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Apr 18, 20197 min read

What Happens When a Clothing Designer Looks in the Microscope?

In one of the notebooks I keep for this research (note to self, keep less notebooks) I wrote down the following questions:

How do you get more students to ask “why not?”
How do you break old rules in a search? What are the rules to begin with?
What is the balance of expertise vs. experimentation?
How do you teach students to be comfortable in the uncomfortable?

My focus this spring in the Netherlands was to talk to people who teach in fields related to social design. Ista Boszhard and Cecilia Raspanti of the TextileLab at the Waag Society were high on my list.

Den Waag building in Nieuwemarkt Square; the top floors are the home of the Waag Society

The Waag Society is located in the Waag building in Nieuwemarkt square, across the street from one of my favorite places to get coffee, Cafe Stevens. It is a beautiful building at the center of the square. It has had many different uses most well known for being Amsterdam's weigh house, along with a multitude of other incarnations, some less pleasant (see links about building's history below).

Like many Dutch institutions, the Waag is mostly closed during the summer when I am usually here. Most of this region of the country takes their holiday in July (how reasonable), hence my third trip to the Netherlands to meet those unavailable last summer. I was excited to finally have the chance to meet Ista Boszhard and Cecilia Raspanti, and to ask about how they began and run the TextileLab whose mission is to “focus on the unethical and environmental unfriendly realities of the current textile and clothing industry”, in other words to question the status quo of the industry. I was particularly interested in how they combined scientific research with aesthetics, and their pedagogical approaches to their work.

Ista and Cecilia began the TextileLab in 2016, as part of a project supported by a European group the Textile and Clothing Business Labs (TCBL-link below), who have a similar mission of improving the social and environmental implications of the textile industry, but on a EU level.

Ista studied fashion in Amsterdam and New Zealand, and was very interested in the idea of collaboration and community within the creation of fashion. This interest helped shape the TextileLab and is a pervasive value in how they approach their work. Cecilia studied in Florence, and is interested in “digital translations of old craft techniques” in the pursuit of forging innovative ways to create new materials (*there are links below to more thorough bios).

I started by asking them about their own educational histories, and what they wished they had been taught while in school. Ista spoke about her time in New Zealand, and how she loved being surrounded by people from many backgrounds. This led to her passion for wanting to collaborate with others, and to see what to see what could happen as a group that working solo can miss. Cecilia spoke to learning that all roles in the industry can be not only important, but creative. She questioned they myth of the genius, or the “fashion star” and talked about how the supporting roles in fashion are where the real freedom and innovation happen. In design school, some students would put boxes over their work on the mannequins to make sure no one saw or “stole” their ideas. Both Ista and Cecilia spoke passionately to creating the TextileLab with the vision of collaboration and incorporating interdisciplinary research vs. the individual star hiding their “secrets” in a box .

The idea of sharing information is vital in the TextileLab, as well as for TCBL (Textile and Clothing Business Labs). If your goals are about questioning what isn’t working about the fashion and textile industries, sharing information is going to further the goals of changing the way things are done. Proprietary thinking is not conducive to spreading information in the name of change. TCBL’s website provides “Knowledge Resources” to help facilitate this, as does TextileLab. The goals are the key, not the sense of owning or developing an idea.

Sharing on a global level can lead to real change, but sharing on a smaller level has other benefits as well. Cecilia notes the importance of documenting what you do, even when you think you have “failed” at something, as one person’s failure is where another may have inspirations using that failure as a starting point.

TextileLab maintains a materials library of bacteria dyed fabrics, bioplastics, laser cut and interwoven fabrics, and more, as well as an online library of information to share with others.

Samples for the material library

Side note: the death of the fashion star

From teaching my feminist art course From Venus to Guerilla Girls, one of the most liberating ideas (to me) is that the myth of the individual genius whose talent is God given is just that, a myth (see Linda Nochlin’s Why There are No Great Women Artists for more on this). In short, in has a long history in art, most recently exploited in modernism. Questioning this idea of singular exceptionalism is worth doing. As I have written about in previous blogs, studies have shown that collaborations can be more fruitful; collaborations among those with dissimilar and diverse backgrounds often leading to better results.

