Fashioning the City RCA 2012

Getting ready to launch the Call for Papers CFP for the upcoming conference I'm organising at the Royal College of Art in September - Fashioning the City: Exploring Fashion Cultures, Structures and Systems. For more info and to apply visit: www.fashioningthecity.wordpress.com

New Year, New Exhibition...

Entrance to the exhibition - Off the Wall


New Year, New Exhibition...it's that time of year again when the annual Work-in-Progress exhibition comes around, which is a key milestone in our academic year here at the RCA. In previous years the fashion and textile's research students (MPhil and PhD) have usually exhibited as part of the larger cohort of fashion and textile MA students. In a new approach, this year as a group we decided to showcase our current working practice within our own self-contained and dedicated gallery area within the much larger exhibition - Off the Wall an exhibition-within-an-exhibition. How successful we have have been you can judge for yourself - since the exhibition is now open everyday from 10.00 - 17.30 until 18th January.

Here below is a brief taster of my own exhibit in the exhibition entitled Antwerpen (Anvers) [Antwerp]: Towards a Case Study, which focuses on one of my ''case study'' cities in my much larger research project looking at the material and materiality of developing that goes into formulating such a case study. The ''mood board'' is a key part of developing fashion collections, and in the spirit of this my exhibit takes the form of a real-life 3-D mood board or collage of material I've collected and is being used to shape and inform my work.


Off the Wall - because everything in the exhibition was exhibited ''off the wall'', suspended from a central hanging rail running through the gallery space


''Mood-board''/''Collage'' of artefacts


Plinth built of fashion magazines Considering the materiality of my research - what are the research materials?


Caramello - The Original Mokatine - bringing to life the sensory experience of Antwerp


Abstract Banners, provided with support from Macroart

Introducing Fashion Film

Research RCA: New Knowledge

''What is Fashion?'' this is the question I pose as part of my installation for Research RCA: New Knowledge - the first ever dedicated exhibition of the work of MPhil and PhD students held by the RCA.

In many ways this question ''What is Fashion?'' is less a statement than a provocation in re-assessing how we look at and consider what fashion is. While there is much commentary about fashion, both in the Fashion Press or Media and amongst those in academia who take up fashion as a serious subject of intellectual investigation, few have actually dared to ask the question out loud ''What is Fashion?''

In a well-known essay Valerie Steele, Director of the Museum at FIT in New York, has even gone as far as to state that for many Fashion is the ''F-word'' - something abusive, yet in turn itself also abused. This curatorial project seeks to address this stance, looking at the different ways in which we seek to define and process the meaning of what fashion is.

In the ''What is Fashion?'' section of my website I post up pictures of my installation together with a PDF copy of the accompanying brochure, with the aim of provoking a continuing and lively discussion. To join in the debate E-mail your thoughts, comments, ideas or images to: whatisfashion(at)nadabea.com

Details for the exhibition:

Research RCA: New Knowledge

22nd - 27th October 2010

Opening Times: 11.00 - 18.00 daily

Private View: 21st October 18.00-20.30

Venue: Gulbenkian Galleries, Royal College of Art, Kensington Gore, London. SW7 2EU.

Transport: Buses: 9, 10, 52 and 452 Tube: South Kensington and High Street Kensington

Holiday Brochures

RCA Prospectuses (Photos: Nathaniel Dafydd Beard)

Having a bit of a clear out this week I came across an accumulation of some old RCA prospectuses, gathered over time, mulling the options as to whether or not pursing a research degree would be a good idea. Coincidentally, I also had an e-mail from the college press/marketing department asking if I'd like to be a featured student profiled in the new prospectus. Am usually quite happy to be in the background just getting on with things, so was not looking to be ''profiled'' in any public way, but in answering questions about my expectations of the course and my feelings about how it is now I am actually here, turned out to be a good chance to reflect on my time so far at the RCA.

Time flies here fairly rapidly, and already the first year is over and we are well into the summer recess. Unlike some of my colleagues, I won't be taking a ''real'' holiday this year, since have given myself several tasks to complete over the summer, combined with full-time working commitments to my ''money job''. But like flicking through a a glossy holiday brochure, a college prospectus offers perhaps much the same experience. It's never quite as glossy as the brochure would have you believe (for non-UK readers, British tour company brochures are notoriously misleading...oops, did we forget to mention the 6 lane highway between the hotel and the beach?). Yet as I reflect on my past experiences over the last year, one of the stand-out aspects has been the supportive nature of my fellow researchers in the School of Fashion and Textiles, a small miracle in such a competitive field, and one I wasn't entirely expecting. All our projects are distinctly different, which no doubt helps, and whenever we meet up it's always intriguing to hear about the latest developments, the successes, and the dilemmas. Helping out a friend this week with writing their own statement for application to a course at a different institution also reminded me of the need we all have for ''cheer leaders'' as I call them. That is, those people on the sidelines, whether family, friends or colleagues, who are there to support you during both the dark, doubting times, and are the there with words of congratulations when things are turning out just the way you hoped. While it is always wise to take the promises of ''holiday brochures'' with a pinch of salt, it is also important as a researcher to keep an open mind, as you never know when some chance conversation or watching the progress of a colleague can help in inspiring or motivating your own work. As I am finding out, the role of the researcher is certainly that of a self-initiator or self-motivator, but a little help from those around you certainly goes a long way.

Quote of the Month

A feeling for fashion in anything from architecture to typography is a feeling for what is in the air, for what is right now. I describe fashion as an atmosphere, and obviously all good designers are highly sensitive to this atmosphere or spirit of the times (particularly fashion-sensitive people who have the misfortune to find themselves just slightly in advance of this feeling suffer all the frustrations of seeing their ideas enthusiastically adopted a year or two later). Obviously, those designers who manage to hit this feeling for now are those who are successful, and who in their turn influence further generations.

Ironside, Janey, 1973, Janey, London: Michael Joseph Ltd.:pp 120

June's quote of the month comes from the highly entertaining autobiography of Janey Ironside, Head of Fashion and Textiles at the RCA during the 1960s and early 1970s. Recently I have been thinking further about the role of fashion and its place in everyday life, particularly as I am now preparing a paper on how fashion has become increasingly commoditised, being portrayed and marketed as an object in itself. In coming across this quote, researching more specifically about the role of art schools in producing fashion, I was intrigued by Ironside's description of fashion less as a tangible 'thing' than as an 'atmosphere', something seemingly un-graspable, yet which all successful fashion designers, and indeed researchers, need to grasp and interpret in some way. It is also interesting that Irondside alludes here to fashion in relation to such, allegedly, unfashion conscious sectors as architecture or typography, rather than just clothing. In capturing this atmosphere through the development of physical products, events, or perhaps books or academic papers, Ironside also re-affirms the necessity of timing in the interpretation of this atmosphere, where being 'too soon' is significantly more detrimental than being 'too late'.