Unpicking the Fashion System

This project frames the fashion object as a unique artefact carrying evidence of human activities and transactions. It involves collecting clothing and textiles, tracing their production, patterns of use and layers of value and meaning. The word ‘collection’ within the fashion context generally refers to a set of garments using variations on a theme of colour, material and details, produced and presented seasonally by a brand or designer. This project began as a way to expand the idea of the ‘collection’ and in doing so reflect on how meaning and value might be generated through clothing. It aims to experiment with alternative understandings of the ‘fashion collection’, specifically to investigate the notion of authorship in relation to a designers practice and more broadly to explore ways in which the fashion object and system are intertwined. The process used is a reversal of the traditional fashion production - de-constructing garments and through this accepted processes and outcomes. The act of taking apart or unmaking to understand plays a central role. Specifically I use dissection and collage as tools that mirror the fluid and dynamic relationships that constitute fashion (clothing/dress/dressing… ) and the shifting role of the fashion designer. The material ‘undoing’ acts as a metaphor for the mechanisms of the fashion system that can also be unravelled and opened up to the possibility of reformatting.