Dr Tiziana Ferrero-Regis is Associate Professor (Fashion) at the Queensland University of Technology. She is a member of the TextileR Centre and the Centre for a Waste-Free World, at Queensland University of Technology. She has previously worked for many years in Milan at Vogue Italia and has published in the area of cultural studies, film and fashion. Her research areas include fashion sustainability, cultural, social and anthropological approaches to fashion and place. Her latest publication is Staging Fashion: The fashion show and its spaces, Bloomsbury.
African countries are today the major importers of the lowest grade of second‐hand clothing (SHC)... more African countries are today the major importers of the lowest grade of second‐hand clothing (SHC). With the opening of global markets and the intense circulation of fast fashion in the Global North from the 1990s, the trade of SHC has exploded in the twenty‐first century. The fast fashion business model, which fuels the SHC trade, has led to reduced quality of clothes, limited clothing lifetime, and accelerated discard of clothing, which end up as donations or become waste. The complexity of the international geographies of the SHC trade creates opacity and secrecy, maintaining inequalities and imbalances between Global North (GN) and South (GS), which continue a relationship of colonial dependence. This paper presents a critical look at SHC exchange in Kantamanto, the biggest SHC market in West Africa, situated within the central business district of Accra, Ghana. The paper scrutinizes the export of unwanted donated clothing, popularly known as “Obroni w'awu” (white man is dead), to Kantamanto. We use direct observation along with an interpretive research design through the analysis of photos taken from Kantamanto, and scholarly and gray literature. The paper documents local practices of reuse, exposing a duality: on the one hand, clothing's symbolic value that is lost in the GN is reconstituted in the GS through exchange and labor‐creating local economies. On the other, the global trade of SHC has become synonymous with dumping, continuing a colonialist relationship between the GN and GS whereby the GN exports unwanted clothing to predominantly African countries’ landfills.
... 276-288. Loffreda, P. 1994, "Intervista a Enzo Monteleone", Cineforum, n. 3... more ... 276-288. Loffreda, P. 1994, "Intervista a Enzo Monteleone", Cineforum, n. 337, September, pp. 74-75. Loshitzky, Y. 1995, "Inverting Images of the 40s: The Berlin Wall and Collective Amnesia", Journal of Communication, Spring, pp. 93-107. Page 14. Transformations, No. ...
Media international Australia, incorporating culture and policy, Aug 1, 2002
Review(s) of: The Film Cultures Reader, by Turner, Graeme (ed.), Rout ledge, London and New York,... more Review(s) of: The Film Cultures Reader, by Turner, Graeme (ed.), Rout ledge, London and New York, 2002, ISBN 0 4152 5282 2, 524 pp., $49.95. Distributor: Palgrave Macmillan Australia.
This chapter addresses some of the issues that emerged in the complex system of Italian film prod... more This chapter addresses some of the issues that emerged in the complex system of Italian film production and distribution in the 1980s and 1990s. The chapter does this in two ways: culturally, it situates Italian cinema within the historical contingencies of the 1980s and 1990s, two decades characterized by renewed consumerism and by a collective retreat into domestic space. Industrially, it locates this cinema within changes in filmmaking practices that occurred after the collapse of the film industry and Cinecittà studios in the middle of the 1970s
Open City, Rossellini and neorealism: Sixty years on [1]. Tiziana Ferrero-Regis. ... This was an ... more Open City, Rossellini and neorealism: Sixty years on [1]. Tiziana Ferrero-Regis. ... This was an episode of violence between two opposed partisan factions that occurred at the malghe (alpine huts) of Porzûs, at the border of Friuli-Venezia Giulia with former Yugoslavia. ...
This chapter addresses some of the issues that emerged in the complex system of Italian film prod... more This chapter addresses some of the issues that emerged in the complex system of Italian film production and distribution in the 1980s and 1990s. The chapter does this in two ways: culturally, it situates Italian cinema within the historical contingencies of the 1980s and 1990s, two decades characterized by renewed consumerism and by a collective retreat into domestic space. Industrially, it locates this cinema within changes in filmmaking practices that occurred after the collapse of the film industry and Cinecitta studios in the middle of the 1970s.
