by helene.goedl -

IMPULSE #4 | Lecture Performance: “REPAIR!_Fashion” by Evelyn Roth

On the 27th of October, a lecture performance by designer Evelyn Roth took place as part of the program of the Vienna based “re:pair festival” 2024. The lecture performance dealt with the role of the repair process in the current fashion system. Under the title “REPAIR!_Fashion – The Relevance of Repair as an Act of Creativity in Circular Processes”, Roth engaged in an act of repairing a garment live on stage before elaborating on the role and the status of the act of visibly repairing and mending garments. Using the example of a blouse, Roth illustrated the repair process as a socio-political statement and creative act. Within the design context, the lecture discussed the possible future of design processes in circular workflows.

The focus of the talk was on the emerging hierarchical change in the structure of fashion: REPAIR!_Fashion aimed to be understood in the context of a systemic and structural change in fashion. Repairing fashion provokes an expanding aesthetic perception and a political positioning that the act of repairing as a design process entails.  In the words of Orsola de Castro, upcyclist, fashion designer, author and co-founder of Fashion Revolution: “Repairing your clothes can be a revolutionary act. “1

About Evelyn Roth

“Evelyne Roth is a designer and a lecturer on the BA in Fashion Design, the MA Master’s Studio ICDP and the cross-institute CoCreate programme of the FHNW Academy of Art and Design. She has held posts at a number of institutions as an expert in Design Thinking and Forecasting. Questioning common processes in the fashion industry, attempting to break with them and launching products that make a contemporary statement are all part of her holistic brief as a designer. Her practice and teaching in design focus on circular design, research, conception and materiality.”2

Key Takeaways

The main issue concerning the visible repair and resale of clothes Roth illustrated in her lecture is the uncertain legal status of reselling a visibly mended garment as a new or updated design under the name of the repairing designer. Roth highlights that for a long time, the goal of repairing was to make the repair process as invisible as possible. She mentioned brands like the luxury fashion house Hermès, who have a dedicated repair program for their bags. The goal of their repair strategy is to “reset” the products to their original state as well as possible, without leaving visible traces of the repair process. Roth postulates that the act of repair should be reconsidered as a creative act of its own which is allowed to leave traces. Through her example of a blouse however, she illustrates what the challenges for such a recontextualization can bring. In her performance, Roth visibly mended a blouse which was originally designed by Dries van Noten. If she wanted to resell the blouse as her own design, there would be a legal argument for copyright infringement because of the protections on the original design. The entire discussion went into more detail, illustrating that within fashion, copyright is a complicated question in general. Some aspects of fashion designs are protectable by copyright, like pattern designs. Certain other aspects however, cannot be protected by copyright, such as silhouettes for example. The copyright question does not come up when a garment is sold without visible mending manipulations as a second hand item attributed to the original designer, which begs the question – when does a repair become visible enough to be relevant and what are the rights of the visible mender in this process.

My impression of the talk was that this issue is certainly interesting and seems to be quite complicated. I personally do not quite see the visible repair of garments and the resale of them on a large scale as an issue that reach dimensions where it will really disrupt the fashion system. However, I of course have not done extensive research on this and can therefore only state my first impression and general opinion in this case. 
As for the relevance to my research topic – I believe digital fashion faces a similar issue of copyright and especially ownership. These topics will be discussed further in a future regular blog post.  

1Programm – Re:Pair Festival 10.-27.10.2024. October 27, 2024. Re:Pair Festival. https://repair-festival.wien/programm/?date=2024-10-27.
2FHNW. “Evelyne Roth.” Accessed November 11, 2024. https://www.fhnw.ch/en/people/evelyne-roth.

Sources

“Evelyne Roth,” FHNW, accessed November 11, 2024, https://www.fhnw.ch/en/people/evelyne-roth.

Programm – Re:Pair Festival 10.-27.10.2024, October 27, 2024, Re:Pair Festival, October 27, 2024, https://repair-festival.wien/programm/?date=2024-10-27.

