Craft Research

I'm at the IFFTI conference in Taiwan; a report of the excellent two days to come soon. In the meanwhile, I just wanted to flag a promising new journal edited by Kristina Niedderer and Katherine Townsend: Craft Research from Intellect Ltd. It was a pleasure to meet Katherine and hear about the journal. From the website:

Aims and Scope

Craft Research is the first peer-reviewed academic journal dedicated to developing and advancing contemporary craft practice and theory through research. Its purpose is to portray and build the crafts as a vital and viable discipline that offers a vision for the future through its ability to explore and challenge technology, to question and develop cultural and social practices, and to interrogate and affirm philosophical and human values.

Call for Papers

Craft Research welcomes contributions from new and established researchers, scholars, and professionals around the world who wish to make a contribution to advancing the crafts.
Contributions may include research into materials, technology, processes, methods, concepts, aesthetic and philosophy in any discipline area of the applied arts and crafts, including craft education. Accepted formats include full research papers, position papers, reports on research linking craft and industry, craft-researcher portraits, and reviews of research exhibitions and conferences.

bad dogs: exhibition invite

clarifying the terminology: research involving (design) practice

After a meeting on Friday, my focus at the moment is the methodology chapter and in particular the issue of rigour in practice-led research. It's not something I'm too concerned about but I do need to articulate very clearly the sources of rigour in my project. Over the weekend I was updating my readings on the area and came across this very helpful paper by Kristina Niedderer and Seymour Roworth-Stokes: 'The role and use of creative practice in research and its contribution to knowledge'. The table on page 10 is particularly helpful in clarifying the terminology, much of which is currently used interchangeably, perhaps erroneously. The timing of reading the paper was somewhat serendipitous as only on Thursday I had a minor epiphany in regards to my project, while reading about someone else's.

I don't know that practice-led is the correct term to describe my project. On Thursday I actually wrote at the beginning of the chapter: "My project: not practice-led research but rather, a project that includes research-led practice". This realisation came about whilst reading about Maarit Mäkelä's project in the book she co-edited with Sara Routarinne: The Art of Research. Research Practices in Art and Design. (The website has the subheading different to the book I'm looking at right now.) The chapters covering various projects, including Mäkelä's, focus mainly on art rather than design, although the closing chapters by Stephen Scrivener and Michael Biggs do bring the book back to design somewhat. Anyway, Mäkelä's project to me reads very much as 'practice-led' but as a result, my project does not. For a start, my project includes an exhaustive (and exhausting) literature survey of garments that waste little or no fabric, both historical and contemporary. As the literature survey both precedes and informs the practice, I'm not sure 'practice-led research' is the correct term for my project - the practice does not lead the research but does contribute to it significantly.

Going back to Table 2 in Niedderer and Roworth-Stokes's paper, and the first category, 'Research Involving Practice', I do identify with the context and purpose. In my project, "practice plays a lead role in the investigative process", and "informs theory building within research to gain new insights, knowledge or understanding". (And this reminds me why it was so easy to embark on a misadventure to the world of Grounded Theory more than two years ago... It made sense, even if inappropriate.)

Next, using objectivity, reliability and validity as the criteria, identifying the sources of rigour in the project should be a breeze. Or so I always (optimistically) believe.

As an unrelated aside, I haven't entertained the thought of designing within the Australian industry for some years now - not much or seriously anyway. Yesterday, a friend asked if could bring in my portfolio to the company she's working for, as there are signs of imminent expansion. I could, I replied, if I had one. The closest equivalent I have is my press book. I had my first look in about three years last night (I should have taken a photo of the dust) and it was almost as if I was reading about someone else. And how things change. Exactly 18 months after this was written, I was applying to do a PhD and got on the road I'm on now. No regrets, of course, but it's strange to even think of myself as a potential designer again. Sure, I am designing as part of the project but it's in my little academic ivory tower, not in the real world where things actually have to sell. Not in the real world where designers have to churn out hundreds of styles every year. Not in the real world where what always seem to ultimately matter, at the expense of everything else, is profit. Anyway, I'm taking the book in; if nothing else, my friend and I can have a giggle at how young I looked. Oh, and I'm still exhausted.

long leg panty girdle

When I first heard of Mara Havinoviski's 'Patterns for Fabric Economy' (1969), I got very excited. A trawl through the websites of various Sydney libraries came to nada, and in the end I organised an interlibrary loan. Not sure why but I always feel guilty when I do, like I'm bothering the librarians, although it's all done impersonally through the library website.

