Material MeMories

Ma Fashion and the environment Chelsea Flower show 2013

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For those of us who love fashion as much as we care for the environment, the dichotomy between the allure of fashion and the difficulty of justifying continued consumption in an age when our ecosystem is ailing is a glaring one.

Fashion of course should never be meek, nor should it be wholesome. Instead it should provoke, guide us into unchartered territory and strive for breathtaking innovation and expression. Fashion should be a manifestation of unfettered identity exploration; fashion should be magic.

Nevertheless, knowing, as we do today, how closely linked overconsumption and production

are with environmental damage, it is indeed timely to ask how the allure of fashion might continue without material abundance. In the following pages three students from London College of Fashion’s MA Fashion and the Environment, ThALIA WArrEN, rAChEL CLoWEs and ANjA CrAbb, explore what a meaningful and sustainable material culture might look like. by exploring the relationship between materiality and memory and the role of nostalgia in contemporary culture through research, design practice and conversations with professionals, these designers propose a gentler pace for fashion that abides by the natural rhythm of our shifting seasons and allows us to live in the present in an ethical, mindful and pleasurable way. 3

Publisher: susan Postlehwaite 3 Editor: Anja Aronowsky Cronberg 3 Design: Erik hartinIllustrations: Amelie hegardt 3 Photography: Norma stein 3 Model: Kamilya

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When the party is over, what happens to the dress you wore? Is it relegated to the back of your wardrobe, huddled together with other obsolete party dresses, dresses that once brought joy and anticipation? For rachel Clowes these very dresses, treasured as mementoes of happier times yet hanging passively at the back of wardrobes of millions of women, symbolise a waste in resources, energy and labour, easily avoided by a change in attitude and design ethos. by experimenting with techniques, ingredients and ratios, rachel has developed a method for producing biodegradable plastic sequins made from organic ingredients and coloured with

natural dyes. her sequins have a lifespan proportionate to the average use of special occasion wear, and lasts for two or three outings before slowly dissolving and releasing natural dye into the fabric to reveal a new design and transforming the garment into an item of clothing that will continue to give pleasure and a sense of sanctuary in everyday life. In rachel’s delicate dresses past, present and future are intersected, and clothes that hold cherished memories of bygone times are re-appropriated to the present and allowed to develop an evermore intimate relationship with their wearer in the future. 3

raChel Clowes

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raChel Clowes

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rachel: Why are materials so important? What do they give to people?

Martin: It’s different for everybody I’d say. but I suppose if you were to look at Mark Miodownik, Zoe Laughlin and myself, the three people that started the Materials Library, our interest in materials are very different. Mark is a materials scientist, in-volved in research and in trying to understand and develop materials. Zoe is an artist, and the material-ity of her objects is an im-portant aspect of her work. she has developed this thing about performability; she’s interested in materials as a part of performance. I also studied art, and making has always been a big part of my household. I’m interested in how and why things are made. After I left art school I went into lots of different types of design; I worked as a silver-smith, a cabinetmak-er, a builder, as a decorator, I did a bricklaying course, I made shoes.

rachel: how is the collection at the Materials Library different to a museum?

Martin: Museums are not just about preserva-tion, they are living spaces. I think all people who run museums realise the value of visitors engaging with things, and collections now often

involve hands-on activity but there’s often a limit to what you can do. We’re not a mu-seum, we’re a library, and that means people can come in and use the objects, handle them. We’ve had a Make space since we moved to the University College London in 2012. one part of our practice is our ‘material of the month’ which means that our members get a

piece of this material in order to play with it, test it, experi-ment and think about it.

rachel: As part of my MA we did a workshop with the Institute of Making called Chemical Catwalk. Part of the project was to come up with a manifesto for materi-als, the idea being to really make us think about what we valued within a material.

