Workshop – Unpicking the Fashion System

Dissident voices from different countries and disciplines met for Disobedient Fashion 2017 aiming to contribute content and generate useful debate on the limits of what fashion is capable of being and doing. The annual conference is a call to (mis)understand the dominant notions of Eurocentric fashion and to examine the relationship between fashion and power in order to question its effects on local and global contemporary culture. This workshop offered an opportunity to uncover and map the complex reality of the contemporary fashion system and locate opportunities for change. We facilitate critical reflection on the roles and processes within the fashion production both through material/garment observations and open discussion. Participants were asked to bring a garment to take apart and contribute to the collective investigation. Each garment was documented and analysed: Is there a personal story connected to the garment? Are there traces of
use and wear? Then dissected: What sort of information is revealed in taking the garments apart? Which materials and techniques have been used? Where was it made and by whom? These questions formed the basis for mapping activity that will connect each garment to the wider fashion system. During this workshop unpicking garments functioned as a metaphor for the unravelling of the mechanisms that constitute pervasive fashion practices and production processes. What is revealed is a set of fluid and dynamic relationships that span global social, cultural, political and economic contexts. Who are the different stakeholders involved? In what ways is the role of the fashion designer shifting? How might our collective insights be used towards innovative modes of knowing and doing in fashion?