The book arrived last week, from the Washington State University library. It smells of old book, or Santa Claus's armpit, to the extent that I have to keep it at arm's length at all times. At most I can only read it for five minutes at a time. More worryingly, I can't seem to understand half of it. The tables, the diagrams - it's all gobbledegook to me. The images of pattern pieces, which should have been self-explanatory, baffled me to no end, until I saw on another page that they were in fact the pieces of a 'long leg panty girdle'. Whatever that is, I think my collection needs one. We all need one.


But, I will persevere. The book is essentially about fabric inspection and usage, and tackling fabric waste in the traditional way, and I think Tyler's book probably covers most of this in a more user-friendly manner. I do like Havinoviski's writing style with its own idiosyncracies like the frequent CAPITALISATION OF SIGNIFICANT STATEMENTS. And thanks to Havinoviski, I'm now aware of 'Parkinson's Law', which just about explains the universe to me at the moment.

back

I will not post a review of the IFFTI08 conference, except to say that the papers I looked forward to didn't disappoint. Yesterday the conference finished with a panel discussion on sustainability and it was a delight to hear the diversity of views from around the world, and more significantly, sense the huge hunger for more knowledge from everyone. The reminder about the development of the Centre for Sustainable Fashion at the London College of Fashion (LCF) was timely; the initiative looks very promising (but I can't find a website). On the whole, I've come back invigorated, and have some very rough ideas for post-doctoral research that would involve industry, too. I did meet some old friends who are doing very well in industry, and the hunger for more knowledge is apparent there, too. I did ask a friend, a designer for one of the largest manufacturers of t-shirts and cotton underwear (all made in Australia) if the company had any plans for even small percentage of organic or other alternative cottons in their products. "We looked into it but the consumers aren't interested", was the response. I doubt this, or at least wonder what the actual percentage of non-interest was. I also wonder when this research was conducted; as Alison Gwilt pointed out on the panel, last year's Earth Hour probably played a huge role in Australia in bringing the environmental crisis to the mainstream. Further, I think the responsibilities are shared, and such a passive approach is sad. This company really could lead, given the volumes of their production. I understand that a 100% shift away from conventional cotton is not possible in an instant - simply, not enough fibre is being grown to meet the potential demand - but examples set by large-scale manufacturers like Nike, Marks & Spencer and Levi's will be followed by many, and soon.

Speaking of denim, I told a friend about the jeans (which admittedly weren't chosen for their environmental friendliness, except maybe durability - I plan to wear them for 5+ years; my oldest pair is 13 or so years old) and she's asked me to blog about them here. I'll certainly check the exact date I bought them, and will photograph them, too, as they are at the moment (in the freezer, to be exact). With four or so months of wear, some of the indigo has worn off where I keep my wallet and keys, and the creases around the crotch, knees and hem - that's my body leaving a very personal imprint on the garment. In fact, when held up from the waist, there is a strong suggestion of the body in them. Because of the freezing there is no smell, but the jeans feel 'dirty' - both have had drenchings of beer, rain and food on them (spot cleaning does the trick), not to mention the natural oils our skins produce.

At the conference I was jokingly referred to as one of the two people in Oz to have Kate Fletcher's book (Sue Thomas is the other); apparently Amazon is having problems with the paperbacks (though do correct me if you know otherwise). Again I spent the flight reading, Chapter 2 titled 'Ethically Made'. Using Donella Meadows' list of systems intervention points and examples from fashion and textiles, Fletcher sets the stage for the future in a most powerful way. I've been reading the book in a rather random fashion, and this chapter has probably had the strongest impact on me to date. As a designer and a design educator I was left feeling empowered and re-energised after reading it. This was partly from the panel discussion, too - the power of all the design educators in the room for a change for better was acknowledged.

I've much more to blog about but other things need addressing urgently. On Monday I saw the final proof for the chapter - I'm very excited.

del.icio.us

Everyone in my inner circle would know that I'm not exactly up there when it comes to new technology and new things on the web, even if I may have been part of the first wave to leave Facebook. I've known of del.icio.us for quite some time but never got around to it until last week. Some of my fellow research students do know me for my, um, somewhat anally retentive bookmarking, so it's hard to believe it took this long for me to join. I joined on Friday, and imported all the bookmarks from Firefox and IE on my uni computer. 1200+... By the time I'd done the same at home - let's not even go there. It may be a blessing I've yet to work out how to do the same from Safari. I've spent four days culling and cleaning (not unlike the experience of leaving Facebook, actually), and whilst there are some obvious missing tags and things that don't necessarily make the sense they could yet, here they are.

