I didn’t expect to look at fashion when imagining my grant for studying social design in the Netherlands. It grew from suggestions (mainly from Marcelo Horacia Maquiera Piriz -a fashion buyer and writer, links to his work below) and seeing the refreshing approaches of the Dutch fashion scene. It retrospect, I shouldn't have overlooked a form of design that is so tied to our identities and our daily lives.
The clothing and textile industry is the second source of global pollution(1). While this of course weighs heavy , it was exciting to see the ways artists, organizations, and designers were working to educate about that, and to work against it.
The number one polluter is the petrochemical industry and our use of it as a fuel. While I feel helpless to enact big change there (it feels like politics and power controls that more than consumer choice), in the clothing industry there is a power as a consumer in deciding what and from whom I buy, and in how I treat my clothing. In other words, it feels more in my control. It’s easier as an individual to not enable a toxic system. It ties into repair and making as well as consuming.
Fashion also talks about who we are as an individual, and who we are within a culture. Issues of identity in terms of culture, gender, and more are being questioned and addressed on our outer layer of clothing. The myth of the universal is being questioned, as is the myth of creativity being a solo endeavor.
Following are some images and information on the innovative people and organizations I saw during my time in Amsterdam.
Fashion for Good
Upon Marcello’s suggestion, I sought out Fashion For Good. They are situated on the Rokin, a main street that leads from the train station into the heart of the centrum. It’s an area I normally avoid, with its throngs of tourists. It’s a intensely commercial area, with H&M, Zara, and other stores catering to those seeking a fast fashion fix. The street displays make it clear it is about clothing and fashion, but their signage makes it clear it’s about something more. Fashion for Good is a museum/ education center/ store whose focus is not on selling (although you can purchase what they feature), but on educating consumers about the ethical and environmental impact of the fashion and textile industry.
Their location entices many shoppers in who don’t quite know what it holds in store. As soon as you step in the door, their interactive display draws you in. You are asked to wear an high-tech bracelet, and view interactive media. Each media stations informs you about processes and statistic of how what we wear impacts the environment and human rights and what we can do to have a gentler impact on them both. Once you view each informative display, you tap your bracelet to commit to the change they suggest: washing laundry less, air drying, reading labels to know where your clothes come from, and more.
In the center of these interactive displays is a gallery of work by designers and companies making fashion in cutting edge ways, ways that challenge the exploitative and damaging norms of the industry. This show rotates, and can also be viewed via their website (below).
The basement features and exhibition about the labor, materials, and resources that go into the making of a single T shirt. Like my experience with making the felted rug, there is clarity and power to seeing a complete process; from raw cotton to final t shirt. To know the gallons of water that go into the shirt, the hours of labor, and what percentage of the total cost goes to each step is a powerful thing.
In the UK, an art collaborative called Platform retrofitted an electrical company van to display all the labor, materials, and resources that went into making electricity work. The quote I remember hearing, was when a woman went into the van, looked around, and said “if everyone knew this, capitalism wouldn’t work, would it?” Damning for sure, but while my point is not to condemn capitalism (at least not here*), it is to acknowledge that seeing the whole process makes it’s difficult not to notice the problems along the way: the vast quantity of water that goes into one shirt, that becomes polluted from the process, no longer potable; the workers who live away from their families working in factory-cities with little stimulus other than work; the harm which growing only one crop over and over does to the land.
When seeing the whole process, these things are no longer invisible.
*The idea of capitalism being unidirectional (extract > make > sell > use > throw in landfill) is what is being questioned by many designers and makers today. Many are already engaged in circular economies while many in the US haven't even heard of this idea.
In the basement the documentary “The True Cost” is shown on a loop. While I didn’t have the time to watch it there, I have seen it since, and it is now a staple for my Wearable Art class. I highly recommend seeking it out. I have included links to the trailer below.
The upstairs features a café (this is Amsterdam after all), an event hall, and a tactile display of alternative materials for fashion. The materials explore the waste stream as a source both with recycling clothing into new materials, and utilizing non-traditional source materials. All aiming towards making a better, more sustainable product. I am coming to terms with being a material-geek.
