plan? A set of loose instructions? A manifesto? A pattern or a shape?

Perhaps a way to cultivate care in fashion? Or a way to nurture a community of practice? A way to map a constellation of people and ideas?

Con-stel-la-tion

● A group or configuration of ideas, feelings, characteristics, objects etc that are related in some way

● Any brilliant, outstanding group or assemblage

We were looking for a title that would express the complexity and entanglements of systemic thinking, but didn’t want to give it a heavy ethical label, as we found that can be too overwhelming. We were thinking about networks and mapping, that's how we found constellations. I like that it names the group as ‘brilliant and outstanding’ whilst also speaking to complex configurations of ideas, people, materials, practices etc. I’m often persuaded by something being a bit more poetic and vague too. But that's just my tendency hahahaha!

Ruby and I have become sort of custodians of these collective pieces. This gives us a reason to work out how to care for them? When to share them? and how to continue the multiple layers of collaboration? We like the idea of the quilts/tent/jacket operating as a future reason to get back together as a group and to do something again, when the time is right.

Calendar

Apr 22 Notes on Fashion Constellations: blueprints towards expanding fashion practice

Apr 22 JOIN Collective Clothes