Researchers Lea Vene and Ivana Čuljak participated in the 6th International Conference GFC - Global Fashion Conference, London, hosted by the Center for Sustainable Fashion and held at the University of the Arts London, London College of Fashion, from 31.10. – 01.11.2018.
Their lecture is entitled The Meeting Point of Global and Local Slow Fashion Practices - Case Studies: Locus Artis and Full Circle, which presented the projects Locus Artis from 2017 and Full Circle from 2018, projects conducted by CIMO - Center for Research of Fashionand Clothing.
Taking into consideration the value of traditional handcraft work as explained by Richard Sennett, in his book The Craftsman (2008), we record the presence of slow fashion and sustainability models within the spaces of possible local design practice today.
Projects Locus Artis and Full Circle research, question and revalorize two different discourses.
The project Locus Artis is focused on craft practices in suburban and rural spaces surrounding the city of Zagreb, Croatia. The aim of the project is to explore ‘traditional' and local values (in relation to globalization politics) towards individual and ethical approaches to clothing practices outside dominant fashion system.
In this project we stress sustainable local croatian production based on clothing manufactured from calico printed fabric. This enables us to question the traces, identity and representation of contemporary peasant cultural practices and values. This study is also shaped around the concept of clothing narratives; reading the textile as text and as rich depository of signs which are kept visible and present in actual women cultural practices (dress elements made of calico printed fabric). Through this democratic, durable and affordable material we uncover inscribed emotional and cultural capital that is being diachronically and persistently transferred in the local spatial and social context.
In the second project entitled Full Circle we research circularization and redesign of second hand clothes within the system of charity donations (present in Croatia since the war in the 1990-ies). We are focused on two case studies: croatian industry of recycled textiles (Regeneracija, Zabok) and Cooperative Humana Nova, Čakovec (recycle and redesign of second hand clothes through an inclusive platform employing disabled people and minorities). With the processes of redesigning and reusing the clothing system is humanized based on ethical principles of sustainability. In this way we intertwine local traditional practices with the imported ones so as to create the meeting point of local and global, traditional and industrial.
The aim of this presentation is supposition of two different aspects (models) of sustainability that are questioned by these projects; one that has its roots in tenable and traditional local craft approaches, and second that has its roots in contemporary necessities, in order to examine their local and global overflows. These two projects are focused on practices that bypass unidirectional fashion consumption (fashion system) and contrariwise exemplify a turn toward humanization of clothing practices.
Key words: sustainable, tradition, local, global, industrial and/or craft, second hand, ethical
http://gfc-conference.eu/proceedings/
* The projects Locus Artis and Full Circle are supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Croatia and the City Office for Culture, Education and Sports of the City of Zagreb, for 2017. and 2018.
* Copyright © cimo - a center for research of fashion and clothing. All rights reserved.
* Photographs: private archives