International journal of fashion studies, Apr 1, 2015
Film, costume and fashion have attracted many scholarly works thanks to the interdisciplinary fie... more Film, costume and fashion have attracted many scholarly works thanks to the interdisciplinary field generated by feminist film studies, gender studies and fashion studies. In particular, the extent of scholarship on the Hollywood studio system has enabled explorations of feminist interpretation of women’s films through the construction of gender identity; the association between fashion and the body; and histories of the relationship between classic Hollywood, costume design and women’s narratives (see Doane 1987; Gaines and Herzog 1990; Stacey 1994; Street 2001)...
Media International Australia incorporating Culture and Policy, 2002
content; orientations; explorations; and glossary.These sections contain useful web links, text g... more content; orientations; explorations; and glossary.These sections contain useful web links, text grabs from the written publication and the work of some 35 artists. Orientationsexamines issues of history and theory and Explorations examines artistic practice with artwork available in still image, movie (QuickTime and QuickTime Virtual Reality) or interactive form. The artworks, dating back as far as 1969 (Jeffrey Shaws's MovieMovie), are mainly designed for a screening context other than the DVD-ROM, such as installation, performance and the distributed networks of the World Wide Web and television. As such, they present not only useful examples of artworks and pre-production processes (for example, Elru Wand's Berlin Connection), but also a significant range of critical methodologies and models for art documentation and presentation. Overall, the publication presents the now-familiarexplorationsof cinematic history and interface design within the framework of more recent debates which ground screen environments as sites for navigation, play and new media authorship. For me, the most interesting parts of the collection are the essays by new media practitioners, who attempt to interrogate issues of temporal models and spatial architectures throughboth practice and critical writings. This book, with the accompanying DVD, is a valuable publication which should become an essential resource for practitioners, theorists and students of digital media. Bernadette Flynn. Film" Media and Cultural Studies, Griffith University Turner, Graeme (ed.), The Film Cultures Reader, Routledge, London and New York, 2002, ISBN 0 4152 5282 2, 524 pp., $49.95. Distributor: Palgrave Macmillan Australia.
Australian fashion is emblematic of Global North countries with high levels of consumption and wa... more Australian fashion is emblematic of Global North countries with high levels of consumption and waste, dominated by high street fast fashion brands. It also has some unique characteristics as it is located in the Asia-Pacific region – the central production hub of garments – and is a leading producer of quality natural fibres such as cotton and wool. Despite this, Australia has a hollowed-out manufacturing sector that can provide minimal value add to these fibres, and little reuse, remanufacturing or recycling infrastructure for post-consumption garment waste. Ambition for change in the Australian fashion sector is rapidly accelerating with product stewardship initiatives, a modern slavery act and textile waste being designated a priority by the Commonwealth government. Both the policy and industry landscape is evolving. This article reflects on the research landscape of Australian sustainable fashion. The authors of this article draw on multi- and interdisciplinary perspectives and ...
School of Design Creative Industries Faculty, Oct 1, 2014
Tiziana Ferrero-Regis, guest editor of Vol. 1, issue 3, of Intellect journal Clothing Cultures. &... more Tiziana Ferrero-Regis, guest editor of Vol. 1, issue 3, of Intellect journal Clothing Cultures. "Welcome to the third issue of Clothing Cultures. We are honoured to have served as the guest editors for this issue. The authors in this issue explore three intersecting themes in using various methods: identity, cross-cultural encounters and everyday practices related to designing, branding and wearing clothing. These themes are at the core of fashion and dress: as an everyday individual and social project, and as a system in which people and objects (clothing) globally circulate. The performance of identity (Goffman 1979; Butler 1990), social practices and the movement of people and commodities (Appadurai 1986, 1996) create and transfer cultural meanings...
