In 2021, Culture (s) de Mode wishes to continue to bring together researchers and professionals from all fields to rethink the many dimensions of fashion: the ideas and products it generates; the richness and diversity of its artisanal and artistic creation; the jobs it has created around the world and the jobs it continues to create; the know-how transmitted by women and men; about History; the memory and heritage of which it is both the catalyst and the heir; the values and senses it produces; the influence it has on each of us every morning in front of the mirror, and about the power of communication fashion has between individuals and generations.
After a year of health, economic, social and intellectual crises, it is more than ever crucial to gather, to jointly help shape the world of tomorrow. Far from being a cliché a naive ideal, this project is essential. Collaborating, exchanging, cooperating, contributing, sharing our ideas and knowledge is the sine qua non condition for trying to understand the upheavals of the current situation and crafting a response. Even before the current crisis, fashion was ailing thanks in part to its dependence on constant seasonal renewal.
Putting fashion back at the center of the cultural life
Fashion is neither a secondary nor marginal cultural pursuit. It is a fundamental mechanism that enabled Western democratic cultures to embrace diversity and democracy. Fashion is not only one of the most important production systems in the world, but also the place where, for at least the past century, different cultures, nations, individuals have invented, every year, a new way of being in the world, by trying to include a growing number of sensibilities. The modern fashion system was born at a time when the costume industry inherited from the program of the artistic avant-garde in the beginning of the last century: making art coincide with life. The cloth was particularly suited to embody the total work of art: it is an artefact that all individuals should have and use, regardless of their class, census, religion, sexual orientation, ideology… And they have it for their entire life, every day, and all day, even at night. It is the perfect Trojan horse for bringing art into the daily life of all human beings, at all geographic and cultural latitudes. It is precisely for this reason that it is from clothing, from fashion, that all revolutions in customs and lifestyles can, must and have begun. Fashion is not a luxury, it is not even the cult of appearances, fashion is the space through which modern societies, season after season, year after year, build their sense of community, their identity and, above all, they comment on and try to correct the rules that govern the social existence and all of their members, and to make them more and more oriented towards freedom and justice. We often forget, but it is through fashion that a community invents a way of living freely and sharing this freedom. Speaking of fashion is to speak of the impossibility of separating the economy and the production system from the cultural movements which they animate, make possible and embody together.
Putting the individual back at the center of fashion
Within Culture (s) de Mode, as a point of departure for our reflection on the very meaning of “network”, we have chosen the prism of the individual. Why? Because fashion, like a network, is best understood as a set of intertwined threads, lines and knots, it is the result of a collective of individuals who produce, disseminate and consume it. Culture(s) de Mode is a patchwork of skills and knowledge that is constantly expanding. Based on the ideas and work of its members, Culture(s) de Mode draws its richness from the people that compose it. Thanks to its members but also to the various people who make its workshops possible, who manage its website, financial and scientific supporters … Culture(s) de Mode can advance its interdisciplinary prowess and develop its research activities. Likewise, it is individuals who shape fashion, who make it possible. People are present at each stage of creation, production, marketing, distribution, and consumption of fashion. They are the ones who plant the flax seeds (for example), extract the fibers, spin them, colour them, and weave them; the ones who shear the animals to collect their wool and then wash it. It is a person who sketches a garment, who chooses the fabrics, who creates the patterns and canvases to make the garment; he is the one who then cuts the fabric, assembles and sews the different parts of the garment. He is also the one who tries on the creation and thus gives it life, the one who ensures its marketing, its sale in store or online, its promotion in different media, its artistic presentation in galleries, its conservation in museums. He is still the one who teaches the history of this garment in universities and schools. In other words, the individual is to fashion like it is to the network: its most important link. The one who makes it possible. The one that constitutes its frame, its fabric. Humans are at the heart of the fashion process, but we have forgotten that.
Restore the value to clothing and textiles
What we have also forgotten is the worth given to clothing and textiles over the cause of history. A mere hundred year ago textiles and clothing held significant value in homes and families. They were constantly repaired, patched, mended, transformed, recycled. Clothing, whose production secrets were learned in school during sewing classes, was passed down from generation to generation. Often inherited from a relative, clothes were given on special occasions in life or used to accompany the deceased on the journey for eternity. The act of dressing was an event. Everyday clothes differed from those worn at dinner and festive events. Theater, opera, horse races, religious ceremonies as well as mourning, family meals and Sunday photographs required outfits prepared with great care. This attention to detail affected all social classes despite a more limited wardrobe budget for the lower classes. In the latter, the budget did not allow to have many “fashionable” clothing, but everything was done to keep the garment as long as possible, to give it a second, or even a third, life. The rise of ready-to-wear and the advent of fast fashion reversed this relationship: now, it is no longer the quality of clothes that matter but the quantity, nor the origin of the material but the price; nor the number of hours spent on it by a seamstress but the constant renewal.
“We need a new culture of fashion, as we talk about the culture of books, jazz or cinema”.[1]
We study, we comment, we constantly revisit the history of literature, the history of cinema, the history of comics, the history of design, the history of television… Cultural industries are all explored by researchers, journalists and students. Fashion is largely excluded from these investigations for reasons often related to the commercial nature of the clothing industry and sometimes to its alleged superficial character. Culture(s) de Mode wants to address this situation, because we believe that the renewal of the discourse on fashion will make it possible to improve the functioning and practices of its industry. Wouldn’t a better understanding of the textile industry guarantee better production, communication and consumption of clothing? Wouldn’t rigorous scientific examinations make it possible to demonstrate the rich historical, cultural, artistic and humanist offerings of fashion, this industry that challenges us every morning in front of the mirror?
The Covid crisis was a reminder not only of the need to work for a more sustainable, responsible and humane industry, but also of the ecological and social emergency that threatens fashion. Today’s initiatives for better fashion are individually built around specific issues, such as that of new materials, that of non-toxic dyes, that of compostable packaging… but fashion needs guidelines, a compass to guide the industry in the right direction. To do this, we need to start by using the same terms, defining the words, deciding what each one means. Sustainable fashion, ecological fashion, responsible fashion, three designations for the same reality or does each expression mean something different? It is a real question of definition, of semantics. It is also a matter of sources. Today we do not have a reliable metric, number, scientific data to rely on to understand all aspects of the industry. Without this information, how do we know where to start? where to go? How do we ask politicians to vote laws and decide on restrictions? Can we decide whether recycled polyester is more or less sustainable and responsible than organic cotton? How to decide it without a reliable framework, without having agreed on the parameters of our decision? How to rethink the laws of working conditions in fashion without knowing the history of professionalisation in this industry? How to revalue artisanal work without having in mind the importance that it has assumed in the past? How to re-establish textile sectors in France without being familiar with the history of the territories and the men and women involved in former times in textile production? Strengthen our network of researchers and foster studies on the fashion of tomorrow, based on the work on yesterday’s fashion, think and rethink the vocabulary of fashion in order to restore value to textiles, to rebuild the know-how and appreciate the women and men who bring them to life, these are the objectives that Culture (s) de Mode intends to pursue.
Stephanie Strauss
Sophie Kurkdjian
With the collaboration of Emanuele Coccia
[1] « Il faut une nouvelle culture du vivant, comme on parle de culture du jazz. C’est cela que nous avons perdu à l’égard du vivant, et qu’il s’agit de reconstituer », Baptiste Morizot, Manières d’être vivant, Arles, Actes Sud, 2019, pp. 17-18