Brunswick 3
CYCLE 02 2023

Wear & Care

Wear & Care

Long Story, Short

An exploration into methods of fashion “rewilding” in Brunswick. Gathering locals, retailers, and researchers to learn about and encourage practices that mend, repair and share clothing to build a local response towards a new fashion system.

What We’re Exploring

‘Wear & Care’ considers Brunswick’s future as a creative fashion district by exploring methods of fashion “rewilding” accessible to the community. The changing fashion landscape depends on shifting values and approaches to transform how we produce and consume to new positive ways of experiencing fashion that aligns people and planet. Local fashion “rewilding” supports new cultures in how we better use, make and recreate clothing. The project will include local workshops, community discussions, surveys and an exhibition supporting existing sustainable fashion practices in Brunswick, alongside shareable resources and fashion forums with RMIT School of Fashion & Textiles exploring emerging research.

Status
Active
This is a living research document. Check in regularly for incremental updates.
Fine print

Project Team

Project and Local Contributors

Over August and September, the RMIT PlaceLab Brunswick team is presenting ‘A Garment’s Life: Conversation Series’ as part of the ‘Wear & Care’ Research Project, underpinned by a carefully considered choice of research method.

One of the key research aims with ‘Wear & Care’ is to gather locals to learn about their practices of mending, repairing and sharing clothing that supports a local community response towards a new fashion system. The research has a particular focus on activities embraced in the home or collaboratively in the community.

As the research considers the changing fashion landscape in Australia and shifting social values in Brunswick, it was critical to establish an environment where lived experiences could be shared naturally and honestly. Therefore, incorporating interviews in the ‘Wear & Care’ methodology was crucial.

RMIT PlaceLab Brunswick Researcher Hayley Thompson facilitating A Garment’s Life: Conversation Series’. Photo: RMIT PlaceLab.

‘Asking people questions about their lives, opinions, and experiences, and allowing them freedom of expression in telling their stories, is a powerful method of understanding people’s life worlds’ (Brinkmann 2013:149).

With an underlying clothing and fashion-specific focus to the Research Project, ‘Wear & Care’ researcher Hayley referred to existing community projects and research methods for exploring wardrobes, from ‘Worn Stories‘ and ‘On Mending: Stories of damage and repair’ to ‘Craft of Use’ and ‘Local Wisdom‘.

The project and book ‘Craft of Use’ by Kate Fletcher was particularly influential to the method shaped for the Conversation Series. The ‘Craft of Use’ method is a ‘face-to-face interview about how a garment is used and portrait photography of the participant in the piece’ (Fletcher 2017:53).

Fletcher’s (2017:54) method ‘asks about specific actions and skills in the wardrobe (around the use of garments) — and utilises clothes as a ‘way in’ to talking about these practices that often go unnoticed’.

Beyond a clothing and fashion lens, methods developed by artist-researcher Jody Haines, were also explored as Jody joins ‘A Garment’s Life: Conversation Series’ as a collaborator and series photographer. The methodology Jody explored in her own practice-led PhD research emerges from what she has ‘coined as an Indigenous feminist (new) materialism’ and engages practices of yarning and collaborative portraiture (Haines 2022:44). You can read more about Jody’s practice and Artist-Researcher Residency during PlaceLab Brunswick’s Cycle 01 Research Project ‘Creatives, Communities & Economies’ here.

Locals who registered to a session are asked to bring along a garment from their wardrobe that has been mended, repaired or shared. Photo: RMIT PlaceLab.

The methods investigated ranged from garment-led interviews, face-to-face interviews and group interviews to collaborative portraiture and garment documentation photography. These all helped to shape the approach and experience the team aims to create in the Conversation Series.

From this, the ‘Wear & Care’ team chose a semi-structured, face-to-face, small group conversation approach to interviewing with photo documentation and portraiture elements. Over six sessions, with a maximum of five community collaborators participating in each, three components are central to the approach and intertwine over 90 minutes: storytelling, group conversation and photography.