a quick note

I should clarify that I cannot share my key research findings here until after I've submitted my thesis and published the most significant aspects of the research. Obviously I will share some findings in the exhibition in August and don't see a problem with discussing those here. As for the rest, they will have to wait until next year. I do hope to maintain this blog beyond thesis submission, however sporadic that may be. So, apologies, but we'll get there eventually.

new books

Eight months after my last post, here I am, again. The collection is well on its way and the exhibition will take place in August 2008. Since my last post, two significant new books have been published on sustainability and fashion and textiles. Whilst I'm still waiting for my copies to arrive and hence am unable to comment on either, here are the details:

Kate Fletcher: Sustainable Fashion and Textiles: Design Journeys, available from here.

Janet Hethorn, Connie Ulasewicz, Yvon Chouinard (editors): Sustainable Fashion: Why Now? A conversation exploring issues, practices, and possibilities, available from here. (This is the book I wrote a chapter for.)

Also worth a read, the WWF 'Deeper Luxury' report, from here.

That's it, for now. In coming days I'd like to summarise some of the articles on futurefashion (NY fashion week) and Esthetica (London fashion week). I have, however, a lot to organise for my exhibition as well as one I'm co-curating for 2009 so it may not happen.

some thoughts on 'well dressed?' part 1

'Well dressed? The present and future sustainability of clothing and textiles in the United Kingdom' is an excellent report from a team at the University of Cambridge Institute for Manufacturing. It may be downloaded here.

p. 10: Hourly wages in the clothing industry by country, US$ per hour (from an ILO report, 2003)
Pakistan 0.23
Sri Lanka 0.57
India 0.71
China 0.86
Mexico 1.75
Hong Kong 5.13
Germany 10.03
USA 11.16

When I had my label, I paid my sample machinist $25-$30 per hour, and the production machinists $12-$15 per hour. (I didn't pay myself anything for design, patternmaking and cutting.) People always wondered why even one of my basic tees retailed for $80, when some other (larger) labels were selling theirs for half that (made offshore). Everything I did was made in Australia - Sydney, in fact. That's why. I have no regrets about it, though. I knew who was making the garments and in what conditions. There were no middlemen and the money went directly to those that did the work. I should note, though, that I really had no idea about any environmental issues at the time, or at least I didn't pay any attention to them. It was hard enough trying to break even - not that that's an excuse. But, once I was in the midst of it, there simply wasn't any time to try to educate myself. That's what I'm trying to do now.

p. 14: The four major environmental issues associated with the clothing sector are:

• Energy use
• Use of toxic chemicals
• Release of chemicals in waste water
• "Solid waste arising from yarn manufacturing of natural fibres, making up and disposal of products at the end of their life."

My research, of course, investigates one aspect (fabric waste) of the last one.

Speed-reading the report and the technical annex, it seems there is some excellent concrete information on the amount of fabric waste produced by the fashion industry - I need to return to this. Although this seems like a short post - well, this is a short post - I've been interrupted by three phone calls and have probably spent two hours on this, and am getting hungry.

Get the report and read it. Very informative. I'll attempt to return to it shortly.

(Oh, and I did get the progress report in today, officially two weeks late. That's progress.)

Categorising fashion design - one example

Ok, got the book [Rennolds Milbank, Caroline (1985) Couture. The Great Designers. Stewart, Tabori & Chang, Inc. New York], these are the categories and designers.

The Founders: Worth, Doucet, Paquin, Lanvin, Callot Souers, Lucile, Boué Souers, Poiret

The Artists: Fortuny, Callenga, Liberty & Co, Mary McFadden, Zandra Rhodes

The Purists: Chanel, Jean Patou, Molyneux, Grès, Augustabernard, Louiseboulanger, Vionnet, Mainbocher, Valentina, Halston, Sonia Rykiel

The Entertainers: Schiaparelli, Adrian, Maggy Rouff, Karl Lagerfeld, Marcel Rochas

The Extravagants: Dior, Nina Ricci, Balmain, Jacques Heim, Jacques Fath, Jacques Griffe, Jean Dessès, Norman Hartnell, Valentino, Givenchy, Galanos, Oscar de la Renta, Bill Blass, Yves Saint Laurent

The Architects: Balenciaga, Charles James, Roberto Capucci, Pierre Cardin, Courreges

The Realists: Claire McCardell, Vera Maxwell, Bonnie Cashin, Norma Kamali, Norman Norell, Pauline Trigère, Hardy Amies, Geoffrey Beene, Perry Ellis, Ralph Lauren, Kenzo, Giorgio Armani, Issey Miyake