The fashion show has a long and rich history, which has been amplifed by the invention of the mov... more The fashion show has a long and rich history, which has been amplifed by the invention of the moving image, the spread of magazines, pop and club culture, the corporatization of fashion, fast fashion and, lately, live-streaming on the internet. Its current confguration-through the organizing principles of seasons, places and spaces-is inseparable from the modern fashion system as fathered by Charles Frederik Worth in the 1860s. Charles Worth has been identifed as the creator of haute couture, which came to defne the 'sublime, heroic moment' (Lipovetsky 1994: 55) of fashion. His introduction of two seasonal collections a year created a rhythm for fashion change and of fashion time. In the frst decade of the 1900s, these seasonal presentations, at fxed dates and times in the couture salon (Lipovetsky 1994), transformed into fashion events that through their repetition generated expectations and aspirations for a rapidly growing number of bourgeois female clients. Within this systematic presentation of fashion, space became instrumental to the creation of the modern fashion moment, the perception and pleasure of being in the act of discovering newness. The site of this discovery shapes up our response to the presentation of new fashion. Notwithstanding the affective force of the fashion show, its primary purpose is to sell merchandise and promote the fashion industry, becoming increasingly attuned with the spectacle, the acceleration of fashion, the expansion of digital media and the creation of extraordinary settings. The fashion show is a moving spectacle that must constantly fnd new and alluring ways to present fashion, in alternative spaces, outdoors, readymade, as Strömberg calls them in this volume, or in completely artifcial spaces. Sometimes these spaces are not always successful, as Suzi Menkes commented on Instagram on the occasion of Givenchy spring/summer 2020 menswear collection shown at Villa Palmieri in Florence at dawn: 'Oh no! What a let down! The Givenchy Florentine show is in the fading half light. What were they thinking. .. "poetic" maybe?' (Menkes 2019). While the collection is visible on the show's live-streaming and video, not all audience members seated in the garden could see the models strutting along the garden's paths. The use of space and its effects failed to address multiple interests and viewers-it catered for the internet audience, yet disappointed spectators on location. The fashion show is widely diverse and cannot be contained within a genre or set of practices, despite attempts to categorize it as art (Skov et al. 2009) or performance (Duggan 2001), whose conventions are Staging Fashion.indb 1
The intersection between dress, body and space produces meanings that can be traced prior to the ... more The intersection between dress, body and space produces meanings that can be traced prior to the early Renaissance and have been rewritten since, according to different cultural, social, economic and design contexts. The fashion show has commanded different staging practices in different spaces, represented through diverse media across fve hundred years of fashion history. Reading the construction of the fashion show and the meanings that it has generated requires an exploration of the way in which its many manifestations have represented commercial, cultural and social tensions in history. This cumulative reading provides a framework in which the fashion show can be seen as a discursive space which reframes it as a bundle of knowledge that is not homogenous but is made up by intersections, departures and discontinuities within the knowledge itself. Thus, a discourse is also a site for power struggle. The fashion show is a microcosm where rules, and their disruptions, bodies, constructed forms, objects, clothing, practices, time and space come together to create a narrative. The accumulation of these narratives across history, including their appraisal, critiques, imagery and documentation, also correlates with many other disciplines, those of scenography, production design, architecture, interior architecture, the diverse arts, flm and cinema, and more expansively urbanism and landscape architecture. As Geczy and Karaminas write (2019: 7), the fashion object is communicated 'across a network of representations and narrative connotations', and not in isolation. Fashion presentations can be organized in a linear way (a central walkway or catwalk with an audience at each side), in a non-linear way, such as shows at the Prada Foundation, or in seemingly indeterminate ways as choregraphed in Yohji Yamamoto's and Moncler Gamme Rouge's productions. Shows predominantly occur in controlled environments; there is the catwalk or show space, whether raised or direct to floor, while the more elaborate mise en scène shows are programmed by production or spatial designers in collaboration with the creative director and technical crew. Then there are the event Staging Fashion.indb 15
Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana met in Milan in 1980 while collaborating in a design studio; t... more Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana met in Milan in 1980 while collaborating in a design studio; they entered the fashion world as outsiders, as neither had any formal training in fashion. Domenico Dolce was born in Sicily in 1958 as the son of a tailor and learnt as a child from his father, whom, like many skilled Sicilian men in the 1950s, ran tailoring workshops. Stefano Gabbana, on the other hand, studied graphic design but was attracted to contemporary fashion, as well as to the American military surplus that at the time flooded Milan antique markets and second-hand shops. In particular, Stefano Gabbana had a love for street style, which had exploded in Milan in the 1970s when the first boutique, Carnaby street-style Fiorucci, opened in the Milan city centre and was a catalyst for street mood and trends. Their collaboration in 1980 resulted in the creation of their own label, Dolce & Gabbana, the aesthetic of which reflected both designers’ backgrounds by eclectically mixing the rigour of tailoring with street influences. In an interview with fashion critic and columnist Sarah Mower, released on the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of the label’s launch, Dolce and Gabbana recalled being young designers in 1985, with virtually no money and working day and night in their small Milan apartment to make their first collection. Beppe Modenese, the founder of Modit (the association regulating fashion shows) and President of the National Chamber for Italian Fashion, invited Dolce and Gabbana to show at Milan Fashion Week, under the New Talent category. The label grew very rapidly and, by the beginning of the 1990s, was well established with a diversification of lines that included menswear and the diffusion line DG it is one of both the few remaining independent labels and one of the 10 largest companies in Italy.