Locals who registered to a session are asked to bring along a garment from their wardrobe that has been mended, repaired or shared (or perhaps a special garment with a story behind it).

They join in a garment-led conversation with a small group of community collaborators, alongside researchers Hayley and Louise as facilitators. While pre-set questions are used as prompts, there is ample space for community collaborators to share their reflections, opinions, or related experiences around clothing, fashion, and sustainability with the group.

As early insights begin to emerge from the first four sessions conducted so far, the method is not only allowing meaningful conversations around daily practices of wearing, repairing and laundering to emerge, but also reflects the deep and complex interconnections surrounding fashion and sustainability with topics including gender, societal values, language and authorship.

The Brunswick team are looking forward to sharing more from ‘A Garment’s Life’ as they wrap up the Conversation Series with two final sessions this week. Stay tuned!

The Brunswick team are looking forward to sharing more from ‘A Garment’s Life’ as they wrap up the Conversation Series with two final sessions this week. Photo: RMIT PlaceLab.

Wear & Care Exhibition

From 3rd to 26th July 2023, our Brunswick Research Studio was home to the Wear & Care Exhibition, exploring concepts of reuse and redesign through a showcase of redesigned second-hand clothing pieces.

Our PlaceLab Brunswick team collaborated with RMIT’s School of Fashion & Textiles to feature a selection of garments redesigned and produced by students undertaking the course Fashion Design Reuse, led by Course Coordinator Dr Georgia McCorkill.

Redesigned second-hand garments.

Redesigned second-hand clothing pieces by RMIT School of Fashion & Textiles students.
Image: RMIT PlaceLab.

Student designers were challenged to select and redesign two used garments or textile items, with opposing characteristics or design concepts, to create one harmonious redesigned garment, or an entire outfit.

With a focus on clothing remanufacture in fashion production, the redesigned garments demonstrated sustainable design techniques through experimental design practice, challenging common understandings of the fashion design process.

Drawing inspiration from deconstructionist techniques and avant-garde aesthetics, the students were encouraged to experiment and apply their own creative process to redesign their existing items into something ‘new’.

Redesigned second-hand clothing pieces by RMIT School of Fashion & Textiles students.
Redesigned second-hand clothing pieces by RMIT School of Fashion & Textiles student.
Redesigned second-hand clothing pieces by RMIT School of Fashion & Textiles students.
Redesigned second-hand clothing pieces by RMIT School of Fashion & Textiles student.
Redesigned second-hand clothing pieces by RMIT School of Fashion & Textiles student.
Redesigned second-hand clothing pieces by RMIT School of Fashion & Textiles students.
Redesigned second-hand clothing pieces by RMIT School of Fashion & Textiles students.

Redesigned second-hand clothing pieces by RMIT School of Fashion & Textiles students.
Image: RMIT PlaceLab.

Alongside the redesigned second-hand clothing pieces, the exhibition also featured a digital display of video interviews communicating the redesign journeys with RMIT student exhibitors, Dr Georgia McCorkill and RMIT Tutors Courtney Holm and Ashley Martiniello. The interviews explored the student design brief, the process of redesigning existing garments and the challenges the students experienced along the way.

If you weren’t able to visit our Brunswick Research Studio for the exhibition, watch the student design journey interviews below!

A huge thank you to all who collaborated on, supported, and visited the Wear & Care Exhibition over the past month!

The Wear & Care Exhibition was presented by RMIT PlaceLab Brunswick in collaboration with RMIT’s School of Fashion & Textiles through the Bachelor of Fashion (Design) course Fashion Design Reuse.

RMIT PlaceLab Researchers:

Hayley Thompson, Nhu Bui & Louise Godwin

RMIT PlaceLab Communications Assistant:

Dani Francisco

RMIT Course Coordinator:

Dr Georgia McCorkill

RMIT Tutors:

Courtney Holm & Ashley Martiniello

Student Exhibitors:

Olena Merrin, Ineska Harrison, Gina-Karlotta Magdaluyo, Zhen Chen, Sai Fan (Mario) Cheng, Dan Zhu, Muhammad Danish Bin Saiful Rizal (Danish), Madellyn Lie, Lavanya (Lav) Rawat, Stephanie Rahardja, Laura Kimie Tomanari Ignacio, Maria Alejandra Romero Fernandez, Laura Scurrah, Rebecca Lee & Lutao (Jill) Ban.

