Fashion Design for Living

Alison Gwilt

• Editorial: Routledge
• Año: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317673330
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Architecture
• Categoría: Architecture General

Fashion Design for Living explores the positive contribution that the contemporary fashion designer can make within society. The book seeks to reveal new ways of designing and making fashion garments and products that not only enhance and enrich our lives, but also are mindful of social and sustainable issues.

This book sets out to question and challenge the dominant, conventional process of fashion design that as a practice has been under-researched. While the fashion designer in industry is primarily concerned with the creation of the new seasonal collection, designed, produced and measured by economically driven factors, society increasingly expects the designer to make a positive contribution to our social, environmental and cultural life. Consequently an emergent set of designers and research-based practitioners are beginning to explore new ways to think about fashion designing. The contributors within this book argue that fashion designing should move beyond developing garments that are just aesthetically pleasing or inexpensive, but also begin to consider and respond to the wearer's experiences, wellbeing, problems, desires and situations, and their engagement with and use of a garment.

Fashion Design for Living champions new approaches to fashion practice by uncovering a rich and diverse set of views and reflective experiences which explore the changing role of the fashion designer and inspire fresh, innovative and creative responses to fashion and the world we live in.

Fashion for Existence

DOI: 10.4324/9781315770758-2

Fashioning publics

The socially responsive design practice of Vexed Generation

Adam Thorpe, Vexed Generation/Vexed Design and Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London, UK

DOI: 10.4324/9781315770758-3

Socially responsive design has been defined as ‘Design that takes as its primary driver social issues, its main consideration social impact and its main objective social change’ (Gamman and Thorpe 2006). It is also the term that clothing designers Vexed Generation used to describe the kind of clothing and product design we delivered in London in the 1990s that took as its inspiration the social and environmental concerns of the day.

Whilst the above definition of socially responsive design successfully articulates a shared agenda with ‘socially useful design’ (Whiteley 1993), describing a design process applied in order to address social needs and human wellbeing over and above stimulating human desires so as to drive market economies, it fails to explain the intended distinction between socially responsive design and socially responsible design that is key to articulating a practice which understands responsibility as an ‘ability to respond’ (Derrida 1983).

The distinction is twofold, linked to i) the relationship of socially responsive design to the market, as expressed by Morelli (2007): ‘the time has come to review Papanek … from a new perspective which reduces the distance between market-based and socially oriented initiatives’, and ii) the agency of designers over design processes and designed products, in both their creation and use. As existing debates in the field reflect (Papanek 1985; Rittel and Webber 1973; Buchanan 1992; Morelli 2007), socially responsive design does not acknowledge the primacy of designers as responsible for the societal outcomes related to the processes and products of design. Instead, socially responsive design understands design for society as a socially ‘situated practice’ akin to Suchman’s concept of ‘situated action’ (Suchman 1987), in that it is contingent on the situated context of the design process, particularly the agency of the people in and around it. The ability of design to have social impact in use is similarly contingent on users and contexts and, ultimately, beyond the control of the designer in that designs ‘are constituted through and inseparable from the specifically situated practices of their use’ (Suchman et al. 1999).

This is not to say that socially responsive design rejects the notion of designers seeking to make responsible decisions as regards the impacts of their practices and products on social systems. Rather it suggests that when design is delivered via commission or collaboration the designers’ agency over the process and its outcomes is not entire. This is not a shortcoming of design, in the context of socially useful design and/or design-led social innovation, but a condition of it. Socially responsive design is socially situated in process and in product – throughout the design’s lifecycle – and as designers we are only able to be responsive rather than ultimately responsible in our engagement with social, political and ethical agendas and objectives.

In this way socially responsive design seeks to offer a pragmatic reading of social design practice that does not require designers to eschew consumerism and the market to deliver socially motivated and mindful design.

The following case studies describe two initiatives delivered by Vexed Generation/Vexed Design between 1993 and 2003. They will, it is hoped, illustrate a fashion design practice that is socially responsive in both its means (the process of design) and its ends (the products of design). They seek to demonstrate how designers of clothing and accessories can attempt to achieve socially responsive practice by application of different methodologies offering, in different intensities, social and market oriented activity and collaboration with the users and stakeholders of their designs.

‘You put up a camera and I'll put up a collar': Vexed Generation clothing between 1993 and 1995

When Joe Hunter and I started designing clothes together in 1993 as Vexed Generation we knew we could not compete in the fashion industry, and we did not want to.

We knew that our meagre resources (we were both on the dole for the most part when we started Vexed) and limited training and industry experience (neither of us had a formal fashion training) meant we could not compete on price (other brands would always benefit from economies of scale and cheaper overseas manufacture we could not and did not wish to achieve); quality (we had limited experience of designing and manufacturing clothing and so did not assume that we could do so ‘better’ than those who had been at it for years); or marketing (we had no resources to pay for PR or advertising to spread awareness of or generate desire for our creations).