All Images © Helene Goedl 2024

by helene.goedl -

IMPULSE #3 | Open House: Die Angewandte – Fashion Department and University Library

At their yearly Open House, the Angewandte (University of Applied Arts Vienna) opens its doors to everyone who wants to get to know the courses on offer at the university or is just interested in taking a look behind the scenes. At the Open House, the studios, workshops and departments of the University of Applied Arts are open to visitors. Students and teachers share insights into everyday university life. Information stands on site and online provide the opportunity for further exchange about the study programmes.1 This year, I seized the opportunity to visit the fashion department at the Angewandte Open House.  

Why was the Open House relevant for my Thesis?

Fashion study programs, fashion design education and their curricula are excellent indicators of where the fashion scene is headed at a given time. Sometimes, these study programs are on the pulse of current developments, sometimes they lag behind for one reason or another. My main objective in visiting the open house was to explore where the fashion department at the Angewandte stands on the role of digital fashion design, whether this development is incorporated into the education and if there are projects already on display that might show the status on this question. Additionally, I made use of the opportunity to take a tour of the Angewandte university library to explore the possibility of using it for my Master’s thesis research.

The Fashion Department

The fashion department at the Angewandte is one of the most successful fashion design education programs in Europe. The admission is highly selective, only taking on between 5 and 10 students each year. The program is currently headed by fashion designer Craig Green.

“London-born designer Craig Green MBE established his namesake label in 2012 shortly after graduating the Fashion Masters course at Central Saint Martins. He has since carved out a unique position amongst the industry’s most innovative talents and continues to earn both critical and commercial success globally.”2

The head of department position is re-staffed in short intervals in order to provide the students with exposure to different approaches during their 5 year study period. The degree program is a diploma, which means it is not divided into a bachelor’s and a master’s degree.

The Fashion Design programme highly values the development of a distinctive creative style and artistic vision in their students.  In close guidance from the professors, “students explore the critical potential of fashion between materiality, corporeality, and concept.The curriculum comprises traditional pattern cutting and construction skills alongside digital skills and techniques. Students benefit from a state-of-the-art, industry-standard sewing atelier, knitting atelier and a spacious studio with a personal work space for each student. Students are given the possibility to work in professionally equipped studio spaces and workshops both within the Fashion Department and other departments of the University of Applied Arts.”3

The department has seen many highly acclaimed professionals in the lead position, such as l Karl Lagerfeld, Helmut Lang, Jil Sander, Raf Simons, Vivienne Westwood, Viktor & Rolf, Bernhard Willhelm, Hussein Chalayan, Lucie and Luke Meier and  Grace Wales Bonner to name a few.3

“Graduates of the Fashion Department have founded their own labels, such as Bless, house of the very island’s, Wendy Jim, Petar Petrov, Femme Maison, Sagan Vienna, Kenneth Ize, and others. Others occupy leading positions in the fashion industry, working for brands such as Balenciaga, Andreas Kronthaler for Vivienne Westwood, Alexander McQueen, Lanvin, OAMC, Prada, Comme des Garçons or Maison Margiela.”3

With regard to digital fashion, I was able to find out that CLO3D is taught in the curriculum as an industry standard program. In terms of digital fashion collections or digital garment developments, I was not able to find any significant presence, suggesting that while the aspect of digital fashion has a place in the curriculum, it is not a focus of the program. The focus is still very much on physical tailoring and traditional skills in the fashion design process, which I believe is a good and solid approach and the successes of the graduating designers prove this. 

The Library

Since the Angewandte has a fashion department, their library catalog naturally is much more extensive than the one at FH Joanneum with regard to this design discipline. I took a guided library tool and created a library account for external students and will be making use of the resources for my thesis. 

Images

1“Angewandte Open House 2024.”
2Craig Green. “About.” Accessed November 11, 2024. https://craig-green.com/pages/about.
3“Fashion – dieAngewandte.”