African countries are today the major importers of the lowest grade of second‐hand clothing (SHC)... more African countries are today the major importers of the lowest grade of second‐hand clothing (SHC). With the opening of global markets and the intense circulation of fast fashion in the Global North from the 1990s, the trade of SHC has exploded in the twenty‐first century. The fast fashion business model, which fuels the SHC trade, has led to reduced quality of clothes, limited clothing lifetime, and accelerated discard of clothing, which end up as donations or become waste. The complexity of the international geographies of the SHC trade creates opacity and secrecy, maintaining inequalities and imbalances between Global North (GN) and South (GS), which continue a relationship of colonial dependence. This paper presents a critical look at SHC exchange in Kantamanto, the biggest SHC market in West Africa, situated within the central business district of Accra, Ghana. The paper scrutinizes the export of unwanted donated clothing, popularly known as “Obroni w'awu” (white man is dead), to Kantamanto. We use direct observation along with an interpretive research design through the analysis of photos taken from Kantamanto, and scholarly and gray literature. The paper documents local practices of reuse, exposing a duality: on the one hand, clothing's symbolic value that is lost in the GN is reconstituted in the GS through exchange and labor‐creating local economies. On the other, the global trade of SHC has become synonymous with dumping, continuing a colonialist relationship between the GN and GS whereby the GN exports unwanted clothing to predominantly African countries’ landfills.
... 276-288. Loffreda, P. 1994, "Intervista a Enzo Monteleone", Cineforum, n. 3... more ... 276-288. Loffreda, P. 1994, "Intervista a Enzo Monteleone", Cineforum, n. 337, September, pp. 74-75. Loshitzky, Y. 1995, "Inverting Images of the 40s: The Berlin Wall and Collective Amnesia", Journal of Communication, Spring, pp. 93-107. Page 14. Transformations, No. ...
Media international Australia, incorporating culture and policy, Aug 1, 2002
Review(s) of: The Film Cultures Reader, by Turner, Graeme (ed.), Rout ledge, London and New York,... more Review(s) of: The Film Cultures Reader, by Turner, Graeme (ed.), Rout ledge, London and New York, 2002, ISBN 0 4152 5282 2, 524 pp., $49.95. Distributor: Palgrave Macmillan Australia.
This chapter addresses some of the issues that emerged in the complex system of Italian film prod... more This chapter addresses some of the issues that emerged in the complex system of Italian film production and distribution in the 1980s and 1990s. The chapter does this in two ways: culturally, it situates Italian cinema within the historical contingencies of the 1980s and 1990s, two decades characterized by renewed consumerism and by a collective retreat into domestic space. Industrially, it locates this cinema within changes in filmmaking practices that occurred after the collapse of the film industry and Cinecittà studios in the middle of the 1970s
Open City, Rossellini and neorealism: Sixty years on [1]. Tiziana Ferrero-Regis. ... This was an ... more Open City, Rossellini and neorealism: Sixty years on [1]. Tiziana Ferrero-Regis. ... This was an episode of violence between two opposed partisan factions that occurred at the malghe (alpine huts) of Porzûs, at the border of Friuli-Venezia Giulia with former Yugoslavia. ...
