Tim Mitchell, Mutilated hosiery sorted by colour, 2005.
The exhibition Fast Fashion: The dark side of fashion (21 July – 9 September) takes a critical look behind the scenes of the fashion industry and consumer habits.
Presented in collaboration with RMIT Gallery and RMIT School of Fashion and Textiles, Fast Fashion is curated by Dr. Claudia Banz at the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg and supported by Deutsche Bundesstiftung Umwelt and Karin Stilke Stiftung.
The exhibition undresses the social, economic and environmental impacts of cheap fashion. In response, the exhibition’s Slow Fashion Studio explores new fashion practices and experiences to bring about positive change.
The term ‘fast fashion’ references a specific production and distribution system of mass-produced fashion that is sold worldwide at low prices. But at what cost? Australians are the second largest consumers of new textiles worldwide, and at the same time, fashion is one of Australia’s fastest growing waste problems.
Vast amounts of clothes bought by Australians are either incinerated or end up in landfill within a year of being made, while the fast fashion industry is among the sectors responsible for disastrous working conditions and boasts a model of economic success earning its profits at the expense of ecological and social systems.
Fast Fashion: The dark side of fashion presents the global triangle of consumerism, economy and ecology from various perspectives: fashion and victims, poverty and affluence, global and local, wages and profits, clothing and chemicals/ecological balance.
After opening at MKG in Hamburg, Fast Fashion toured Dresden as well as the Philippines and Indonesia as part of IKAT/eCUT, a Goethe-Institut project exploring the past, present and future of textiles in Germany, Southeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand. Each region has presented a local response to the fast fashion problem.
RMIT senior lecturer Dr Jenny Underwood, Slow Fashion Studio curator, said fashion reflects who we are as an individual and as a society.
“Using the Fast Fashion exhibition as a provocation, the Slow Fashion Studio features the work of nine design practitioners, who collectively create a social space for exploring alternative approaches to how fashion is produced, consumed and experienced,” Underwood said. “The Studio will showcase everything from advanced digital technologies such as using Virtual Reality to better design and fit clothes to individual body shapes, to meticulous hand craftsmanship.RMIT senior lecturer Dr Jenny Underwood, Slow Fashion Studio curator, said fashion reflects who we are as an individual and as a society.RMIT senior lecturer Dr Jenny Underwood, Slow Fashion Studio curator, said fashion reflects who we are
Luisa Hilmer from Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg and Ina Budde who founded Design for Circularity, are visiting Melbourne courtesy of the Goethe-Institut and will hold talks and workshops as part of the Fast Fashion exhibition, along with Sina Trinkwalder, CEO of Germany’s first social-textile business manomama, dedicated to providing eco-social clothing and accessories utilising a regional supply chain.
What: Fast Fashion: the dark side of fashion
When: 21 July – 9 September 2017
Where: RMIT Gallery, 344 Swanston Street, Melbourne
Exhibition website: Goethe-Institut RMIT Gallery