Sources

“About,” Craig Green, accessed November 11, 2024, https://craig-green.com/pages/about.

“Angewandte Open House 2024,” Angewandte Open House 2024, October 14, 2024, accessed November 11, 2024, https://openhouse.uni-ak.ac.at/en/.

“Fashion – dieAngewandte,” accessed November 11, 2024, https://www.dieangewandte.at/fashion.

All Images © Helene Goedl 2024

by helene.goedl -

IMPULSE #2 | Event: “ORF Lange Nacht der Museen” – Mode Wien Pop Up Museum

On Saturday, October 5, 2024, this year’s “ORF Lange Nacht der Museen” (“night of museums”) took place throughout Austria. For the 24th time, the event allowed visitors to explore a large number of museums with just one ticket. Once again this year, numerous museums and galleries participated in the event and opened their doors from 6.00 pm to midnight.

In addition to varied exhibitions, many exciting special events were part of the evening. Visitors could choose their personal highlights from the wide range on offer and visit all participating museums and events with just one ticket. The participating museums offered a wide range of experiences, from small, curious and eccentric locations to large, renowned cultural institutions.1

I decided to explore the “long night” in Vienna this year, and one of the participating institutions I selected for one of my visits was of special interest to my thesis topic and my research into digital fashion.
The PopUp Museum of Mode Wien in the Guild House of Viennese Fashion Makers was located in the historic center of Vienna. The site used to serve as an accommodation for itinerant garment makers. The exhibition “Symbiosis”, which was on display during the “long night” pays tribute to the creative energy and craftsmanship of the Viennese fashion scene.2

Why was this Exhibition relevant for my Thesis?

In my research into fashion design, one component of interest for my research is the way fashion is displayed in museum exhibitions. Fashion has a long history of “fighting” to be viewed as an art form, often times being perceived as lesser than classic artistic disciplines such as painting, sculpture or even literature and music. The idea that fashion is more trivial as an artistic discipline certainly has many underlying causes, not least of which is the aspect that fashion was and is to this day perceived as a female domain as well as a part of pop culture, which lowers its merit in the eyes of certain fractions of the art scene. Interest in fashion is not often equated to other interests in the arts, often being dismissed as something mundane and trivial. In recent years however, the perception of fashion has shifted and the artistic merit of the craft as a discipline of art is finally gaining more traction. Along with this tension of fighting for its place in the art cannon, exhibiting fashion can be a challenge because fashion usually depends to a certain extent on the incorporation of movement, body and the context of being worn. This makes it a challenge to exhibit in an engaging way.

Exhibition Review

The space in the guild house was divided into sections. In one of the rooms, the exhibition “Symbiosis” was displayed. This exhibition featured designs from Viennese fashion designers in correspondence with artworks by local artists, all elaborating on the same topic. The correspondence between the garments and the art pieces created an interesting dialogue and extended and re-contextualized the designs on display. The overall exhibition design however, was unfortunately not quite as successful as it could have been. Since the “long night” always attracts a large number of visitors, the exhibition was quite crowded and the space did not provide good opportunities for easy crowd guidance, resulting in a rather hurried exhibition experience. 

The other section of the space was dedicated to a pop up shop where some local designers had the opportunity to sell some of their designs and give insights into their design process. The designers were present and this provided an opportunity to ask further questions about their creations which was a nice component. Overall however, I would have preferred if they could have dedicated the whole space to the exhibition concept in favour of a better visitor flow and a more pleasant overall visiting experience. It became quite clear that the exhibition was likely more of an afterthought and the pop up shop spatially took priority over it, which was a pity. Although I understand the overall concept and I appreciate the approach with the correspondence to other art disciplines, I must say that I have seen fashion exhibited in more engaging ways in other museums, such as the exhibition “Dressing the Body” at the Disseny Hub Barcelona. 