This chapter addresses some of the issues that emerged in the complex system of Italian film prod... more This chapter addresses some of the issues that emerged in the complex system of Italian film production and distribution in the 1980s and 1990s. The chapter does this in two ways: culturally, it situates Italian cinema within the historical contingencies of the 1980s and 1990s, two decades characterized by renewed consumerism and by a collective retreat into domestic space. Industrially, it locates this cinema within changes in filmmaking practices that occurred after the collapse of the film industry and Cinecitta studios in the middle of the 1970s.
International journal of fashion studies, Apr 1, 2015
Film, costume and fashion have attracted many scholarly works thanks to the interdisciplinary fie... more Film, costume and fashion have attracted many scholarly works thanks to the interdisciplinary field generated by feminist film studies, gender studies and fashion studies. In particular, the extent of scholarship on the Hollywood studio system has enabled explorations of feminist interpretation of women’s films through the construction of gender identity; the association between fashion and the body; and histories of the relationship between classic Hollywood, costume design and women’s narratives (see Doane 1987; Gaines and Herzog 1990; Stacey 1994; Street 2001)...
Media International Australia incorporating Culture and Policy, 2002
content; orientations; explorations; and glossary.These sections contain useful web links, text g... more content; orientations; explorations; and glossary.These sections contain useful web links, text grabs from the written publication and the work of some 35 artists. Orientationsexamines issues of history and theory and Explorations examines artistic practice with artwork available in still image, movie (QuickTime and QuickTime Virtual Reality) or interactive form. The artworks, dating back as far as 1969 (Jeffrey Shaws's MovieMovie), are mainly designed for a screening context other than the DVD-ROM, such as installation, performance and the distributed networks of the World Wide Web and television. As such, they present not only useful examples of artworks and pre-production processes (for example, Elru Wand's Berlin Connection), but also a significant range of critical methodologies and models for art documentation and presentation. Overall, the publication presents the now-familiarexplorationsof cinematic history and interface design within the framework of more recent debates which ground screen environments as sites for navigation, play and new media authorship. For me, the most interesting parts of the collection are the essays by new media practitioners, who attempt to interrogate issues of temporal models and spatial architectures throughboth practice and critical writings. This book, with the accompanying DVD, is a valuable publication which should become an essential resource for practitioners, theorists and students of digital media. Bernadette Flynn. Film" Media and Cultural Studies, Griffith University Turner, Graeme (ed.), The Film Cultures Reader, Routledge, London and New York, 2002, ISBN 0 4152 5282 2, 524 pp., $49.95. Distributor: Palgrave Macmillan Australia.
Australian fashion is emblematic of Global North countries with high levels of consumption and wa... more Australian fashion is emblematic of Global North countries with high levels of consumption and waste, dominated by high street fast fashion brands. It also has some unique characteristics as it is located in the Asia-Pacific region – the central production hub of garments – and is a leading producer of quality natural fibres such as cotton and wool. Despite this, Australia has a hollowed-out manufacturing sector that can provide minimal value add to these fibres, and little reuse, remanufacturing or recycling infrastructure for post-consumption garment waste. Ambition for change in the Australian fashion sector is rapidly accelerating with product stewardship initiatives, a modern slavery act and textile waste being designated a priority by the Commonwealth government. Both the policy and industry landscape is evolving. This article reflects on the research landscape of Australian sustainable fashion. The authors of this article draw on multi- and interdisciplinary perspectives and ...