Wear & Care’s Research Survey is now open!
We’d love to hear how you wear and care for your clothing.

RMIT PlaceLab’s ‘Wear & Care’ Research Project is an exploration into methods of fashion “rewilding” in Brunswick.

Gathering locals, retailers, and researchers to learn about and encourage practices that mend, repair and share clothing to build a local response towards a new fashion system.

“Rewilding” fashion describes actions that support new cultures in how we better use, make and recreate clothing, and also, how we experience fashion outside of the commercial industry.
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This survey should take around 5-10 minutes to complete. Questions will focus on different aspects of “rewilding” fashion, plus demographic questions. All responses are anonymous by default, your participation is voluntary, and you can opt out at any time.

As part of the survey you can opt in to receive information about participating in further Wear & Care research activities. If you opt in, your email address will be linked to your survey responses in order to help us to find the right people to participate.

At the end of the survey, you will have the chance to go in the draw for 1 of 10 $100 gift cards.

Click the link ‘Get Involved’ to enter!

Person holding piece of thread.

‘Wear & Care’ is an exploration into methods of fashion “rewilding” in Brunswick. Gathering locals, retailers, and researchers to learn about and encourage practices that mend, repair and share clothing to build a local response towards a new fashion system.

The project considers Brunswick’s future as a creative fashion district by exploring methods of fashion “rewilding” accessible to the community.

The changing fashion landscape depends on shifting values and approaches to transform how we produce and consume to new positive ways of experiencing fashion that aligns people and planet.

Local fashion “rewilding” supports new cultures in how we better use, make and recreate clothing.

The project will include local workshops, community discussions, surveys and exhibitions supporting existing sustainable fashion practices in Brunswick, alongside shareable resources and fashion forums with RMIT School of Fashion & Textiles exploring emerging research.

We’d love you to be part of it. Follow us here & stay tuned.

RMIT School of Fashion & Textiles.
Image: RMIT University.

What Is: Fashion ‘Rewilding’?

Fashion “rewilding” describes actions that support new cultures in how we better use, make and recreate clothing that can expand beyond the boundaries of the dominant Western fashion system.

Within this current system, the most prominent way we experience fashion is through a lens of commercialisation and industry demands.

Rewilding in a fashion context endeavours to release fashion from the grip of fashion industry codes of constant change, newness, and profit motives, to build more diverse, inclusive and community accessible experiences of fashion.

‘Rewilding actions, then, are those that make wild spaces for fashion to flourish beyond the dictates of the fashion industry’, states Professor Alice Payne (2019:14), Dean of the School of Fashion & Textiles at RMIT University

On a broad scale, Payne (2020:159) explains, ‘rewilding fashion may mean producing far less clothing, shifting to regenerative agriculture methods, relocalising supply chains, as well as activism’.

RMIT PlaceLab ‘Wear & Care’ Community Repair Series.
Image: RMIT PlaceLab.

On a human level, it creates space for more people to experience fashion as cultural expression and a creative practice of making, wearing and caring in new and different ways, not confined only to the experience as ‘consumer’.

We see communities of makers, menders, sharers, viewers, wearers and carers of clothing building humble practices of fashion rewilding in our neighbourhood of Brunswick, and we want to find out more!

Dye Garden at RMIT Brunswick Campus during RMIT Sustainability Week 2022. Image: RMIT University.

RMIT PlaceLab acknowledges the people of the Woi wurrung and Boon wurrung language groups of the Eastern Kulin Nations on whose unceded lands we conduct the business of the University.

RMIT PlaceLab respectfully acknowledges their Ancestors and Elders, past and present, as the original and continuing Makers of Place.

Brunswick 4
CYCLE 02 2023

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