Nor were we preoccupied with making clothes that we thought were ‘on trend’ or ‘in fashion’ and would therefore be desirable to consumers. Constantly trawling the markets and charity shops of Camden, Portobello and Brick Lane, we were painfully aware of – and disparaging of – the manner in which the styles adopted and adapted by the patrons of these stalls were aped in subsequent seasons by fashion brands in what we saw as an ever-decreasing spiral of creativity and quality. The ‘new’ versions of these garments were of such inferior quality of material and manufacture that they would never make it back to the market stall for re-sale and re-use but rather contribute to landfill, resource use and climate change.

Consequently we sought to make clothing that was unlike any other. Clothing that met the contemporary personal and social needs of people like us living in London at the time. To do this we asked different questions of our clothing in an attempt to find different sartorial answers and we embraced the aesthetics that these answers suggested, even when they appeared odd and incongruous.

We wanted to make our clothes in the UK, for the UK and about the UK.

In the UK

Our desire to manufacture in the UK was not a consequence of nationalism but because we wished to contribute to jobs and prosperity locally if we were able. We also held perhaps romantic and misplaced ideals linked to the sustenance, even prosperity, of skilled labour, craftsmanship and artisanship within UK clothing and accessory manufacture. By manufacturing clothing that was ‘beautiful and useful’ (Morris 1880) in the UK we hoped to assure a future for workers seeking to experience the inherent self-expression, satisfaction and reward of a job well done. This perspective is more clearly articulated by Sennett (2008) in his exploration of craftsmanship. Certainly, as newcomers to the skills and competencies required to make clothing that would endure, we were respectful of, even enamoured with, those who could realise our design prototypes as desirable and marketable products of a quality that would last. We anticipated that this durability, physical and emotional (Chapman 2005), would avoid the necessity to contribute to the un-merry-go-round of resource depletion and landfill engendered by the disposable fashion of which we were critical.

We were also keen to play a role in maintaining a regional diversity in fashion, such as the style defined by Breward et al. (2004) as a ‘London Look’. We consciously sought to offer an alternative to the homogenised aesthetics of globalisation that were losing their appeal for a generation of taste makers that were part of a 90s DIY creative culture, a culture fostered in part by digital democratisation (of music and film) and in part by a recessionary economic climate. This same climate created redundant capacity in space and labour that meant that we could find (and just about afford) studio space, factory space and retail space to get our small dockets into production and distribution.

For and about the UK

In London, in 1993, the Conservative government tabled the Criminal Justice bill. Amongst a raft of wide ranging proposals, the bill sought to introduce new legislation granting additional powers to the police that specifically targeted certain practices and lifestyles in UK culture, including raves (free outdoor parties); squatting (living free and without permission in unoccupied property); ‘unauthorised camping’ on public land; and much peaceful outdoor protest (particularly environmental protest, which often involved occupation of land to prevent socially and environmentally harmful activities being carried out by the authorities, for example road expansion schemes and inhumane animal testing and transportation). The bill also championed surveillance (the use of CCTV by local authorities). In effect the Criminal Justice bill sought to criminalise, and in so doing eradicate, many social and collaborative cultural practices that supported – and in some cases constituted – alternative lifestyles. Many, including Vexed Generation, perceived the bill as an attack on civil liberties and the ability of citizens to self-help in the face of social injustice and inequality. Furthermore, the partial and subjective nature of the legislation was perceived as indicative of an insidious and intolerant hegemony that would result in further marginalisation of certain groups within society. Despite fierce resistance, the bill was passed as an act in 1994.

The word vexed means ‘annoyed’, ‘frustrated’ or ‘worried’. It also describes ‘a problem or issue that is difficult, much debated and problematic’. The word generation describes ‘all of the people born and living at about the same time, regarded collectively’. It also refers to ‘the production or creation of something’. We considered the words Vexed Generation in several senses, simultaneously describing our state of mind in relation to social issues in London at the time and the broader cohort of likeminded people that shared them. They also related to the nature of our concerns and our intended action, our ‘mission’: to use these concerns to generate designs that would communicate and address them.

Consequently, Vexed Generation designed clothing that, it was observed, could ‘simultaneously communicate these issues and protect their wearers from their worst effects’ (Evans 2003).

Design research methodology

In the first instance we applied what could be regarded as an auto-ethnographic design research approach, though it was not understood as such at the time. As avid scooterists and cyclists we reflected on the shortcomings of the garments and accessories available to us; how could they facilitate less pollutive, and more accessible, approaches to urban mobility? Living in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets at the time, we were exposed to the early use of CCTV as it spread from its early application within the City of London’s counter terrorist ‘ring of steel’ into the adjacent neighbourhoods. We conducted a literature review, grateful for the assistance of friendly journalists with access to Reuters news text (we had little or no access to the internet), who provided facts and figures on air quality and CCTV use as well as news of the ongoing activities surrounding the new powers introduced by the Criminal Justice Act (CJA). We carried out user-centred research, observing interactions between police and protesters, including police arrest techniques, on video and in situ. We engaged in ‘immersive’ design research, placing ourselves in situations that enabled us to experience these interactions further first hand – some willingly, some not so! We met with groups that were directly affected and engaged by the new legislation (JUSTICE, Liberty, Advance Party Network,¹ the Legal Defence and Monitoring Group, Privacy International), listening to the...