Talk: Fashion studies/Design culture: Convergences and Divergences

Rachel and I finished the first cycling garment just in time (nothing like a deadline) for a talk I was invited to give in Kolding, Southern Denmark on Thursday November 21st. I wasn’t quite sewing on the way there but it was close! The event was titled Fashion studies/Design culture: Convergences and Divergences  and hosted by Trine Brun Petersen, Assistant Professor, Department of Design and  Communication and Pernille Dahl Kragh. It set out to explore the overlaps and more often gaps between what many would consider complimentary subjects and disciplines. It was interesting to me as my work has often rubbed against design but never with fashion. I planned to present the project whilst wearing a historic garment made from a 1890s patent, therefore making both conceptual and material links between cycling cultures of the past and present and teasing out some of the intersections between rational design and irrational fashion. It was an experiment in what was gained (or lost) in performing research in this way.

The talk had two aims: (1) theoretically, to explore  some of the project content and (2) methodologically, to ask what happens when you perform research while wearing your research?

I didn’t change until the coffee break before my talk, partially for impact and partially because the auditorium was so warm. Those Danes know how to heat a room! I hadn’t completely thought through the layering factor (I was wearing three woollen garments). As I was waiting to talk I also became aware that I was adding yet another technology with the potential to malfunction to a talk  – computer, powerpoint talk, projector and now dress. Part of the performance was of course the ‘reveal’ or ‘transformation’. If it didn’t work then the point would be somewhat muted.

It did work and it definitely added both to the experience of presenting and, from the feedback I received, to the overall story I was telling. In thinking about  articulating this experience I remember what Les Back has written about the value of images:

‘The quality of the images operates outside of language and the conventions of The Word. Yet, at the same time, there is something to be listened to in these silent portraits. Part of what is compelling about them is that they contain voices that are present yet inaudible. We have to listen to them with our eyes.’ (Back, L. (2007) The Art of Listening, Berg Publishing. pp.100)

The dress similarly, simultaneously, contributed to the overall story and operated outside the words and images I was using. These multi-dimensional mediums entangled enabling a sensual, textual, audible and visual experience that was multi-directional. Again Les sums it up:

‘…the lens is not always about the control and fixing of subjects. To see photography as merely a governing technology misses the instability and complexity of the drama that unfolds on either side of the lens. […] It is a mistake, I think, to see the lens as only looking one way. […] Cameras in this context are like windows that look out onto the street, and through which the street looks in.’ (Back, 2007: 104)

More soon….. here are some pics from my time in Denmark.

Christmas decoration at Copenhagen airport

The view from the train between Copenhagen and Kolding

I think this pic captures one of the few students NOT using an Apple Air.

Guy Julier, opening the seminar

Me, talking about patents as an intersection of design and fashion

Fashion studies/Design culture: Convergences and Divergences

Design Research Conference Series
University of Southern Denmark
Engstien 1; 6000 Kolding

The Auditorium/1.20
21. November 2013, 2pm-6pm

Fashion studies have over the last 10 years become a well-established field of research, while the concept of design culture has evolved as a way of studying design in its complex relations of production and consumption (Julier, 2000). However, the two areas are often approached as separate fields of practice as well as of academic inquiry. This seminar aims to explore the convergences as well as the divergences between fashion studies and design culture. The seminar will present current research from scholars working in either of these fields, followed by discussion.

The seminar will take place in the auditorium and will be open to all.

Programme:

14.00-14.10 Welcome by Head of Department Per Krogh Hansen, IDK

14.10-14.30 Professor Guy Julier, University of Brighton
En-fashioning Design Culture

14.30-14.50 Professor Cheryl Buckley, University of Brighton
Conceptualising Fashion in Everyday Lives in 20th C London and New York

14.50-15.10 Dr. Louise Wallenberg, University of Stockholm
Fashion Histories/Fashion Studies: A Few Thoughts on An Emerging Field

15.10-15.40: Panel debate

15.40-16.10 Coffee

16.10-16.30 Dr. Marie Riegels Melchior, Design Museum Denmark
Translating Danish into Fashion

16.30-16.50 Dr. Kat Jungnickel, Goldsmiths, University of London
Freedom of Movement: the bike, the bloomer and women’s im/mobility in late-nineteenth century Britain

16.50-17.10 Dr. Maria Mackinney-Valentin, The Royal Danish Academy – School of Design & Dr. Stina Teilmann-Lock, University of Southern Denmark
Fashion and IPR – paradoxes and potentials

17.10-17.40 Panel debate and closing remarks