I went to one event upstairs featuring entrepreneurs innovating more sustainable techniques, materials, and processes in fashion. Fashion for Good had awarded grants to them to help further their work. It was clear they were working to affect change not just in the consuming public, but in the fashion industry itself.
Upstairs at Fashion For Good
They often offer workshops in clothing repair and upcycling, although the current lockdown (January of 2022) seems to have put this on hold. They offer support to designers, businesses, and industries globally who want to work in more ethical ways. Their website news-section goes much more into this, and I would encourage exploring their website. They also offer virtual tours, which my Wearable Art class undertook last year.
They reach out with many arms to attack a complex problem. They are not just asking questions, but featuring answers, and supporting those working to solve the problem. They don't want to educate about the ways the industry does damage, but they want to empower citizen-consumers to make better choices. If you buy their ethically made lingerie, great; if you repair your own, even better. If you have one pair of jeans that last for years, vs. 20 pairs that go in and out of fashion trends, great.
I find hope in these tangible suggestions, and that is a powerful thing.
Amsterdam Museum: Fashion Statements
The Amsterdam Museum features the history and culture of Amsterdam, set in a 17th century orphanage (later replaced by Aldo Van Eyck's orphanage!). Amsterdam has a weird and specific history, and this is a wonderful place to delve into that history.
In the summer of 2019, they featured the show “Fashion Statements” featuring wearable art and fashion that explorse identity. In the museum it was displayed along with historical pieces from the museum's collection to show similarities and progressions along certain themes. Sadly the museum's online exhibition archive is quite incomplete, and they have no public archive of the show that I can share. Many of the Dutch designers were ones Marcelo had suggested I look at, alongside designer new to me. It also included my fashion and art crush, Bas Kosters!
Bas Kosters
Kosters is a graduate of ArtEZ (Netherlands premier fashion school with. many other illustrious alum) whose work includes sculpture, performative fashion, zines, quilts and wall hangings, prints and drawings. Much of his work addresses mental health, self-acceptance, love towards yourself and friends, celebrating queer culture and identity, and even sorrow as it is part of our lives that should be honored as well. There is a great deal of joy and hope in his work.
The Amsterdam Museum features Koster's work created from bits and pieces of thrifted fashion. It even includes a short video of him thrifting, considering the fabrics. At the end of the summer, I got a chance to peek in his workspace during a studio sale and the variety of materials he uses is astounding! He is a fun follow on Instagram, and you can get a sense of his values, and prolific output there as well.
Art Comes First
One of the first rooms featured the work of London based designers Art Comes First, and their amazing scissors (see image below)! Art Comes First is an art collective featuring Sam Lambert and Shaka Maidoh. Their work is simply stunning both in design and craftsmanship. They are tailors extraordinaire! The work at the museum celebrates black as a pigment color, but also as a culture.
L: "we learned a lot more after we decided to pass other colors"
R: "...and black is beautiful. It is beautiful in all aspects."
They have different artistic branches that have to do with working collaboratively, lifting up other POC creatives, make gender fluid clothing, addressing ideas of sustainability and the circular economy, documenting and sharing their images creatively, encouraging slow fashion and anti-consumerism, paying tribute to historical and cultural traditions, supporting exchanges between African and the diaspora, and supporting others in the arts. The idea that design is about creating a singular person, and a star-focused culture is an idea they are laying to waste.
This multi-directional aim, with ethics at the center of the process, reminds me very much of a CSW alum, Jordan Carey and his Loquat Shop. For Jordan it about supporting the POC artist community in Maine (he works out of Portland), speaking to history and ancestors, supporting other artists of color, as well as fashion as a form with can communicate values and ideas. I would highly recommend looking up his work as well (link below, as I am good like that).
Loquat Shop work including up cycled future ancestors jacket.
Here are a few other designers from the Fashion Statements show.
This work is by designer Ninamounah, "...presents the body shapes that are suppressed by our society....The body itself is never good enough. Ninamounah's designs have real shapes: breasts, large, full, milk-giving breasts. With her 'pregnant' look she responds to the hiding and shaming of pregnancy. No hidden corsets here, but a celebration of fertility." (from wall text)
Top: From historical collections, Middle left: Karim Adduchi, from there on: Marga Weimans
A satellite exhibit in the attic of the Amsterdam Museum, featuring some local fashionistas, shows how street fashion can speak to identity of the wearer. Tom of Holland (middle row, green sweater) is a repair artist who is fairly well known, and makes some amazing repair art.
