Keynote at 'Imagining the Unusual' Conference

Skjold, E. (Foredragsholder)

Institut for Bygningskunst og Design

Aktivitet: Tale eller præsentation › Foredrag og mundtlige bidrag

Beskrivelse

Keynote speaker 19th of September: The Usual has become the Unusual

What comes on the runway, in fashion media, and finally in retail, is the result of skilled fashion workers’ abilities to catch even the smallest butterfly movements of time, understand various currents and trends, and convey them into physical matter; as fashion imagery, as garments, or as displays on the runway represented on the moving body of the model. This mechanism is often described as a wave-shaped developent where new trends emerge in particular environments (typically amongst young people), spread out to leading influencers and brands, after which it is disseminated on the mass-market and to some point ends. It can derive from the upper classes, the street, or various groupings, but the nesting place is always amongst particularly idealised groupings in society - be that upper class, be that youth on the street. It is perceived as the fuel of the fashion system, where each season (and in-between) the pulse of the moments is captured, conveyed, displayed and sold. As such the fashion system could be seen as organised around the celebration of the unusual.

Outside of this institutionalised and highly ritualised system, it is widely acknowledged that spreading of trends also occur. Typically, these trends emerge and fade away in a much slower pace and are not in the same way submitted to a professionalised system. They are carried and re-mediated by what I have termed fashion’s others (Skjold 2014). This would inherently be most of people on Earth, as they represent the non-ideal; the usual. In a fashion context however, all of these individuals have become the anomaly, the exotic or the monstrous. However mostly, the ignored and the excluded. This has been widely documented through studies of the hardship it takes for non-ideal individuals to find clothing that are appropriate both in terms of aesthetics, style, silhouette, and down to the construction of the garment. And moreover, to find it where and when it is needed.

In a fashion and sustainability perspective, these issues have caught tremendous interest in research, as it has become evident how reversing the perception for what is usual and unusual seems to hold an important key to develop the fashion sector into a slower, more diverse, and less waste-based one. This however, requires deep reflections on the way in which the canonised structures of the current fashion system can be adapted into new fashion narratives, that are built on emotional and environmental sustainability in the true meaning of the word.

Periode	19 sep. 2019
Sted for afholdelse	HSE Art and Design School, Rusland
Grad af anerkendelse	International

Emneord

fashion sustainability
fashion education
wardrobe method

Dokumenter og Links

An interdisciplinary conference in Moscow, September 19-21, 2019. The unusual, extraordinary and eccentric in the last decades is more often seen in advertising than in academic discourse. Beginning from at least the mid-19th century, European culture grows increasingly suspicious both of this rhetoric and of what stands behind it, which partly coincides with the era of scientific methods of world cognition. In fact, such categories as “great person”, “genius”, “extraordinary event” come to belong to the realm of mass culture, where they are ruthlessly exploited for profit. As the result of this, researchers avoid talking about the unusual, preferring either to banalize it or to exclude it from the academic discussions altogether. We, on the other hand, suggest talking about this elephant in the room, which both draws the eye and prevents serious discussion. We specifically concentrate on the link between the impression (of emotional reaction, sensory organs) and its rationalization – verbalization, portrayal, evaluation, usage, etc.