Another benefit is one pointed out to me by Marcelo Horacia Maquiera Piriz, the fashion buyer and consultant at Droog (see blog entry: An Economy of Passion: Droog and Remy Ramakers) . In addition to his work at Droog, he works with fashion students from ArtEZ in Arnhem, to help them navigate the transition from student to working designer. He has noticed (and Ista and Cecilia agreed) more and more designers are interested in staying small and local. They more interested in autonomy and creating innovative work that responds to social and environmental issues of our times. Marcelo thinks the idea of the “Mega Structure” is gone, that it is simply not of this time. He gave me examples of some Amsterdam-based designers, and looking through their websites I could see their interest in issues of gender-fluidity, creating fabrics that are less environmentally damaging, and creating images of inclusivity. (links to these designers are below).

Back to TextileLab Much of what Ista and Cecilia talked about was very in keeping with the pedagogy of progressive education: taking initiative, learning by doing, the necessity of mistakes in moving forward, questioning assumptions and more.

An important aspect to the TextileLab is the proximity to the creative work of others. The Waag Society has many kinds of making methods: a wood lab, an electronics lab, a biohacking space (which I want very badly), and communal spaces to code, work, share ideas, and to host group events. These labs are all next to each other, on the top two floors of the Waag building. This proximity enables a flowing between spaces and subjects of study. Cecilia attributes her interest in bacterial fabric dye to observing an artist experimenting with using bacteria to create paints in the BioLab part of the Waag. She had the opportunity to see the work of others, which led to her own questions, which led to her experimenting in and teaching others to explore the dying qualities of bacteria. A chain reaction really.

Many aspects of the Waag Society: images from a Biohacking class' final presentations, a communal working space, the BioLab's incubators, and samples of technical possibilities.

The other important aspect to Cecilia’s explorations is not just the lure of the new, but the lure of the better. Textile dying contributes greatly to pollution and water waste around the globe. Dying with bacteria can be done in a way much less harmful to the environment. It is in keeping with the lab’s mission to address the harmful effects of the fashion industry.

Dying with bacteria

One drawback is only a drawback if you look at it from the status quo: bacteria dyes are not uniform from batch to batch. Instead the resulting colors can vary greatly depending on various factors, and can even differ from creator to creator. But while this may not work for mass-producing uniform T-shirts, it works perfectly well on a smaller scale where the variety can be valued for its unique color. Serendipity questions the industrial norm of consistency. The examples in the images show the value in chance.

Natural dyes and laster cut materials.

We also discussed ways of encouraging students to challenge the status quo in the industry, and to get the students to ask new questions and to be comfortable with the uncomfortable. Some of it very much relates to seeing the work in peripheral labs: different ways of working, the experiments of others, observing where the seemingly unrelated touch.

But some of the other techniques Ista and Cecilia mentioned were:

the importance of hands on creating, and learning from the materials by creating them
experiment, fail, document, experiment again, repeat
having a structure of co-creation
ask where are materials and information coming from
see fashion as a medium where you can express ideas
as a teacher guide the students, but let them find and ask the questions
empower the students to not accept the existing systems as a given
help students examine the history of assumptions and traditions
set up the structure of the workshop intentionally
the importance of delving into the expert research without assuming you can’t understand (*you can, but it takes time and work)

Work by TextileLab participant Laura Muth exploring alternative leathers (links below to read about and see more of her work)

Much of what we discussed would come up again with other talks I had with others I spoke with this month: the idea of the local and small, the idea of creating not for the ego but for some form of social betterment, the idea of exploring the greater context not just the finite version of something (where does something come from and where is it going?) , and the idea of cooperating on a greater scale to enact change.

The Waag Society’s TextielLab has inspired in me to consider the following questions for my teaching and beyond:

How can a school, with the tradition of separate academic departments, create a place of proximity?
Do separate subject matters limit learning potentials?
How do I structure a class to help students ask the big questions?
With the Dutch valuing of society and the American valuing of the individual, is the same notion of sharing information possible? How might it have to be approached in the US?
Many students (of mine) still value the idea of originality and individual exceptionalism (the art or fashion star); how can you introduce the freedom and values of the small and local?
Can you have a class where a student explores an object exhaustedly? Asking the questions? Where something comes from? What energies and materials that go into its making? Where does it go when it's done being used? Does it have to be made this way because it has been in the past? (I would love to teach this)