Martin: It’s hard to write a manifesto. I’ve gotten my stu-dents to write a design mani-festo and then told them to design something using the manifesto as a starting point. but often their manifestos end up giving them limita-tions or setting them up for

failure. Good manifestos should get even better with time because they keep being more considerate of their topic.

rachel: My work with sustainability is very much about keeping things within use. After all, the most valuable clothes are those that

in Conversation with Martin Conreen

Martin Conreen is a lecturer in de-sign and one third of the people behind The Materials Library. he trained as a fine artist and sculp-tor and was the head of the Design Department at Goldsmiths College until 2005 and made fellow of the royal society of Arts in 2006. Mar-tin’s research has since his student days focused on all aspects of ma-terial culture and human behaviour. he helped set up The Materials Library at King’s College in 2005 as a resource, laboratory, workshop and studio for other material-minded researchers, and has given inquisitive minds a space to play and conduct hands-on investigations into the senso-aesthetics of materials ever since. he talks to rachel Clowes about the materiality of stuff, the emotional attachments we form with things and the function of ob-jects in human relationships.

raChel Clowes

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raChel Clowes

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you wear, otherwise you just have them in your wardrobe and you’re not getting any use or any joy from them. how do you think peo-ple get joy from materials, is it actually from the engagement with them?

Martin: I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. If we had a collection that was static and wasn’t actually being used, it would stay on the shelves and people would look at it and they’d lose interest. If people use and handle the collection, it eventually gets worn out or damaged. The things in our collection naturally replace one another, this is the way it works in life, and the way we work too.

rachel: What makes a material wondrous to you?

Martin: Everything is wondrous if you wonder about it. If you rush into a space and go, ‘oh, show me all the best things!’ you miss out. I love ordinary things. I think anybody with a material can be quite thoughtful and imagina-tive. My job is to get people to reflect on what stuff is, what stuff is for, what stuff costs, what stuff means, what its impact is, what its secret life is. Creative people can look at things, even the most ordinary things and go ‘wow, look at this! ‘Look what it’s made of, look what it does. Why does it feel like this? ‘somebody who doesn’t think deeply about objects, about materiality might just pick it up and say, so what? I have seen people do that. but I think you can turn that attitude around in a conver-sation, it’s about tapping into something that they’re interested in. I think you have to find the angle that opens your imagination up, and the doorway to the thing you might be interested in. stories are a good way of communicating.

rachel: At LCF we’re looking at planting a dye garden and growing flax for example so peo-ple can see it and familiarise themselves with its properties, what it feels like to the touch and how it can eventually be used in textiles. but to me materials are only one factor when

you think about fashion and sustainability. PVC for example is very polluting and probably not something that I would pick to use, but it might be a better choice if somebody wants a raincoat and knows that they’re going to keep it for twenty years. A beautifully designed PVC raincoat made to last might be better than buying an organic cotton dress that you don’t really like and will only wear once. To me that is a complete waste of labour, of land to grow the cotton, of transportation, of everything.

Martin: If a garment is trapped in a wardrobe and not doing anything, it’s kind of stuck in a cycle of nothingness. but I’m seeing a change in consumer attitudes today. There’s a lot of interest in age, durability, objects growing old, gaining a patina and becoming valuable. Today there’s more interest in things increasing in valuable rather than being dissolvable.

rachel: Yes. one of the things I was worried about when I was experimenting with making dissolvable sequins was whether people would get too attached to their garments. Would they be tempted to just hang on to a sequined dress after just three wears or would they make use of its potential by dissolving the sequins and giving their dress another life as a top worn in daily life?

Martin: Like any kind of relationship, how you feel about things can go a bit wrong. You can look at yourself wearing something and say ‘look at that mark there’, or ‘I’ve put weight on’. It’s the same sort of niggles in relation-ships between people that happen between people and things. objects fall out of favour and they end up sitting on shelves. We often have too much stuff and stop having a rela-tionship with it. but instead of trying to give new life to an object, we never get rid of it and it just sits around. Why not give it away instead? Like that relationships will carry on being reinvigorated and reinvented. something in use is always better than something not in use. 3

