@fashion_ colloquialism

The project looks critically at fashion design and the fashion industry by probing through (fashion) design two iconic objects drawn from the heyday of the western fashion and luxury industry (late 90s and early 2000s). The chosen objects, the Maison Martin Margiela mask and the Louis Vuitton Monogram Graffiti Speedy by Marc Jacobs index two dimensions of fashion as a design practice and  industry, which are: a. (design) identity; b. know how. The project’s critical framework is grounded in feminist theoretical traditions, critical fashion studies, activist-led criticism of the industry and capitalism, as well as the researchers’ lived experience of fashion. On the one hand, it looks at the practices and values that subtend the iconic objects. On the other, based on its understanding and critique of the iconic objects, it explores livable alternatives to the fashion system’s modes of production and ideologies, both concretely and speculatively. In doing so, the project outlines a methodology which accounts for the specificities of fashion’s language as a design practice and written form. Its outcome is a publication and two artisanal mass-reproducible objects.