School of Design Creative Industries Faculty, Oct 1, 2014
Tiziana Ferrero-Regis, guest editor of Vol. 1, issue 3, of Intellect journal Clothing Cultures. &... more Tiziana Ferrero-Regis, guest editor of Vol. 1, issue 3, of Intellect journal Clothing Cultures. "Welcome to the third issue of Clothing Cultures. We are honoured to have served as the guest editors for this issue. The authors in this issue explore three intersecting themes in using various methods: identity, cross-cultural encounters and everyday practices related to designing, branding and wearing clothing. These themes are at the core of fashion and dress: as an everyday individual and social project, and as a system in which people and objects (clothing) globally circulate. The performance of identity (Goffman 1979; Butler 1990), social practices and the movement of people and commodities (Appadurai 1986, 1996) create and transfer cultural meanings...
The fashion show has a long and rich history, which has been amplifed by the invention of the mov... more The fashion show has a long and rich history, which has been amplifed by the invention of the moving image, the spread of magazines, pop and club culture, the corporatization of fashion, fast fashion and, lately, live-streaming on the internet. Its current confguration-through the organizing principles of seasons, places and spaces-is inseparable from the modern fashion system as fathered by Charles Frederik Worth in the 1860s. Charles Worth has been identifed as the creator of haute couture, which came to defne the 'sublime, heroic moment' (Lipovetsky 1994: 55) of fashion. His introduction of two seasonal collections a year created a rhythm for fashion change and of fashion time. In the frst decade of the 1900s, these seasonal presentations, at fxed dates and times in the couture salon (Lipovetsky 1994), transformed into fashion events that through their repetition generated expectations and aspirations for a rapidly growing number of bourgeois female clients. Within this systematic presentation of fashion, space became instrumental to the creation of the modern fashion moment, the perception and pleasure of being in the act of discovering newness. The site of this discovery shapes up our response to the presentation of new fashion. Notwithstanding the affective force of the fashion show, its primary purpose is to sell merchandise and promote the fashion industry, becoming increasingly attuned with the spectacle, the acceleration of fashion, the expansion of digital media and the creation of extraordinary settings. The fashion show is a moving spectacle that must constantly fnd new and alluring ways to present fashion, in alternative spaces, outdoors, readymade, as Strömberg calls them in this volume, or in completely artifcial spaces. Sometimes these spaces are not always successful, as Suzi Menkes commented on Instagram on the occasion of Givenchy spring/summer 2020 menswear collection shown at Villa Palmieri in Florence at dawn: 'Oh no! What a let down! The Givenchy Florentine show is in the fading half light. What were they thinking. .. "poetic" maybe?' (Menkes 2019). While the collection is visible on the show's live-streaming and video, not all audience members seated in the garden could see the models strutting along the garden's paths. The use of space and its effects failed to address multiple interests and viewers-it catered for the internet audience, yet disappointed spectators on location. The fashion show is widely diverse and cannot be contained within a genre or set of practices, despite attempts to categorize it as art (Skov et al. 2009) or performance (Duggan 2001), whose conventions are Staging Fashion.indb 1
The intersection between dress, body and space produces meanings that can be traced prior to the ... more The intersection between dress, body and space produces meanings that can be traced prior to the early Renaissance and have been rewritten since, according to different cultural, social, economic and design contexts. The fashion show has commanded different staging practices in different spaces, represented through diverse media across fve hundred years of fashion history. Reading the construction of the fashion show and the meanings that it has generated requires an exploration of the way in which its many manifestations have represented commercial, cultural and social tensions in history. This cumulative reading provides a framework in which the fashion show can be seen as a discursive space which reframes it as a bundle of knowledge that is not homogenous but is made up by intersections, departures and discontinuities within the knowledge itself. Thus, a discourse is also a site for power struggle. The fashion show is a microcosm where rules, and their disruptions, bodies, constructed forms, objects, clothing, practices, time and space come together to create a narrative. The accumulation of these narratives across history, including their appraisal, critiques, imagery and documentation, also correlates with many other disciplines, those of scenography, production design, architecture, interior architecture, the diverse arts, flm and cinema, and more expansively urbanism and landscape architecture. As Geczy and Karaminas write (2019: 7), the fashion object is communicated 'across a network of representations and narrative connotations', and not in isolation. Fashion presentations can be organized in a linear way (a central walkway or catwalk with an audience at each side), in a non-linear way, such as shows at the Prada Foundation, or in seemingly indeterminate ways as choregraphed in Yohji Yamamoto's and Moncler Gamme Rouge's productions. Shows predominantly occur in controlled environments; there is the catwalk or show space, whether raised or direct to floor, while the more elaborate mise en scène shows are programmed by production or spatial designers in collaboration with the creative director and technical crew. Then there are the event Staging Fashion.indb 15
Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana met in Milan in 1980 while collaborating in a design studio; t... more Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana met in Milan in 1980 while collaborating in a design studio; they entered the fashion world as outsiders, as neither had any formal training in fashion. Domenico Dolce was born in Sicily in 1958 as the son of a tailor and learnt as a child from his father, whom, like many skilled Sicilian men in the 1950s, ran tailoring workshops. Stefano Gabbana, on the other hand, studied graphic design but was attracted to contemporary fashion, as well as to the American military surplus that at the time flooded Milan antique markets and second-hand shops. In particular, Stefano Gabbana had a love for street style, which had exploded in Milan in the 1970s when the first boutique, Carnaby street-style Fiorucci, opened in the Milan city centre and was a catalyst for street mood and trends. Their collaboration in 1980 resulted in the creation of their own label, Dolce & Gabbana, the aesthetic of which reflected both designers’ backgrounds by eclectically mixing the rigour of tailoring with street influences. In an interview with fashion critic and columnist Sarah Mower, released on the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of the label’s launch, Dolce and Gabbana recalled being young designers in 1985, with virtually no money and working day and night in their small Milan apartment to make their first collection. Beppe Modenese, the founder of Modit (the association regulating fashion shows) and President of the National Chamber for Italian Fashion, invited Dolce and Gabbana to show at Milan Fashion Week, under the New Talent category. The label grew very rapidly and, by the beginning of the 1990s, was well established with a diversification of lines that included menswear and the diffusion line DG it is one of both the few remaining independent labels and one of the 10 largest companies in Italy.
Staging Fashion: The fashion Show and its spaces, 2021
The fashion show has a long and rich history, which has been amplifed by the invention of the mov... more The fashion show has a long and rich history, which has been amplifed by the invention of the moving image, the spread of magazines, pop and club culture, the corporatization of fashion, fast fashion and, lately, live-streaming on the internet. Its current confguration-through the organizing principles of seasons, places and spaces-is inseparable from the modern fashion system as fathered by Charles Frederik Worth in the 1860s. Charles Worth has been identifed as the creator of haute couture, which came to defne the 'sublime, heroic moment' (Lipovetsky 1994: 55) of fashion. His introduction of two seasonal collections a year created a rhythm for fashion change and of fashion time. In the frst decade of the 1900s, these seasonal presentations, at fxed dates and times in the couture salon (Lipovetsky 1994), transformed into fashion events that through their repetition generated expectations and aspirations for a rapidly growing number of bourgeois female clients. Within this systematic presentation of fashion, space became instrumental to the creation of the modern fashion moment, the perception and pleasure of being in the act of discovering newness. The site of this discovery shapes up our response to the presentation of new fashion. Notwithstanding the affective force of the fashion show, its primary purpose is to sell merchandise and promote the fashion industry, becoming increasingly attuned with the spectacle, the acceleration of fashion, the expansion of digital media and the creation of extraordinary settings. The fashion show is a moving spectacle that must constantly fnd new and alluring ways to present fashion, in alternative spaces, outdoors, readymade, as Strömberg calls them in this volume, or in completely artifcial spaces. Sometimes these spaces are not always successful, as Suzi Menkes commented on Instagram on the occasion of Givenchy spring/summer 2020 menswear collection shown at Villa Palmieri in Florence at dawn: 'Oh no! What a let down! The Givenchy Florentine show is in the fading half light. What were they thinking. .. "poetic" maybe?' (Menkes 2019). While the collection is visible on the show's live-streaming and video, not all audience members seated in the garden could see the models strutting along the garden's paths. The use of space and its effects failed to address multiple interests and viewers-it catered for the internet audience, yet disappointed spectators on location. The fashion show is widely diverse and cannot be contained within a genre or set of practices, despite attempts to categorize it as art (Skov et al. 2009) or performance (Duggan 2001), whose conventions are Staging Fashion.indb 1
