Fashioning People and Place: 2013

Thursday, 19 December 2013

Notes to Self, LCF event, The Future of Fashion: A True Story of Collaboration and Transparency

Imran Amed, The Business of Fashion

The Business of Fashion started in 2007 without a clear direction of content or purpose, other than to please its founder, Imran Amed. Imran teaches at CSM and is also a consultant.

Imran states that he needed to “just do” in order to gain a vague idea of what he could achieve on his website. The first web address of BoF was surprisingly: uberkid.com. Imran didn’t imagine that BoF would become so successful, so his first draft of the website was expectedly naïve, perhaps unprofessional but always honest.

Imran Amed started working in fashion only six years ago, before this he worked with a management consulting company called Braxton. When he worked with Braxton he developed an interest in fashion as an analytic and wanted to apply his ‘left brain’ skills into creativity. Imran suggested that creativity hadn’t been nurtured in 2004 to 2005 and in 2006 fashion blogs weren’t as prominent as they are now. He recalls Diane Pernet as one of the original fashion blog pioneers. Scott Schuman’s The Sartorialist and Susie Bubble’s Style Bubble is mentioned shortly afterward.

“People were talking about the façade and the surface of design and style at this time.”

“Today we’re inundated with media; it’s possible for anybody to join in the conversation... but in order to be successful and gain a following you must have a clear point of view.”

As Imran never studied writing or journalism and only started blogging for himself he’s confident to suggest that the internet is the most powerful tool for communication in business today for creative people, as formal training isn't necessary to some extent. He suggests that it’s easy to gain a following as long as a creative voice and an opinion is dominant.

Brand Identity: By 2008 BoF had changed and the following was growing. There were roughly 1,000 new followers signing up to read content each month within ‘08. Imran was able to recognise some of these names too, such as celebrities or fashion designers.
The uberkid.com web address had to be changed at this point in time.
Imran states that he’s embarrassed at most of the content/style of the website in its early stages, although the honesty of the site is also why it has been so recognisable and lovable; working in its favour.

With this change in 2008 came a new design. The typography had always been an important aspect of the now, digital newspaper. The creativity of the banner changes often to represent the site’s creativity; the ‘O’ for ‘of’ being the most important feature.

By 2009 BoF was holding interviews with Giles Deacon and NET-A-PORTER.

BOF aims to join every discipline as a community. The website has become a destination for everyone to have a conversation.

2010 involved the famous Fashion Pioneers interviews which were streamed live online. The interviews between the host and the guest were intimate ones; this style isn’t usually portrayed in fashion media, as Imran states, most fashion interviews might only care about the designs, perhaps not the designer. These digital experiences led to learning and educating between the host, the guest and the audience. Another important aspect to BoF aside from educating is the community and sharing.

Right now is a very exciting time to be within the fashion industry; the most dominant areas within fashion buying and communicating according to Imran are video, social media and mobile phones.BoF operate as & are considered within:

- Business and Trade Media: Authoritative voice, opinionated

- Fashion Blogosphere: Dialogue and conversations, accessibility and authenticity

- Premium Fashion Magazines: Story telling, high aesthetics and aspirational

BoF listens to feedback making them popular among fellow bloggers.

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Bruno Pieters, Honest By

Bruno Pieters opens his talk with a very open and honest account of how he founded Honest By. The company is very honest in all media so he didn’t speak of unknown facts.
After working for around ten years within the fashion industry, including working for Hugo Boss, Pieters had to take a sabbatical as he wasn’t happy. Pieters didn’t see a purpose of just making clothes and making money, he needed something to believe in. Bruno experienced a lot of corruption within the industry during his time as a designer for various companies and the lack of transparency within the business bothered him. The corruption bothered him to the point that he eventually decided he should do something about it and he created his own transparent brand.

All aspects of the design process is contained within the Honest By website so if any customer should want the information it’s there – “if they’re willing to pay that price point” Bruno admits. Included in the open-source information is: material information, manufacturing details, price calculation and carbon footprint.

“Heritage is a synonym for past; knowing about the provenance of things is important.”

Bruno says that it’s a great fact to be recognised as the first transparent company in the world, although to him he says that’s also a reality.