Like I said, these categories have little bearing to what I'm researching, but it's really interesting to me nevertheless that someone has categorised fashion designers at least partly according to how they work. The designers of some or considerable interest to my project can be found under several of Rennolds Milbank's categories: Callot Souers, Fortuny, Zandra Rhodes, Madeleine Vionnet, Jacques Griffe, Balenciaga, Charles James, Claire McCardell and Issey Miyake. Of course, these are not the only designers that I've looked into; for example, the book is that much old now that Yeohlee Teng doesn't appear. Also, people like Thayaht (an Italian futurist that worked for Vionnet at one point) and Bernard Rudofsky weren't fashion designers, yet designed clothes at one point in their respective careers: clothes that wasted very little fabric. And of course, all types of 'traditional' dress from around the world are of interest to me, as usually very little fabric is wasted in their making. The kimono from Japan is probably the best known example in this respect.

I'm not sure it's within the scope of my PhD to attempt to categorise all different types of fashion designing, but I'm guessing that when I get to the other end, I will have some very good pointers toward such a categorisation. Or I might realise such a categorisation is not appropriate. I do know that different fashion designers have very different approaches to designing: some rely entirely on the sketch, others do not sketch at all and there are countless variations between the extremes.

Practice-led and practice-based research

This research is about fashion design practice, and part of the research will be conducted through practice, but I am not convinced 'practice-led' or 'practice-based' sufficiently describe the project. How I came to the research problem isn't entirely practice-led, either; things that I'd seen and read in books played an equally significant role.

The 'themes' for next year's Nordic Design Research Conference are Inquiries about Design, Inquiries for Design and Inquiries by Design. I think the first and the last reflect what I'm attempting, but the middle fits as well: I do hope that eventually other practitioners will somehow benefit from the research.

My research and this blog

My PhD looks into a way of making clothes that doesn't waste any fabric exclusive of the garment. Put it another way: if you make a zero-fabric-waste shirt that takes 150cm of fabric, every skerrick of that 150cm length of fabric is in the finished shirt. Currently clothing production is somewhat inefficient (in my opinion), in that roughly 15% (Cooklin 1997, see below) of the fabric used ends as waste at the cutting out stage. The following texts give estimates for this wastage:

Abernathy, F. H., J. T. Dunlop, et al. (1999). A stitch in time. Lean retailing and the transformation of manufacturing - Lessons from the apparel and textile industries. New York & Oxford, Oxford University Press. The authors estimate the amount of waste to be around 10 percent for pants and jeans, but higher for blouses, jackets and underwear.

Cooklin, G. (1997). Garment technology for fashion designers. Oxford, Blackwell Science. As stated above, Cooklin estimates the wastage at 15% of total fabric used.

Feyerabend, R. (2004) Textiles Briefing Paper http://www.mrs-hampshire.org.uk/Workshop%204/Textiles.pdf accessed 24/10/2006. The amount of waste varies between 10 and 20% of total fabric used.

Garment style (number and shapes of pattern pieces), the number of sizes in one marker (usually you can save fabric if you, for example, cut the Mediums and Larges together in one rather than two separate markers, but this is only possible if you are cutting the same number of Mediums and Larges) and the skills of the marker maker are some of the factors determining the amount of waste. Marker, by the way, is the cutting layout of a garment, containing all the pieces of a garment to be cut. It is the marker maker's responsiblity to try to fit all the garment pieces as tightly as possible; the motivation is economic, as a saving of, say 5cm of fabric per garment, translates into quite a big financial saving if you are making 500 units of that particular garment.

Now, if we wanted to eliminate this waste (and at a later date I'll write more on why I think we should at least reduce the aboove figures), the problem with the current practice is that the marker maker is limited by what has been designed by the fashion designer and patternmade by the patternmaker. I want to make clear that I am NOT researching a way of designing garments that use less fabric (put it bluntly, those garments would be shorts and crop tops), but rather, I'm looking at how fashion design and patternmaking are able to eliminate fabric waste: how to make clothes without wasting fabric.

This blog will hopefully serve a dual purpose: as a repository of my thoughts, and others', on the research as it advances, and as the written and visual record of the experiments that I will conduct. I am currently developing the design briefs for the experiments, drawing from literature on this kind of fashion-making. I know it's a little clunky to have the two separate blogs, but I'll try to cross-link the two regularly, and each has a link to the other in the sidebar.