raChel Clowes

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Taking the first lines of T.s. Eliot’s poem burnt Norton as her starting point, Anja Crabb examines notions of memory and experience, and their relationship to fashion and identity in her collection. Where T.s. Eliot writes about how ‘time present and time past are both perhaps present in time future, and time future contained in time past’, Anja explores how much loved garments so often become material manifestations of our memories, guiding us through unknown waters, and providing anchors in times of need. by using photographic prints on cloth as an emblem and artefact closely linked with memory, and incorporating human hair embroidery as a potent

symbol of our mortality into her garments, Anja allows us to manifest our own experiences upon the clothes that we wear. A jacket printed with an image from our childhood becomes permeated with nostalgia, and a blouse delicately embroidered with our child’s hair becomes deeply personal and meaningful. Memories are embedded into these items of clothing and the value attached to them becomes priceless. In a time when fast-paced consumption and a powerful focus on material culture can sometimes feel overwhelming, these evocative garments speak of a way forward, and a way to relate to fashion that is deeply imbued with our own personal narratives. 3

anJa CraBB

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anJa CraBB

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Anja: The concept of sustainability in fashion relies on being able to collaborate with other people in order to find the most creative solutions, and this is something that is very appealing to me. In my work I’ve been looking at the no-tion of co-design and par-ticipatory design. Designing fashion today, whether sus-tainable or not, is a largely collaborative effort, but all the same someone does need to pick and choose the garments that go into production and make sure that the collection has co-hesion, that it works. That’s what the creative director of a house or brand does, in other words he or she becomes a sort of curator. Would you agree?

Charlotte: being a cura-tor can mean many dif-ferent things. one of the most radical changes for me in my own work has been embracing and acknowledging that sometimes I’m the author, sometimes I’m a collaborator and sometimes I’m a participant. To answer your question, I think there’s a real parallel between a designer and a curator and

also between a stylist and a curator. These roles are about really visualising a particular moment of creativity. When I started working as a curator in the early 1990s it was a nicely

invisible profession. When I’d say I’m a curator people would go, what is it? Today professions or careers like artist, curator or designer have become very co-opted terms. You can ‘curate’ lunch, you can ‘design’ a collection without doing anything other than going to the launch party and looking beautiful. These terms have become over-stretched, so my call to arms is just reclaim the terms and really take owner-ship of them. To me curating is about interpreting and cre-ating for others. It’s a really powerful exchange, and one that improves the quality of our lives.

Anja: I’m very interested in the way you as a curator work with photography. I would say that photography is the most emblematic artefact of memory, and for my MA project my main theme was embedding memory into clothing as a means of adding meaning and

in Conversation with

Charlotte Cotton

Charlotte Cotton became a curator before anyone really knew what be-ing a curator was all about. she was the curator of photographs at the Victoria & Albert Museum in 1992–2004, then the head of Program-ming at the Photographer’s Gallery in London. In 2005 she moved to the Us to set up the cultural pro-gramme at Art + Commerce, work as a visiting professor at Yale and eventually to take on the post as cu-rator of photographs at the Los An-geles County Museum of Art. Today she is back in London to investigate curating as a social practice and the impact the practice can have on lo-cal communities. here she talks to Anja Crabb about photography as a material form, the importance of collaborative practice and curating as activism.

anJa CraBB

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anJa CraBB

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value and something personal to a garment. I used photography as a vehicle to explain my concept but also as an inspiration for the tex-tile printing I did in my collection.

Charlotte: I can see that there is an intersec-tion between your interest in photography as a material form, which is also one side of my practice, and the other side of my practice which is more about trying to set up new cultural paradigms for how we respond to creativity in a digital era. You’re using the motif of the photograph, rather than a photograph, as emblematic of an analogue relationship with the physical and material object. one of the areas of my curatorial practice is working with contemporary art photographers who are really exploring the material, the sculptural and physical notions of photography. Today, as a creative person in a digital epoch, your work isn’t only about what you make, it’s about how you define your practice.

Anja: I’m also interested in hearing what you think of the democratisation of creation. Take the whole Instagram phenomena for instance: whack a filter on your smartphone and upload the result. People say images look good once you put an Instagram filter on, but actually they all look the same. With this type of tech-nology you’ve got the modernisation but also homogenisation of photography as a medium. I’d say there’s also a loss of skill. Do you feel that the digital age has brought with it a loss of skill?