Bruno speaks from a place of peace; he speaks calmly and honestly about his experiences and thoughts. “It’s important to work in the present moment, although the future is now, there’s no need to think of this way of dressing as future ideals as the future is here in this present moment. We are creating our future.” He also quotes Gandhi… “Be the change you wish to see in the world.”

Bruno argues that if we buy from companies that sell fast and cheap fashion then we are paying these companies to not be sustainable. As child labour is continuing to grow, it is our responsibility if we choose to buy into these cheap fashion products or not. “We are responsible – grab that responsibility.”

“Freedom is almost a synonym of being irresponsible, although freedom should be about being responsible; the reasons you are free should be your privilege.”

“We can solve the problems through consumption as the problems are all about consumption – and the way we consume.”

Key points that Bruno raised:

- Classic fashion system is terrible

- Honest By is exclusively online

- Honest by – purity and simplicity fitting with its name

- They’re mostly about transparency and they are not ‘eco-fashion’, they’re good fashion

- Not based on seasons, they don’t create seasonal collections

- Their loyal consumers want something with depth. Their brand is a lifestyle more than something pretty. The loyal consumers want more for their money.

- The biggest loyal consumers are in the

, within Europe and then the

USA

Bruno Pieters, Honest By

Imran Amed, BoF

Saturday, 9 November 2013

Neal’s Yard Annual Lecture, Nature v 9 Billion of Us! The Cultural and Design Challenge

The most recent, sobering population statistic tells of a 9 billion strong population by 2050.

UAL hosted the annual Neal's Yard Lecture titled Nature v 9 Billion of Us! The Cultural and Design Challenge.

That’s right, there’s another sobering forecast on the horizon – a staggering 9.7 billion people are expected to inhabit the Earth by 2050 – this, the statistics tell us, might be slowing, however, even if the rate of increase slows, the impending population increase is certain.

Tony Juniper, Special Adviser to the Prince of Wales Charities’ International Sustainability Unit, Senior Associate with the University of Cambridge Programme for Sustainability Leadership and the author of What Has Nature Ever Done For Us, questions if we’re currently capable to support 5 billion people – eventually bringing a political point of view to the debate.

Physicist Robert Langlin is quoted early into the evening “Earth didn’t replace dinosaurs after they died she just moved on and became something different… Even if we weren’t to survive this... the Earth will move on from us, but at what cost? What waste!”

The evening continues with thoughts surrounded with the complexities of how we might be able to align current needs of the population within environmental capacities.

We were told that the last landmark point in population growth was when the Earth reached 7 billion – this was for Juniper’s generation - he puts it into perspective, as the ‘landmark’ for his dad was in 1960, when the world population reached 3 billion, which is an astonishing x1000 rise in total population since the agricultural and industrial revolution began.

Juniper continues that the current population demands a fast paced (unsustainable) system, meaning the Earth is having to ‘boost its yields’ which is over-stretching its capacities. And boosting yields, or the speeding up of a natural process does have its own cumulative effects, often negative. This is why a desired, sustainable system is often referred to as a slow(er) system.

Our consumption in the West is noted and spoken of, which is a challenge that faces us. The Western 'standard' of living is the highest in the world and according to a traditional economist's point of view of more equals better, the West and its people are doing very well indeed, although you only need to swim in the shallows to discover that inequity is everywhere and that our 'standards' are in actuality highly superficial and biased, noncomprehensive statistics.
Here's a quote that springs to mind, from the book Small is Beautiful by E.F. Schumacher, published in 1973, which highlights the above point beautifully, taken from Chapter 4, one of my favourite chapters in any book I've read, Buddhist Economics.

"...The modern economist is used to measuring the "standard of living" by the amount of annual consumption, assuming all the time that a man who consumes more is "better off" than a man who consumes less. A Buddhist economist would consider this approach excessively irrational: since consumption is merely a means to human well-being, the aim should be to obtain the maximum of well-being with the minimum of consumption.... The less toil there is, the more time and strength is left for artistic creativity. Modern economics, on the other hand, considers consumption to be the sole end and purpose of all economic activity."
~ E. F. Schumacher, Small is Beautiful

The definite ideal that is discussed during the evening is that economic growth needs limiting. And a point is made that the impacts on Earth would be more imminent if Western ways of living are adopted everywhere in the world.