Studio Frowijn
Studio Frowijn is the label run by Liselore Frowijn, a recent graduate of the ArtEZ fashion program. ArtEZ has graduated many innovative designers including Bas Kosters (above) and Iris Van Herpen whose work graces many a Hollywood runway and music video (Bjork!). She is a clear example of what Marcello’s observations on new designers: small scale, not about designing for everyone, focus on clients, and their own values about sustainability in terms of the materials they chose.
In our brief, and now 3-year-old conversation, Liselore talked about the industry standard of a new collection several times a year as being unsustainable. She works to create work that is meant to last, to fight the values of fast fashion, but also to take pride in her craft. She uses pineapple leather and recycled textile materials, even going to recycling plants to learn from the process. She talked about material innovation, something I see the world of fashion deeply exploring with an eye to sustainability.
She has many designs beyond this, it's just the coat I lust after.
Studio Frowijn’s Manifesto of 20 key elements
1-dynamic
2-sustainable
3-creative
4-aware
5-niche
6-semi-couture
7-layered
8-thoughtful
9-transparent
10-unique
11-capsule
12-artisinal
13-bold
14-local
15-educative ?
16-goal driven
17-innovative
18-flexible
19-circular
20-optomistic
One of my favorite things about Liselore: she builds with Legos as part of her idea generation! Making is learning!
My own Lego self portrait, complete with Weiner dog. Now I just need to figure out how to make a Lego bike with a basket for the dog.
Viktor and Rolf In Rotterdam
In 2018 there was a show of Viktor and Rolf, a Dutch Design duo, at Kunsthal in Rotterdam. This was from before my grant, and I mostly went just because I am a fan. Where I do see it relate to my research is the "why not?" question. They investigate clothing expression via text, and text in literal and sculptural terms. They question the structure of clothing by creating collar upon collar until it envelops the head. They put a hole in the middle of a red tulle skirt because why not? It's ridiculousness at it's best.
As for the dolls, " The exhibition includees 25 handmade examples from the 'Dolls" series which consists of repllicas of antique dools dressed in some of the fashion artists' most iconic designs. Each porcelain doll is dressed in am haute couture creation that was exactly scaled-down on the basis of original patterns, a meticulous and extremely labour-intenside process. Even the fabrics have been woven to scale, and the miniature model's hard and make-up are exact copies of the runway styles."
I relish the ridiculousness of it all.
I now own a pair of Viktor & Rolf souvenir socks.
And some other fashion sites around the 'Dam...
1st row: from Rietveld Academy's graduation show 2019 (I think) showing some natural dyes, and clothing...and sorry no names.
2nd row: first two images-Bas Kosters from a show at OSCAM, last image from AMFI end of year show also 2019
3rd row: all AMFI show, exploring 3D printed insect forms as accessories
4th row: THE Iris Van Herpen; if you don't know her, you should really look her up.
Notes
(1) I have heard fashion and textile 2nd from various sources, but looking it up it seems to be contested, although the range seems to be 2nd to 5th. None of which are great, all of which call for improvement. My guess is it changes over time as well. All the more reason to be educated as it's not a prize to come in 1st, 2nd or 3rd, but all a call for action. For a more in depth look as the issues, here is good article from the UN (reliable I hope) goes over some of the major problems:
Links
Marcelo Horacio Maquieira Piriz
Blog Entry on Kinder Textile Materials
Blog Entry on Microfiber Exhibit at OBA
Fashion for Good
The True Cost
Trailer
Bas Kosters
Bas Kosters on Instagram
Art Comes First
Art Comes First on Instagram
Jordan Carey and Loquat Shop
Loquat Shop on Instagram
Tom of Holland
Ninamounah
Karim Adduchi
Marga Weimans
Studio Frowijn
Studio Frowijn on Instagram
Viktor & Rolf Show at Kunsthal, Rotterdam
Viktor & Rolf website
Kommentare