Charlotte: I wouldn’t call photography a democratic medium actually. It’s a bit like the saxophone which is easy to pick up and get a note from but very difficult to make music with. The camera in many ways is the same. With all the new technology available to us the idea that ‘clicking the shutter’ of a cam-era is authorship of a photographic project is rather obsolete. Authorship can instead be about the way that you edit images, the way

that you sequence images or the way that you put images together.

Anja: but what happens to the idea of curating as a skill, as the ability to interpret and create, in an age when it’s possible for everyone to publish on the internet?

Charlotte: I don’t want to criticise the fact that ordinary people can today be in control of the tools of dissemination. After all, it does mean a level of democracy for our means of communication. but what you’re talking about is a fear that we squander the opportunity to really make our voice heard, to say some-thing meaningful by just allowing anything to go. Where do you go for a good crit of what’s happening on Instagram for instance? on the Internet the model is still more about cen-soring than editing or curating. but these are exciting times. It’s a moment of experimenta-tion with the new technologies that are avail-able to us, a moment of creative innovation. There is nothing in the idea of the mass that precludes creativity. That mass doesn’t repress creativity. At the same time there’s a call for curators, critics, writers and thinkers to not stand on the sidelines. We are here to engage in a creative exchange and contribute to the story of creativity in the digital epoch. 3

anJa CraBB

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Fig leaves from the st john the Theologian Churchyard, smoke bush from Millenium Park, indigo from Cordwainers Community Garden and lavender flowers from oaks Way are all elements of the local flora harvested by Thalia Warren, only to be turned into vivid yellows, deep greens, aqua blues and subtle nudes for her collection. restricting herself to a fifteen mile radius encircling the edges of Dalston in East London where she lives, Thalia has explored the rich possibilities available at the doorstep of a dyer with a keen eye and an openness to plant life hidden in the urban landscape. The natural rhythm of our shifting seasons

are at the forefront here, as are the traditional japanese dyeing techniques that give rise to the botanical alchemy present in Thalia’s collection. Fragile silks and utilitarian canvas pieces are juxtaposed, and clean lines act as a foil to palpable craft. Using the apron as a point of departure, and evoking overtones of food, gardening and dyeing, Thalia weaves a delicate yarn of associations that suggest a pace of fashion that is in line with seasonal rhythms and brings to mind the slow Living movement with its focus on living in the present in a meaningful, sustainable, mindful and pleasurable way. 3

thalia warren

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thalia warren

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Thalia: reading about your work I kept coming across the idea that you’re trying to step away from a traditional approach to craft and move into the notion of ‘hacking’. Can you explain what you mean by ‘hacking’ in relation to craft?

shane: Process is something I’m really inter-ested in, though I’m not that interested in set technique. What led me to making is an interest in materials and what you can do with them, and I’m very at-tracted to the idea of mis-appropriation or misuse of materials. This is what hacking is about. For exam-ple, you might get an object off a shelf at Ikea, but once you’ve opened the box you throw away the instructions. Assembling your object then becomes a space for inven-tiveness and reliance on tacit knowledge. reinventing technique is basically how I define hacking.

Thalia: The notion of play is something that I’m interested in as well, when I was working on my collection I was trying to get into a state of playful mindfulness. I was striving for a suspension of judgement. rather than being too critical of any one idea, just move through them and evaluate afterwards.

shane: Yes, when you really capitalise on your response to certain things in an intuitive way and without thinking too much, you get quite precious moments. This is when there’s a love-ly marriage between your understanding of things and the materials themselves. It’s a little

duet you’re doing, you and the material, a dance really. There seems to be a division in art educa-tion today, where technique or skill has become a little bit of a bad word and the emphasis is on research and contextualising ideas. There’s often a separation between making and thinking, but when you play you’re joining these dots back up again.

