Do designers write? Fashion Theory/Academia/Literature

[poppies]

I'm curious if anyone has ever studied the academic literature of fashion. I guess I'm just thinking that in art/architecture there's always been an extensive amount of critical and theoretical writing, especially from the artists/architects themselves, and I'm wondering if there are any designers that write fun pretentious manifestos or significant critical writing that have pushed the craft in new directions.

 

[LA Guy]

Originally Posted by poppies

I'm curious if anyone has ever studied the academic literature of fashion. I guess I'm just thinking that in art/architecture there's always been an extensive amount of critical and theoretical writing, especially from the artists/architects themselves, and I'm wondering if there are any designers that write fun pretentious manifestos or significant critical writing that have pushed the craft in new directions.

Academic literature about fashion is woefully lacking, and what little there is is pretty vacuous. There are more sophisticated treatises written in the MC part of this forum.

 

[farfisa23]

I have an MFA in critical studies from a pretty famous art school, my emphasis and my thesis was on fashion theory, both with critical writing and with creative writing/digital art.

A good place to start is with Roland Barthes and Dick Hebdige. Also Valerie Steele edited a lot of good books on the subject.

It's pretentious and works on picking up on garmentos.

 

[LA Guy]

My father was an architect, so I read a bunch of architectural monographs when I was a kid. Judging solely from the comparable literature for fashion, fashion designers tend to be less intellectually inclined

 

[farfisa23]

Originally Posted by LA Guy

Academic literature about fashion is woefully lacking, and what little there is is pretty vacuous. There are more sophisticated treatises written in the MC part of this forum.

epic fail.

 

[poppies]

Originally Posted by LA Guy

My father was an architect, so I read a bunch of architectural monographs when I was a kid. Judging solely from the comparable literature for fashion, fashion designers tend to be less intellectually inclined

I had a feeling this was the case, but I was hoping I was wrong.

 

[LA Guy]

Originally Posted by farfisa23

epic fail.

Maybe. Let me rephrase. There are some interesting works about fashion, but not really from the point of view of a fashion designer. Roland Barthes and Dick Hebdige wrote interesting works about fashion, but they were not immersed in the fashion world.

Edit: I would be loved to be proven wrong, but I am pretty sure that if I started talking about Barthes ideas about the bourgeousie to a fashion designer, I would be met with a face palm. I tried, at some point, to present a dumbed down version of this years ago, (ay have been lost with the great crash), but just got frustrated.

 

[LabelKing]

Karl Lagerfeld appears to be one of the few intellectually-inclined designers.

 

[jkennett]

Labelking read my mind.

Lagerfeld is certainly a very intelligent and well-read man. However, in my opinion he doesn't contribute much to fashion theory despite his owning a publishing house and writing quite a bit. I feel that most of his commentary is just a gimmick to feed the press with his "strange genius" and general eclecticism.

 

[LabelKing]

You also have a number of "avant-garde" or "progressive" designers who are fond of spouting off critical theory and such. I think I even recall Heidegger being involved, and also Walter Benjamin.

 

[WishEllis]

Indeed Benjamin has some great things to say about fashion (by way of cultural materialism/spectrality etc...).

From the Arcades Project

"Boredom is a warm grey fabric lined on the inside with the most lustrous and colorful of silks. In this fabric we wrap ourselves when we dream. We are at home then in the arabesques of its lining. But the sleeper looks bored and grey within his sheath. And when he later wakes and wants to tell of what he dreamed, he communicates by and large only this boredom. For who would be able at one stroke to turn the living of time to the outside? Yet to narrate dreams signifies nothing else."

Also on a similar theme

"Every fashion couples the living body to the inorganic world. To the living, fashion defends the rights of the corpse."

And in a more obviously playful way:

"In my formulation: 'The eternal is in any case far more the ruffle on some dress than some idea.'"

 

[LabelKing]

My favorite is "Fascism is the aestheticization of politics" which is actually quite appropriate for fashion.

 

[Arethusa]

Originally Posted by LA Guy

Maybe. Let me rephrase. There are some interesting works about fashion, but not really from the point of view of a fashion designer. Roland Barthes and Dick Hebdige wrote interesting works about fashion, but they were not immersed in the fashion world. Edit: I would be loved to be proven wrong, but I am pretty sure that if I started talking about Barthes ideas about the bourgeousie to a fashion designer, I would be met with a face palm. I tried, at some point, to present a dumbed down version of this years ago, (ay have been lost with the great crash), but just got frustrated.
Barthes crew represent. <3

 

[robin]

Originally Posted by WishEllis

Indeed Benjamin has some great things to say about fashion (by way of cultural materialism/spectrality etc...).

From the Arcades Project

"Boredom is a warm grey fabric lined on the inside with the most lustrous and colorful of silks. In this fabric we wrap ourselves when we dream. We are at home then in the arabesques of its lining. But the sleeper looks bored and grey within his sheath. And when he later wakes and wants to tell of what he dreamed, he communicates by and large only this boredom. For who would be able at one stroke to turn the living of time to the outside? Yet to narrate dreams signifies nothing else."

Also on a similar theme

"Every fashion couples the living body to the inorganic world. To the living, fashion defends the rights of the corpse."

And in a more obviously playful way:

"In my formulation: 'The eternal is in any case far more the ruffle on some dress than some idea.'"

 

[Marcus Brody]

Originally Posted by Arethusa

Barthes crew represent. <3

2nd.

I'm a PhD student in cultural sociology, so that's basically the "it" text regarding fashion for the people I interact with.

Also, I wrote a paper last semester on the negotiation of meaning and the definition of the eponymous term for Ask Andy's Trad Forum. If I someday fix it up and publish it, I'll post the link here.