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Professor Anthony (Tony) Ryan OBE, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for the Faculty of Science at the University of Sheffield and author of “Project Sunshine: How Science Can Use The Sun To Fuel And Feed The World” speaks about his opinion and fascination from a “reductionist” point of view, primarily being a chemist.

Ryan states that a more sustainable system should be reliant on the sun for its energy, alike 400 years a go when we lived primarily on sunshine.

“1 hour of sunshine will run the economy for one year! What if we made a cycle of systems based on energy systems from solar fuels. We need to get back to being a solar economy again.”
~ Tony Ryan

Ryan touches on the largely unarticulated fact that organic agriculture can’t feed 7 billion, so we need to think beyond it. And indeed our meddling with nature, and speeding up its processes to boost its yields has had negative knock-on effects. For example, grasses used to interact with the soil, although years of using pesticides have trained the crops to only take what they need from the chemicals, lessening their functioning ability to ‘talk’ to the soil and gain nutrients from it, and the sun. So we now need to 're-train' these crops.

Anthony Ryan has an interesting perspective I never considered before about GM tech, that is GM technology COULD be used to re-train the crops and be used in a benevolent manner, however, the ethical issues for this remain, and the corruption of powers that be, i.e. the hands that hold many of these powerful tools aren't trusted with them, leaving us all wary and associating GM with completely negative association.

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The Cultural & Design Challenge
We swiftly moved onto what focus an arts and design person plus the arts industry are able to contribute, before we all got swallowed whole into the uncertainty of political agenda.

The Art and Design industries have responsibility to communicate issues and agitate as an industry, if we wish to instigate change.

A definite underlying message is clear, in whichever way the discussion turned, we all agree that our cultural narrative needs to change, and this is why it’s imperative that the arts industry should take action.

Culture, past and present, is defined by its art; art and design works intrinsically within influencing culture, and as its mirror - acting as a reflection of the current times; of the current needs and desires of the masses. The industry has a definite responsibility to protect and maintain itself, while protecting the very structure and people that support it.

We left the event with more questions than answers, like any good debate... but feeling equally inspired.

"What if we built mathematical models of recreating cultures, to suit a nation?" ~ Tony Ryan

We end the evening focusing on lessons learnt from the past - i.e. the Elizabethan peak wood crisis; could we learn something from past systems?

...

Can we learn something from present systems?

If we take a look at indigenous cultures and their rapidly reducing rate, for example, one thing remains true, which is that we need more emphasis on protection, of people and culture.

Our crisis could have much to do with our own reducing culture into uniform and globalized entities...

again, this leads us to political and nationalized agenda.

Everyone agreed that corruption is ubiquitous, and tyrannical democracy is not working for the people, and the consequential unjust inequity is much to blame.

Another more upbeat point that is made, that I'll leave you on, is that the power of one person is great. One person can do much and inspire another to do the same.

Here's a video of the event posted on YouTube.

Thursday, 12 September 2013

ALIVE exhibition, Paris, photo montage

"IMAGINE A WORLD WHERE BIOLOGICAL FABRICATION REPLACES TRADITIONAL MANUFACTURE, PLANTS THAT GROW PRODUCTS, AND BACTERIA GENETICALLY RE-PROGRAMMED TO ‘BIOFACTURE’ NEW MATERIALS, ARTEFACTS, ENERGY OR MEDICINE.

This world is happening right now. Today, designers and artists have begun to either embrace or rebel against this bioengineered world and as a result, new design directions are beginning to emerge. The exhibition En Vie – Alive, presents a new design landscape, where fragments of a possible programmable ‘synthetic’ future are confronted with ‘natural’ alternative design perspectives. The quest for a different kind of ecological design models underpins the selection of projects, which range from potential sustainable solutions, to poetic interpretations and extreme provocations.

Created and imagined by leading designers, architects and artists, the work showcased here is decidedly different. These designers create and unravel a future hybrid world, where our everyday products and manufacturing tools will be ‘alive‘." ~ Alive