Staging Fashion: The fashion show and its spaces, 2021
The intersection between dress, body and space produces meanings that can be traced prior to the ... more The intersection between dress, body and space produces meanings that can be traced prior to the early Renaissance and have been rewritten since, according to different cultural, social, economic and design contexts. The fashion show has commanded different staging practices in different spaces, represented through diverse media across fve hundred years of fashion history. Reading the construction of the fashion show and the meanings that it has generated requires an exploration of the way in which its many manifestations have represented commercial, cultural and social tensions in history. This cumulative reading provides a framework in which the fashion show can be seen as a discursive space which reframes it as a bundle of knowledge that is not homogenous but is made up by intersections, departures and discontinuities within the knowledge itself. Thus, a discourse is also a site for power struggle. The fashion show is a microcosm where rules, and their disruptions, bodies, constructed forms, objects, clothing, practices, time and space come together to create a narrative. The accumulation of these narratives across history, including their appraisal, critiques, imagery and documentation, also correlates with many other disciplines, those of scenography, production design, architecture, interior architecture, the diverse arts, flm and cinema, and more expansively urbanism and landscape architecture. As Geczy and Karaminas write (2019: 7), the fashion object is communicated 'across a network of representations and narrative connotations', and not in isolation. Fashion presentations can be organized in a linear way (a central walkway or catwalk with an audience at each side), in a non-linear way, such as shows at the Prada Foundation, or in seemingly indeterminate ways as choregraphed in Yohji Yamamoto's and Moncler Gamme Rouge's productions. Shows predominantly occur in controlled environments; there is the catwalk or show space, whether raised or direct to floor, while the more elaborate mise en scène shows are programmed by production or spatial designers in collaboration with the creative director and technical crew. Then there are the event Staging Fashion.indb 15
Australia has a high consuming customer base accustomed to purchasing low-cost
imported clothing,... more Australia has a high consuming customer base accustomed to purchasing low-cost imported clothing, resulting in high volumes of waste. At the same time, Australia is a primary producer of natural fibre: the world’s largest exporter of merino wool, and third largest exporter of cotton. Yet local textile manufacturing is almost non-existent, with the bulk of raw fibre exported and the majority of clothing imported. This hollowed-out manufacturing base presents as a challenge to progressing a connected, local and sustainable fashion system within the country. This essay examines the designers, entrepreneurs, and retailers working against the odds to promote a sustainable ‘local’ fashion system via different strategies that vary between fledgling reshoring projects that make use of local raw fibre, and the shortening of supply chains for heightened transparency. The practices we discuss highlight the inherent ambiguities of seeking to establish a local sustainable system in a country such as Australia. Local production systems are unlikely to supplant and replace the current globalized systems of fashion production without seismic shifts in the wider economic reality of the industry. However, the subtle resurgence of locally-made points to a desire from both the consumer and producer to have a greater connection with a product’s origins.
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imported clothing, resulting in high volumes of waste. At the same time, Australia is a
primary producer of natural fibre: the world’s largest exporter of merino wool, and third
largest exporter of cotton. Yet local textile manufacturing is almost non-existent, with the
bulk of raw fibre exported and the majority of clothing imported. This hollowed-out
manufacturing base presents as a challenge to progressing a connected, local and sustainable
fashion system within the country. This essay examines the designers, entrepreneurs, and
retailers working against the odds to promote a sustainable ‘local’ fashion system via
different strategies that vary between fledgling reshoring projects that make use of local raw
fibre, and the shortening of supply chains for heightened transparency. The practices we
discuss highlight the inherent ambiguities of seeking to establish a local sustainable system in
a country such as Australia. Local production systems are unlikely to supplant and replace the
current globalized systems of fashion production without seismic shifts in the wider
economic reality of the industry. However, the subtle resurgence of locally-made points to a
desire from both the consumer and producer to have a greater connection with a product’s origins.