Rachel Botsman explains why the new social currency is trust

See her presentation here 

Inez and Vinoodh share a vision

How would you connect fashion to elegance?Inez van Laamswerde: I don’t think they connect. Fashion to me is a very abstract word which encapsulates a very big universe motivated by money. Elegance is very innate, it is almost unachievable through clothes; it’s there or it’s not. However, I do believe that Vinoodh and I can find elegance in everyone who steps in front of our camera. But it has nothing to do with clothes.
Vinood Matadin: Elegance is a memory of the past.

Would you describe fashion as a language and a discourse, as Barthes did it?IvL: It’s a language of signs, of codes, that has to do with status and the projection of who you want to be in your projection towards someone else. The thing that always blows our mind is that the people who think they are outside of fashion or think they have nothing to do with fashion, wake up every morning and decide what to wear, what they want to be, and which language they want to speak with these clothes. If you go for a date, a job interview, or a game of golf, you know the code you need to use for what you want to communicate to the people you’re meeting. Everyone is affected by fashion and by these codes. In short: fashion is a daily form of masquerade that communicates culture, gender, and class.
VM: Most people don’t even know where these codes come from. They just use these codes and they have no clue that somebody one day invented these codes for them.
IvL: Yes, they’re given through role models that obviously have evolved through the years.
VM: The interesting thing is to use these codes and change them. Then people ask questions when looking at an image.

The full interview by Donatien Grau is here

Refashioning a system

My graduation essay from Kunsthochschule Berlin-Weißensee on fashion and open source is available for download at
http://issuu.com/cornucopiazine/docs/refashioning_a_system-ruiz_schmidt_e-book
Looking forward for comments or questions. Thank you to Dr. Knut Ebeling, my design tutor Patrick Rietz and all the amazing people whom I interviewed: Otto von Busch, Zoe Romano of Serpica Naro and Openwear, Giana Gonzalez and Katharina Thiel of Anotherframe.

Thank you openwear

http://openwear.org/blog/?p=1708

Martin Margiela: artisanal line

Overcoat: a classic coat made of macramé bags.

Production time: 82 hours.

Afterthoughts

In the last six months we have finished our graduation collection from Kunsthochschule Berlin-Weißensee, and have relocated to our home city of San José, Costa Rica. We hope to set up an atelier soon and I have been busy with my theory for the completion of my degree. The title of my research is Re-fashioning a system: how Open Source has influenced Fashion Design, and I interviewed several designers working within the Open Source movement. I will be posting the interviews shortly.

Respect to Herr Yamamoto.

From The Talks:

Over 30 years later, are people still too stuck up when it comes to what they wear?

I simply cannot stand people’s tendency to become conservative. There’s always a move back to established conventions, otherwise upcoming waves would be soon categorized as common sense. Even the term avant-garde – avant-garde is now just a tiny fashion category. It became so cheap and pretentious. I hate it. But still, I strongly believe in the avant-garde spirit: to voice opposition to traditional values. It is not just a youthful sentiment; I live my life by it. Rebellion. You will only be able to oppose something and find something of your own after traveling the long road of tradition.