Secondhand Culture: Waste, Value and Materiality

This event hosted by the Bard Graduate Center is looking very promising. Alexandra Palmer, Nicky Gregson and Susan Strasser have all written texts that have considerably enriched my research so I very much look forward to hearing each speak.

Details from the above release:

RSVP required to academic-events@bgc.bard.edu or 212 501 3019

For more information please contact Alex Phelan at phelan@bgc.bard.edu

Bard Graduate Center 38 West 86th Street, Lecture Hall

Thursday, April 15th, 5pm - 8pm
Film Screening: Secondhand (Pepe), 2007
followed by Q&A with the filmmakers, Hanna Rose Shell and Vanessa Bertozzi

William Davies King
Professor of Theater, University of California Santa Barbara
Suited for Nothing: Collecting Second-Hand

Friday, April 16th 9am - 4pm
Shirley Teresa Wajda
Historian
Secondhand Culture Studies: A View from the Rust Belt

Alexandra Palmer
Senior Curator, Royal Ontario Museum
Back to Back: Retro-fitting Fashion within the Museum

Alison Isenberg
Associate Professor, History, Rutgers University
Second-Hand Cities: Antiques, Inheritance, and Preservation from the Civil War to Urban Renewal

Nicky Gregson
Professor, Geography, University of Sheffield
Death, the Phoenix, and Pandora: End of Life Ships, Chock-Chocky Furniture and the Bangladeshi Middle Class

Marilynn Gelfman Karp
Emeritus Professor of Art, New York University
In Flagrante Collecto: Caught in the Act of Collecting

Susan Strasser
Professor, History, University of Delaware
Commentary

I hope to see you there!

Earth Pledge FutureFashion revisited

Just linking to an excellent post by Jill Danyelle (she of fiftyRX3 fame and of danyelle.org) about the show, quite passionately pointing out its shortcomings which I alluded to in three sentences. Jill later elaborates further here. After reading another lot of moronic blog entries about guilt-free (their claim) sustainable shopping and cute (their claim) eco-chic bits of crap these posts have restored my energy and faith. Eco-hating - I like it.

She also questions the press-fluffy statements from Loomstate regarding their recycling of tees with Barneys. "A fresh take"? Wasn't it in 2000/2001 that Walter Van Beirendonck, under the Aestheticterrorists brand, was selling old promo tees, with his own prints simply printed on top of the sponsor's logos? The website has them down as from 2002 but I know I bought three from the collection just after I'd been retrenched in October 2001 (they weren't cheap so the package helped!), and wore one on a flight to Peru in December 2001, and being three months after 9/11, the airport officials in Lima were somewhat concerned about the word 'terrorist' on my chest. Ill-advised on my part, sure, although I've yet to hear of a terrorist group that uses fashion as an identifying element, not counting concealing scarfs in menacing videos. But I digress. Anita made a good point the other day about the current fad for all things eco (too often their claim); it's almost as if everything that has gone on before has been forgotten and every press release erases any history that existed.


For the record, one of the three tees went to charity after it stretched out of existence, one I still wear (the same as Walter is wearing above) - on optimistic thin days - and one is filed away for posterity. It has more holes than cotton jersey in it now, but there are too many memories attached for me to let go of it.

more fabrics! and two milestones

The fabrics from KimoYES arrived on Friday and I'm very pleased and excited: they're simply divine. What's even better, Jill from KimoYES emailed me with as much background to each one as she could. I'm not alone in thinking that designers and manufacturers have a power to encourage a stronger consumer engagement with a garment, which in turn might get consumers to want to hang on to their garments for longer, caring for them better, maintaining and repairing them (or having them repaired). My talk on Thursday, based on the paper I presented at Dressing Rooms, was about designing garments for repair and alteration, arguing that decisions by the fashion designer and patternmaker can facilitate and enable future transformative practices (repair and alteration) in a garment. I also think we can help steer consumers towards less environmentally damaging laundering practices. I used my Viktor & Rolf jacket as an example. The care label says: "Do not wash in water, do not dry clean." And I haven't for the two years I've had it. Instead, my dry cleaner sponges (with what, I don't know) the cuffs and neck which tend to get dirty quickly, given the light colour of the jacket and the fact I rarely wear collared, long-sleeved shirts. Presumably the washing instructions stem from the high metal content of the fabric (19%, with 81% cotton). I love, too, that pressing the jacket is pointless. I just pull it back into shape when I put it away. The thought that has gone into the buttoning and buttonholes is nice, too: the top hole is a regular keyhole, the middle is set into the waist seam and the bottom one is fake.


































But back to the vintage kimono fabrics. Below are my photos with Jill's comments. Wherever I end up using them, the garment will come with all of this information, too. A bit like the Dutch project Made-By, where you can enter the garment code on the website and get its entire production history. What a fantastic idea; let's hope for lots of companies signing up. As for Jill's fabrics, they come from old, damaged kimono; she salvages what she can for sale as well as her quilting work. She also mentioned an artist who often gets the bits that are too damaged for sale; he happily uses them. The condition of the fabrics is excellent, despite their age.

Left to right, top row:
#3254 (black/white). 70s
#3518 (fine navy wool with pink) is from a woolen kimono - I'd say from the 70s
#3856 (grey and black) is an ikat meisen silk where the threads are dyed before the weaving process (hence the irregular pattern). This fabric would be from the 70s
#4167 Ikat wool. This is from a roll of kimono fabric that is old stock. 70/80s

Left to right, bottom row:
#2747 (pink with black/white/red) 50s/60s
#3282 (red/pink) 80s
#2785 (black/grey/white) - can't tell you much about this one. Suspect that there may be some hemp in this fabric. What do you think? I don't know how to test for it. [I'm not sure either; I know the smell of burning cellulosic fibre, cotton/linen/hemp/etc. but not sure how to go from there.]
#3159 (red shibori) Red rinzu silk which has been patterned using shibori. This is probably machined rather than done by hand. Typical 70s

Oh, the milestones? My younger brother turns 31 today; Happy Birthday! There is no card in the mail but once my PhD is dead and buried, I will get into that habit again, or at least try. And I checked the receipt for the jeans again: six months today. Perhaps I'll wash them next weekend.