Thalia: From the point of view of sustainability in fashion that way of working is part of the

problem I think: people are becoming more and more detached from the process, and the realities of actu-ally making an item. When you work only on Illustrator without ever leaving your computer, what you get is a very skewed way of making.

shane: I think technique can hold you back. If you’re taught, told or instructed in how to use a paintbrush, mix your colours and apply paint on paper, you can’t re-ally ever unlearn this. That

initial response to what you do with a brush, how you hold it, what colours you choose, how you apply the material, the relationship between medium to a surface, should be left unconditioned.

Thalia: You often work with other people: is this participatory element of your work also part of trying to somehow find more freedom?

shane: Yes, it’s about opening up the debate and encouraging exchange really. It’s about creating a space where the relationship with

in Conversation with shane waltener

Artist shane Waltener studied sculpture at Camberwell College of Arts, but was always curious about notions of domesticity and how to link crafts and making to the fine arts. Today he works with DIY, basketry, textiles, sculpture and sugarcraft, always with the focus on honouring and celebrating the process of making. here he talks to Thalia Warren about the impor-tance of working together, the al-lure of guerrilla gardening and the dance that ensues between maker and material when you allow your mind to rest and your intuition to take over.

thalia warren

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space and time and material can be explored in a completely open way. I put certain things to the fore to get the ball rolling but then the exercise runs itself really. People have person-al exchanges with others and learn collectively, either by working on their own or collaborat-ing. There’s a lot of play and chance involved. The role of the artist as a narrator is turned on its head a little and people are encouraged to tell their own stories. With relation to craft there is a social aspect involved. It’s about the object and the making and about what happens when people come together to create collectively. The way we create becomes more important than the object itself. I’m interested in people being producers rather than con-sumers. To teach somebody to fish rather than to give them a fish.

Thalia: I did this wonderful workshop at Camberwell College of Arts some time ago: The London Tokyo Exchange Workshop. A group of japanese artists came to visit and we were sent off to go and play in the 3D stu-dio without any specified outcome. We were hoping that having a go at making something together would facilitate a connection and communication through the language barrier. I’d been thinking about aprons at the time, so I instigated us putting this tarpaulin on like an apron to create a kind of table space between us. The space depended on all of us being en-gaged in order to maintain the tension. It was quite a special moment. Much later I had an experience out foraging with the Urban har-vest group. We found a quince tree growing by the side of the road, full of fruit, all ripe and about to drop. A few of us started collecting the quinces. one of us had an umbrella and hooked the branch down with its handle, and someone else was picking the fruits and we all had our arms full so I ended up holding out my skirt and filling it up with quinces. Afterwards I started thinking about how to allow us to work with our arms free and collect fruit be-tween us. And it made me remember the table

apron we created at the Camberwell work-shop, and from those two experiences I ended up developing a harvest apron for my collection.

shane: I’ve never had a garden, I’ve only had window boxes. I’m a completely frustrated gardener, so I’ve started using parks and just planting things in parks in an act of guerrilla gardening. A few years back I had beetroot patches in burgess Park and for my basket weaving I just started using what was growing around me.

Thalia: Like you, I’ve been foraging in the city quite a bit. For my collection I decided to draw a roughly fifteen mile radius around Dalston, where I live, and concentrate on sourcing dye plants close to me, in the city.

shane: recycling and provenance of materi-als is of course quite topical for both design and fashion now, and I have learned to look around me in a different way. some time ago I was thinking about making shoes out of bark as an alternative to leather. They might not last as long as leather shoes, but perhaps that could be in their favour. What’s more luxuri-ous than that which doesn’t last?

Thalia: The notion of transience is something that I have to sometimes fight for with regards to the natural dyes I use. You can get natu-ral dyes that are very long lasting, but I think that the ones that aren’t so light fast tend to be seen as less valuable. I actually think that it can be quite interesting to have something that changes and develops over time, a bright colour fading into grey for example.

shane: To have traces of something that was once there is quite lovely. It calls on your im-agination to conjure up the now faded green or that particular shade of pink. The beauty of it is that an object might not last, but if you have the experience of creating it, you can al-ways make it again. 3

thalia warren