From the 10th to the 27th of October 2024, the re:pair festival took place at the MQ Vienna. During the festival, many activities and events took place, all revolving around the topic of repairing and fixing anything from appliances to bicycles, from musical instruments to furniture and, most importantly for me – clothes.
“The third edition of the re:pair FESTIVAL will take place from October 10 to 27, 2024, with the festival headquarters located in the MuseumsQuartier.
This year’s re:pair FESTIVAL program offers an exciting mix of practice and theory with over 120 events. A variety of workshops will teach creative skills and the joy of repairing. Knowledge will be shared through lectures, ambulances, walks and two exhibitions.
To make the festival accessible to everyone, admission to most events is free.
Repair is an important tool in the fight against the climate crisis. Repair allows for more efficient use of products and more careful use of our resources. And it is easy to integrate into everyday life. Repair is cheap, fun, creative, and empowering.”1
Although I unfortunately missed most of the festival due to sickness and schedule conflicts, I managed to visit one of the exhibitions which was part of the program. The exhibition – curated by Tina Zickler – dealt with the quality of materials in fashion and emphasised the touch aspect of traditional natural materials versus modern materials. The title of the exhibition “Touch & Feel – Quality in Fashion” reflects this.
About the Exhibition “Touch & Feel”
“If you compare the quality of today’s fabrics, buttons and other sewing accessories as well as their workmanship with the standards of 100 years ago, you have to admit a blatant loss of quality. This is why many young people and adults are only familiar with low-quality clothing made from synthetic fibers, especially polyester. The outstanding properties of renewable natural materials – sustainability, durability and comfort – are unknown to many people today. The “Touch & Feel” exhibition shows the quality of fabrics, buttons and other sewing accessories in the past. Linen, silk, wool, rabbit fur, mother-of-pearl, glass and horn buttons versus polyester, polyamide and plastic ->>> Touch & Feel!”2
The exhibition was installed in the “Schauraum der Angewandten im MQ” in the Museum Quarter in Vienna. While the space is quite small, resulting in the exhibition having to be on a reduced scale, it still managed to incorporate several aspects material questions in the fashion system. Natural materials where exhibited in different states of fabrication. Linnen was displayed from the raw material to the first fibre processing to a finished piece of clothing. Visitors were allowed to touch all the exhibits which added considerably to the experience and gave the material component another dimension through which fibre quality could be comprehended.
The natural materials were juxtaposed with textiles made from synthetic fibre. In some cases, it is astonishing how similar the first impression of synthetic materials can be to natural materials. It is only once you touch and feel the materials on the skin that you can really perceive the difference as a wearer.
Why is this Topic Relevant for my Thesis?
One of the aspects of digital fashion that is interesting to me is that the material quality of clothing, which is such an important aspect of fashion design gets completely lost. An interesting corresponding development in “traditional” fashion design of today – which was also covered in the exhibition – is that the material seems to become less important as well. Particularly in fast fashion, the tactile quality of the textiles seems to not be a priority any more, but the selection of material is much more dominated by considerations of price and outer appearance of the fabric. This has lead to a decline in overall fibre and textile quality across the board in the textile market because buyers are demanding low prices and quickly produced materials rather than sustainably produced and comfortable to wear fabrics. It will be interesting to delve further into the topic of materiality in my further research and writing.
Images
1MuseumsQuartier Wien. “Re:Pair FESTIVAL.” Accessed November 12, 2024. https://www.mqw.at/en/program/repair-festival.
2re:pair Festival 13.10.–5.11.2023, Programm – Re:Pair Festival 10.-27.10.2024. (Translated by DeepL)
Sources
“Re:Pair FESTIVAL,” MuseumsQuartier Wien, accessed November 12, 2024, https://www.mqw.at/en/program/repair-festival.
re:pair Festival 13.10.–5.11.2023, Programm – Re:Pair Festival 10.-27.10.2024, October 11, 2024, Re:Pair Festival 10.-27.10.2024, October 11, 2024, https://repair-festival.wien/programm/?date=2024-10-11.
All Images © Helene Goedl 2024
