Critical Making: Contemporary Fashion Practices Symposium Exhibition

Fashion at the School of Design, Otago Polytechnic is pleased to convene the 2020 iD Dunedin Fashion Symposium Exhibition, Critical Making: Contemporary Fashion Practices. The annual scholarly fashion event established in 2010 as a public fashion design lecture series held alongside iD Dunedin Fashion Week, and since 2017 as a symposium, has the purpose of providing a platform for exchanging ideas and research about and into the wider fashion discipline. In 2020 due to the disruption occurring globally, we made the decision to take the symposium exhibition online. While we are disappointed that we cannot have a physical symposium exhibition, we are happy that we have the means to provide an online space for the widest scope of fashion practitioners to present their works to each other and to the world for inspiration and critical discussions. The symposium exhibition proposals were triple blind peer reviewed.

Introduction

For many involved in the discipline of fashion, making things is usually a deeply felt need involving experimentation: engaging mind, emotion and hands with textiles and other materials to create fashion that clothes the human body.  

For our Critical Making: Contemporary Fashion Practices Symposium Exhibition we were looking for outcomes that demonstrated an intensity of questioning and examination during the design process. Why should these designs exist? What are the ideas they are expressing? What traditions do they grow out of? What are their influences? What materials will make them work best? How will they be made? Can I make them? What improvements can I make to the designs? Do they break rules or fashion new directions? Do they work on a human body? What happens to the designs when that body moves?  

Critical making for us also involves investigations into materiality, such as experimenting with creating new forms of material, new ways of using old materials, different uses for new materials, and using materials not usually associated with garments. Does the design honour the material, or is the material being forced into forms it does not want to hold? What happens if that occurs? What histories, cultures, memories and emotions do the materials bring to the design? What connections between design and materials am I creating in my combinations?  

Consideration of the body and person that will wear the fashions created is vital too. Are the designs effective on the body and how do they affect the wearer? Do they provide comfort and protection – physical, and / or emotional? What is their sensorial impact on the wearer and viewer?  

Thinking and acting sustainably is critical for all of us. Trying not to add to climate change effects, but to act in ways that might reduce them, using practices that are sustainable for people, the environment and one’s design business, and thinking through the implications of one’s choices in making fashion, are all explicit elements of fashion design practice now.  

The designers featured in this Critical Making: Contemporary Fashion Practices Symposium Exhibition we think demonstrate that they have integrated these multiple aspects of critical making. They have shown intuition, skill and reflection in their creative practices, challenging their own and others’ assumptions and using multiple ways of knowing in their fashion outcomes.

We sincerely thank the Otago Polytechnic Research office, and the Otago Polytechnic School of Design for their ongoing support through time and funding.

Critical Making: Contemporary Fashion Practices curatorial panel and convenors:

Dr Margo Barton – Professor of Fashion, Otago Polytechnic, co-chair of iD Dunedin Fashion, and milliner / fashion designer.

Dr Jane Malthus – dress historian and honorary curator for the dress collection at Otago Museum with qualifications in textiles, clothing and fashion, history and fine arts. 

Moira White – Curator, Humanities at Otago Museum, and currently secretary of the Costume and Textile Association of New Zealand.

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