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.

The Researcher as Entrepreneur

Today was scheduled a workshop/lecture organised by FuelRCA, the business practice advisory arm of the college, on the thrillingly titled subject of 'Setting Up a Company'. The lecture was given by four accountancy and/or tax experts from KPMG, and from a sartorial and aesthetic point of view, they certainly looked like representatives of an accountancy firm. It is almost strange how it remains possible to tell exactly what someone does just by the demeanour of their features and mode of dress. Or as a colleague I attended the lecture with pointed out, you can always tell who is researcher by the pointedly seriousness of their expression, and their 'please don't distract me' body language.

I was interested to attend this session as part of my own research work is connected to how and why designers in the fashion industry go about setting up their business. As we learnt in this session the UK retains its incredibly laissez-faire attitude to the establishment of a business enterprise. As the process was explained to us in so seemingly simplistic terms it's wonder why everyone is not an entrepreneur. While the technicalities may be simple, what was not explained was the reality of the fortitude and stamina required in setting up a business, whether as a sole-trader or as a partnership or limited company. It made we aware that as researchers, certainly in our department of Fashion and Textiles, the requirement of an entrepreneurial spirit is certainly an asset in the practice of research. As much as it is an opportunity to be able to pursue research on a specific and nuanced topic, it is also required of the researcher to create their own opportunities via avenues of research, meetings, writing articles, submitting conference papers, archives, libraries and chance conversations with fellow researchers or colleagues. My own background, and indeed my first degree, is in the area of business and management, and in developing my own skills as a researcher over the past few months it has certainly felt at times like I am in pursuit of learning how to manage a business. While their are a number of books and lectures on the subject of writing a thesis or surviving the trauma of your viva voce, each of our projects are ultimately so individual, that perhaps as researchers we are all, to a certain extent, entrepreneurs.

How useful the practical aspects of this session will be I have yet to determine, as I ruminate on the vague prospects and opportunities for life in both the current research and the post-research phases. But for anyone else contemplating the adventure of entrepreneurial endeavour here are some links that might prove a useful starting point:

www.companieshouse.gov.uk
www.hmrc.gov.uk
www.businesslink.gov.uk
www.bbaa.org.uk

Mind Maps

Each week, the research students from the School Fashion and Textiles try and get together to participate in a workshop or ‘reading group’ session. The role of researcher can be a lonely task, so these sessions are good way of re-connecting with each other, and to catch up with happenings both inside and outside the college. Since I have been nervously preparing for my first interim exam (I haven’t had such a formal assessment for at least six years, it has been surprising to remember how daunting exams can be), I was wondering if it was such a wise use of time to attend last week’s session, but as it turned out, fortunately I did. Hosted by Harriet Edwards, a researcher in the college, we participated in a workshop on drawing and ‘mind mapping’. The theme of the workshop was ‘’intuition’’, and after a brief introduction by Harriet we were all asked to help ourselves to paper and drawing materials and to make a sketch about our thoughts on the process of intuition in our work. The image above is my own attempt this, using a biro pen on grey paper. After 10/15 minutes we were each asked to stop and to show our drawings to the rest of the group and explain a little about them in turn. Following this we asked to do some writing on the same theme, and again read out our efforts, if we wanted to, or to talk more generally about our thoughts. With our agreement, the session was partly recorded and documented by Harriet to use in her own current research study.

In many ways this was a useful very workshop for all of us, taking us away from our normal everyday routine, and re-connecting us to the possibilities of different processes that can be used for research. In general I do not view my work as that of someone who is a ‘maker’ or ‘producer’ so it was interesting to be asked to express something through the act of drawing, as opposed to writing. And yet, going through my own notebooks I notice how many rough sketches and strange doodles are included, seemingly unconnected to the words, and yet the words wouldn’t be relevant without them. In working through the process of research, this workshop was also revealing to me in realising how much of what I do is connected or derived from ‘intuition’ or the ‘intuitive’. Often an idea or concept for a piece of work, whether written or practical, begins in a state of flux, and from that initial components of the core idea are composed. From this I’ll perhaps attempt to see how they fit together or can be ordered in some way, sometimes finding quite disparate things fit very well, while seemingly logical things do not fit in at all. After this; putting everything into some kind of concrete whole appears possible, but even after careful ordering and composition some things still do not quite fit, and so remain outside the work or concept. Yet sometimes those ‘discarded’ bits are the most interesting, and turn out not to be so useless after all, opening up the possibility for new ideas, concepts and projects.

Blythe House Archive Visit

As I was talking over with someone only the other day, one of the truly amazing things about living in a city as vast and infinite as London is that, however many years you live here, or however many visits to the city you make, you never really get to know it all. Friday last week proved this well enough again when I had the opportunity to visit Blythe House, hidden behind the behemoth of Olympia and the Earl’s Court exhibition centre. Having never stayed in a hotel in the city, Earl’s Court has always remained something of a mystery for me. Earl’s Court oddly remains one of London’s prime tourist hotspots, despite the area not being particularly central, or cool, and having the advantage of only being on a direct tube line to Heathrow. Since the MA students in our department are working on a project to do with archives and personal biographies, we also had the opportunity to accompany them on a visit to this mystery corner of London, and to visit the textiles archives of the British Museum.