Images

1ORF Lange Nacht Der Museen. “Info,” 2024. https://langenacht.orf.at/info.
2ORF Marketing & Creation GmbH & Co KG. “ORF Lange Nacht der Museen Booklet.” Press release, 2024.

Sources

“Dressing the Body. Silhouettes and Fashion (1550-2015),” Disseny Hub Barcelona, December 12, 2023, https://www.dissenyhub.barcelona/en/exhibition/dressing-body-silhouettes-and-fashion-1550-2015.

“Info,” ORF Lange Nacht Der Museen, 2024, https://langenacht.orf.at/info.

ORF Marketing & Creation GmbH & Co KG, “ORF Lange Nacht der Museen Booklet,” Press release, 2024, accessed November 11, 2024.

All Images © Helene Goedl 2024

by helene.goedl -

IMPULSE #1 | Film: “Notebook on Cities and Clothes”

About the Film

In his 1989 film “Notebook on Cities and Clothes”, Wim Wenders documents Japanese fashion designer Yohji Yamamoto’s journey through developing a collection for a fashion show in Paris. Although Wenders previously expressed a disinterest in fashion, he accepted the commission to create a film on Yamamoto when he was approached by the Centre Pompidou in Paris for the production.
In the film, Wenders intercuts interviews with Yamamoto with documentary scenes shot in his atelier while he develops a collection with his team. In the process, Wenders finds appreciation and understanding for the process of fashion design by finding parallels to his own creative practice. Wenders labels this project as a “diary film”, shooting primarily without a team and filming most of the material himself.1 

About his approach to fashion before making the project, Wenders says in his voiceover in the film: “The world of fashion… I am interested in the world, not in fashion. But maybe my judgement was premature. Why shouldn’t I try to approach the topic without prejudices. Why not look at fashion like any other industry, the film industry for example?”

“Filmmaking…should sometimes just be a way of life. Like going for a walk, reading a newspaper, writing something down, driving a car, or making this film. From day to day it writes itself, driven by the curiosity for the topic.2

About Yohji Yamamoto

Yohji Yamamoto was born on the 3rd of October 1943. He is among the most notable modern Japanese fashion designers. Yamamoto is based in Tokyo and Paris. Noted as a masterful tailor, his brand identity is marked by his avant-garde tailoring which also incorporates Japanese design aesthetics.3

Why is this Film an Impulse for my Thesis?

In the course of my research, it is becoming more and more clear that my thesis will deal at least in part with an exploration of the material component of fashion and clothing, the role materiality plays in our relationship to clothing and the challenges this poses for extending the fashion design discipline into the digital world. 

In the film, director Wim Wenders mentions his starting point for his exploration into the world of fashion design – a jacked he owned that gave him a special feeling when he wore it. The piece was by Yohji Yamamoto.2 This is an example for the importance of materiality in fashion design, especially in how the wearer builds a relationship to garments. 

Wenders and Yamamoto connect over the famous August Sander photo documentary work “People of the 20th Century” in which Sander “documented” everyday people in their environments through portraits (The word “documented” is in quotations because we know today that some of the images were staged by Sander and are not truthful to the real circumstances of the portrayed people). While Wenders admires it as an iconic work of photography, Yamamoto is fascinated by the clothes and demeanour of the portrayed people. Yamamoto appreciates how clothes back in that time reflected and communicated a lot more about a persons circumstances in life.2
This can be seen as positive or negative. Clothing as a tool of social stigmatisation is also a common occurrence throughout history. 


