Under the supervision of
Professor Sandy Black and Dr Thomas Makryniotis
at the London College of Fashion, University of the Arts London
Keywords Critical Fashion, Fashion Film and Fashion in the Expanded Field
Abstract Going against the traditional productivist nature of fashion design, this practice-based Ph.D. proposes a strategy for critical fashion practices in a research context at the intersection of fashion, fine arts and film methodologies. This interdisciplinary strategy investigates fashion in the expanded field, exploring fashion practice as a form of critical thinking, questioning the fashion system itself: a practice of unmaking, the purpose of this research is to develop a practice-based method of producing an essay film as an artistic reflection critically discussing the problems of the fashion system, providing new insights into the way a fashion designer develops new approaches that can expand the action spaces available for fashion. Since the etymology of the word ‘fashion’ relates it to the Latin factio, meaning ‘making’ or ‘doing,’ to ‘unmake’ fashion carries in itself a paradox; it is both a metaphorical undoing and a methodological one, a practice of fashion resistance by not producing clothing, a deconstruction of fashion in order to understand what it’s made of – like unpicking the seams of a jacket in order to analyse its construction. It de-constructs underlying assumptions regarding a transition to post-productivism, exposing the limitations of current market-driven fashion design processes. Drawing on Rosalind Krauss’s notion of sculpture in the expanded field (1979), as used in the discourse on cinema (Bardon et al., 2015), this research documents the development of experimental fashion films since the 1980s and the interdisciplinary fashion practices that stand at the edge of the fashion discipline. It investigates how thought experiments can steer the creative process towards a critique of fashion, drawing from modernist conceptual and de-materialised art practices towards the development of a conceptual fashion. The research methodology developed within the practice extends the potential of communicating through the essay-film format in order to critique fashion within the contemporary context of heightened concerns about climate change and environmental issues induced by mass-production, fast-fashion, and global fashion distribution and consumption. This is developed through a juxtaposition of allegorical images resembling a thought process: the fashion image is used as a thinking-form for constructing a critique of its own systems. The thesis emphasises the importance of taking a critical stance to fashion due to the lack of self-reflection within current fashion practices, synthesising a body of knowledge to inform practitioners of experimental, critical fashion while revealing complexities within the communication of these concerns, proposing fashion as the representation of a deconstructive thought where dress itself becomes ‘immaterial’.
With the support of FCT · Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia
PhD thesis submitted in January 2019
‘Unmaking’ presented as part of a group show in London, 09.02 - 04.04. 2017 at the Austrian Cultural Forum ‘Transfashional London’
View of the second public screening of the essay film Unmaking, presented at the conference ‘The End of Fashion’, in parallel with the paper ‘Fashion in the expanded field: strategies for critical fashion’ at the ‘End of fashion’ conference held in Wellington, New Zealand, on 8-9th December 2016 at Massey University of Otago, with online publication of peer reviewed abstracts and catalogue of the exhibition.
View of the first public screening of ‘Unmaking’ at the Lisbon Fashion Week on the 7, 8, and 9 October 2016 at Praça do Municipio n31, Lisbon, Portugal. Photo: Luis Santos
TRANSFASHIONAL: Experimental fashion in the context of contemporary art exhibition 19.05 - 04.06.2017 Warsaw, Centre of Contemporary Art Zamek Ujazdowski
Research Practices 2013 - 2019
Research Cards 2013 - 2019
Diagram