Beginning life as the headquarters of the Post Office Savings Bank, today Blythe House is a humungous space acting as a repository of artefacts from the British Museum, the V&A and the Science Museum. One of series of recently astonishingly sunny days, it seemed oddly incongruous to enter a building whose every window seemed shuttered with blinds to keep out the light, hazardous to protecting delicate artefacts. After negotiating our way around the labyrinth of corridors and stairs, passing a room piled high with crates, and boxes, we entered the study area of the British Museums textile archive. Collection Manager Helen Wolff had laid out for us on a table a sample selection of cloths and garments from the archive, and proceeded to give us an introductory talk about the chosen artefacts and the role and activities of the museum’s textile collection. Amongst them were a beautiful and intricately embroidered loose gown made by the Miao people of China, a richly decorated jacket from Palestine, a bark textile from the Oceania region, and some ‘modern’ textiles from South America and West Africa. She also introduced us to a sample of textile artefacts collected from the desert coastal regions of Peru, some of which had originally been used as totems to accompany the dead into the afterlife. Since they had been buried deep underground in such an arid landscape, this had helped to preserve both their form and colour. Following on from this, Helen guided us around the main store area, with textiles kept either in crates on shelves, or for more delicate items, laid out flat in aluminium drawer units. Many other textiles were kept rolled up in acid-free tissue paper and calico, which were then placed on racks on pull-out screens. This we were told was one of the best ways in which to keep textile lengths, rather than folding them up, which had often been done in the past.

One of the key aims of the museum is make their collection as accessible to textile researchers and other interested parties as possible. To this end Helen and her colleagues are working towards photographing and cataloguing the museums entire textile collection. Much of this is now available to view online through the British Museum’s own website, via their dedicated research section on the website, viewable here: http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/search_the_collection_database

While my own practice in fashion research is more about the present day workings and developments of the fashion industry, the visit to the archives at Blythe House opened up the possibilities that the collections of ‘ethnographic’ institutions can offer. While we can all enjoy and wonder at the splendour of blockbuster exhibitions showcasing the work of famed and fabled designers, the seemingly more ‘humble’, and intrinsically humanistic work of textile producers remain equally fascinating. In conjunction with my own recent (re)visit to the Tropenmuseum (Tropical Museum) in Amsterdam, it is surprising how overlooked the development and processes of textiles are in the realm of curated exhibitions on fashion and textiles. Yet at the same time, institutions, like the British Museum and the Tropenmuseum, can offer an intriguing and significant insight into broadening the scope and depth of fashion and textiles research.

In a further intriguing development in opening up the archive as an exhibition space, fashion curator Judith Clark, together with her partner Adam Phillips, have put together an exhibition at Blythe House. Opening shortly, the exhibition is called A Concise Dictionary of Dress, and has been devised in conjunction with the experimental arts agency Artangel, famed for their collaborations with Rachel Whitread, Roni Horn and Roger Hiorns. The exhibition itself is set to take place in the V&A’s section of Blythe House, in which is located their repository of clothing, furniture and ceramics. Further information can be found at: http://www.artangel.org.uk/projects/2010/the_concise_dictionary_of_dress

Because it had to start somewhere...

In thinking about beginning a blog it occurred to me how naff the idea of this actually was. After all, it seems as if the whole world is blogging, and within the fashion world it’s now almost become a kind of cliché. This is not to do a disservice to those who blog well, like Susie Bubble and Bryan Boy, who are rightly deserving of their status as ‘star’ bloggers, but it takes time, effort and dedication. While the editorial teams of print magazines are said to be trembling at the imminent demise of their publications due to the increasing influence of bloggers, this is in reality unlikely. Television never did kill the radio, E-mail rules, but the fax retains its purpose. Besides, retro is all the rage, in a world where we are so used to the opportunity of ‘choice’, many of us are still happy to put our trust in paper and pencil (or pen) over developing an addiction to yet another infuriating electronic device. Why tie yourself up in the multiple, yet often rather useless, apps, when you can be a member of the ‘Moleskin Mafia’?

And yet here I am, developing the tentative beginnings of a blog dedicated to my own experiences as an academic researcher and curator in the field of fashion. If you’re looking for style tips, or want to know what the hot trend will be for Spring/Summer 2015, then don’t ask me, since I have no idea. My work or practice instead concentrates instead on developing the themes and nuances of this subject that, perhaps selfishly, interest me. Having never had the stamina for keeping a diary before, or any other kind of journal-documentation for that matter, the development of a blog, documenting my process as fashion researcher/writer/curator presents a new challenge. So as with many other things, I am approaching this as ‘project’, since am beginning to have to learn about the importance of documenting the process of what I do, and how I go about this. While the people that know me, well, know that I am great hoarder of information in many ways (books, magazines, exhibition brochures), I’ve never had very sentimental feelings for documenting other aspects of my life as other people do. I have few photographs of friends or family for instance, and so many holidays, birthdays etc. have gone pretty much un-documented (or in pre-digital times, if any photos were taken they remained on the original film, undeveloped, sitting on a shelf gathering dust). For me, the best ‘photos’ were always the photos of the mind, the memories, the smells , the ambiences captured in our heads, to be replayed and relived as and when, perhaps triggered by occurrences and experiences in present-day life.

Yet, since joining as a research student on the MPhil/PhD programme at the RCA last October, I have become more aware of the processes and necessity of documentation as a part of the research. All those seemingly random conversations, lectures, films, reading, scrappy notes and drawings in sketchbooks, visiting exhibitions et al are all a part of the research. During a recent discussion with some fellow research students in our department someone stated: ‘everything is the research’. Even though we all have our specific focus and projects to work on, in a way our work is a re-questioning of everything, not only of our research itself, but also for us as individuals; that is as thinkers, writers and practitioners. Or as I think someone else once said: because it had to start somewhere, and I didn’t know where else to begin...