Personal Key Moments from the Film: 

  • Digital craftsmanship – Wim Wenders interjects the elaborations of Yamamoto on Sander’s work by questioning the value of digital craftsmanship in comparison to classical craftsmanship. Especially connected to the people depicted in Sander’s portraits. Wenders essentially questions whether digital processes will ever be able to compare to the value of physical craftsmanship.
From: Notebook on Cities and Clothes (1989).
  • Craftsmen’s morals – “[…] in short, to find the essence of a thing through the process of fabricating it”.2 – Another instance of an argument in favour of the importance of physical process. 
From: Notebook on Cities and Clothes (1989).
  • Designing time – Yamamoto postulates that if he could design anything, it would be time. He says some materials are alive, they age and the true finished garment is a product of time.2 Here, we see another component of the analog fashion’s life cycle that cannot be translated into digital space. Or does digital fashion have the ability to age? What would digital aging look like? Will digital fashion age through outdated formats, low resolution, outdated shading and 3D modelling conventions?
From: Notebook on Cities and Clothes (1989).
  • Importance of collaboration – fashion as a collaborative art form is brought up in the final scenes of the film. Yamamoto and his team come together to review the collection shown at Paris fashion week and celebrate. Wenders acknowledges the importance of each of their contributions – does this collaboration get lost in the digital fashion design process?

1“Notebook on Cities and Clothes | Wim Wenders Stiftung.”
2 Notebook on Cities and Clothes.
3 Wikipedia contributors, “Yohji Yamamoto.”

Bibliography:

“Notebook on Cities and Clothes | Wim Wenders Stiftung,” n.d., https://wimwendersstiftung.de/en/film/notebook-on-cities-and-clothes/.

Notebook on Cities and Clothes. 35mm Color, 1989. https://www.primevideo.com/detail/amzn1.dv.gti.52af787f-a727-4c08-92cd-19e1ac0a8357.

Wikipedia contributors. “Yohji Yamamoto.” Wikipedia, November 5, 2024. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yohji_Yamamoto.

by helene.goedl -

19 | Designing A Digital Fashion Garment – CLO3D Tutorials and Program Review

After completing the full introduction tutorial series on CLO3D’s official YouTube channel, I want to share my thoughts on the program and the series of tutorials before I talk about making my own garment in my final blogpost. 

Overall, my experience with learning the program through the tutorials is very positive. Not only is the tutorial series very comprehensive and easy to follow, they also provide free practice files and update the videos regularly to reflect updates in the program. The topics are well selected and well paced in the structure of the tutorial series and everything you might need to get started with the program is covered in the videos.
In the unlikely case that the tutorial series doesn’t cover a function you specifically need, CLO also frequently posts tutorials and videos on their channel covering specialty topics and new updates of the program. Additionally, there is a community forum on the CLO website where you can ask any questions that might come up as you use the program.

My final impression of the program so far is that it is an extremely well thought out tool for professional designers. CLO includes many thoughtful functions and modification options which show that it is a program catering to a demographic of professionals. It incorporates many industry standards, from international sizing options, diverse avatars to Pantone color selections.

I would recommend picking up this program to anyone who wants to add a tool to their repertoire of fashion design tools. As for people without a background in fashion design, I think the program is well enough explained to be picket up by novices, but they might struggle with some functions and applications. 

In my next and final blogpost, I’m excited to report on the process of designing my first custom design piece in CLO3D. 

by helene.goedl -

16 | Designing A Digital Fashion Garment – Critical Pattern Components and Modification Options

In the last blogpost, we learned how to develop patterns from scratch in CLO3D. In this post, we will explore some critical pattern components and the most common way of pattern modification – the dart. 

Previously, we established that there are two basic ways of developing a pattern for a garment in CLO, that is, working with geometric base shapes or using the free drawing polygon tool. As mentioned in the last post, it takes some experience to know what the base shape of a pattern piece should even look like, which is why I remarked that at this point of the learning process of CLO, we have arrived at the point where I would expect people without prior pattern drafting experience would start struggling. To demonstrate the challenges that might come up at this point, I will use the example of a seemingly simple garment to develop – a basic sleeveless top.

Even with an apparently simple base shape, there are critical pattern parts which require some knowledge of pattern drafting to get right. Notoriously, the armhole is one such critical point. The anatomy of the human body makes it difficult to navigate this area since there are a lot of curves and a lot of movement is expected, so patterns must accommodate for adequate mobility in this area of the garment.

In classic pattern drafting, there are usually mathematical formulas that tell you where to place lines and curves using the measurements of your model’s body. When drawing the shape of the pattern freehand with the polygon tool in CLO, you are bound to run into issues as the freehand drawing is simply not precise enough and will lead to messy armhole shapes if you don’t have a lot of experience and a good feeling for developing the shape in the 2D window.  

The most common way of modifying patterns to accommodate curves in the body is the so-called dart. A dart is a small added seam in the garment that takes in parts of the fabric and allows the garment to better fit the shape of the body. CLO also has a dart drawing feature, which is simple enough to use but will be another case of functions that might be too confusing for users without previous pattern drafting experience. 

Dart placement and shaping is another of those notoriously difficult things to learn in pattern drafting. The functions in CLO will certainly offer a lot of help to users experienced in pattern drafting, but might have their limits as well, since darts are sometimes a matter of shaping the mockup garment directly on the body. They not only depend on the individual body shape of the client for whom the garment is made but can also be influenced by the undergarments that are expected to be worn underneath the garment. To put it simply, dart placement and shaping is a whole science in itself and could fill many many blogposts on its own.   

by helene.goedl -

14 | Designing A Digital Fashion Garment – Understanding Pattern Pieces, Pattern Layouts and Pattern to Garment Relationships

In the previous blogpost, we discussed the preset avatar options and settings and the avatar editor in CLO3D and their implications for 3D body representation in digital fashion design. In this post, we will turn to the two-dimensional side of fashion design – the pattern. We will take a look at how the pattern is laid out in CLO3D, how the pattern representation relates to the garment pieces and how CLO helps to understand the relationship between 2D and 3D representation.  

In dressmaking education, learning how to construct patterns and how to translate design sketches into a pattern and how that pattern and its pieces relate to the finished garment are some of the most challenging skills to learn. It takes a while to understand the relationships and logic between the two-dimensional pattern and how the curves and darts translate to the fit of the garment on the body. 

Interestingly, the practice of drafting two-dimensional patterns comes from the tradition of male tailoring. In women’s dressmaking (also referred to historically as mantua making), tradeswomen would drape a mockup fabric or muslin directly on the clients body to form shapes of the garment rather than constructing a paper pattern first.1 The practice of draping is still in use today. Some fashion designers work exclusively with draping in the design stage, especially for custom pieces, whereas for mass production, the pattern would be translated into a two-dimensional paper pattern. 

After this short excursion into the history of pattern making practices, let’s take a look at the CLO3D interface and how it deals with the sewing pattern.

CLO by default has a workspace layout with two display windows next to each other – one for the avatar and the 3D representation of the garment, one for the 2D sewing pattern. 

In the 3D window, the pattern pieces can be arranged around the three-dimensional body of the avatar, making it easier to understand how the curves of the pattern correspond to the shapes of the body.  Arrangement points can be displayed on the 3D avatar, making the placement of individual pattern pieces easier. 

In the 2D window, the garment pieces are laid out flat and symmetrically arranged. When selected, pattern pieces in the 2D window are highlighted, as well as the corresponding garment piece in the 3D window. This is another immensely helpful feature that helps you understand how the two relate to each other. It is especially useful for more intricate and complicated pattern arrangements and elaborate pattern constructions that are not obviously easy to understand. 

Speaking from my own experience, the CLO arrangement makes it way easier to understand pattern drafting. However, it might be that because I already have the background knowledge of how pattern pieces work, I find it easier to understand the setup of the program than someone with no prior knowledge. But I think this way of learning pattern drafting, or at least using CLO or a similar digital fashion program along with traditional teaching methods to teach pattern drafting could be immensely helpful for people learning the skill.

1Abby Cox, „Alexander McQueen & The Patriarchy Problem in Modern Fashion“ October 20, 2023, online video, 9:58, https://youtube.com/watch?v=OVwhg8LZnlc.