The Tailor

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Costume Society of America

Western Region

ANNUAL MEETING & SYMPOSIUM Via Zoom

ABSTRACTS 2020 October 3, 2020

Members may download an electronic version of the Abstract Booklet for free at: https://csoa.memberclicks.net/symposium-abstract-archive

A limited number of hard copies may be purchased from the CSA Online Store

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This craftsman’s technology was definitely worth adapting!

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SYMPOSIUM SCHEDULE Saturday October 3, 2020

First Session 10:30am-12:00pm

• 10:30-10:35am WELCOME by ABRA PILAR FLORES, President of CSA-Western Region

• 10:35-11:30am KEYNOTE SPEECH The Worldwide Tribe: Crafting and the Internet by LAUREN STOWELL, founder of American Duchess

Presentation of first paper

(Each presentation will be 20 min followed by 10 min Q&A)

• 11:30am-12:00pm Adapting the Traditional with the Contemporary: Fashion Artefacts as Technique Exploration in Practice-led Design Research JENNY LEIGH DU PUIS, Cornell University

Break for lunch 12:00-1:30pm

Second Session 1:30pm-3:15pm

• 1:30-2:00pm Americana: Music, Style, and Craft in the Age of Instagram KERSTIN HEITZKE, New York University

• 2:00-2:30pm Community Inspires: Oneida Community Plate Advertising, Paris Couture, and American Design 1940-41 KAILA TEMPLE, University of Delaware

• 2:30-3:00pm Digital Transnational Circulations: Indian Block Print Patterns in the Age of Instagram

NANDINI GOPALARATHINAM, New York University

LIGHTNING ROUND

• 3:00-3:15pm Seattle Style: Fashion/Function CLARA BERG, Museum of History and Industry (MOHAI)

Afternoon Break 3:15pm-4:00pm

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Third Session 4:00pm-5:30pm

• CSA-Western Region ANNUAL BUSINESS MEETING – All Western

Region members welcome!

• COCKTAILS – BYO – immediately following the Board meeting

Let’s Celebrate the Makers!

Modified Batik print

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CSA WESTERN REGION

2020 SYMPOSIUM PLANNING COMMITTEE

Symposium Chair – Naomi Arnst

Symposium Co-chair – Eileen Trestain

Abstract Administrator - Mary Gibson

Abstract Editor/Publisher – Judi Dawainis

Technical Support Team: Abra Pilar Flores, Coleen Scott, Sarah Andrews-Collier, Katie Wilson, Eileen Trestain

We are proud to direct the proceeds from this event to fund the Jack Handford Intern Award Fund

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The Western Region Symposium Team would like to share our gratitude and give special thanks to: Lauren Stowell, of American Duchess for her inspiring Keynote presentation, sharing their videos, and her generous discount offer. The Jurors, members who generously volunteered their time to carefully evaluate all abstracts received. All Members who submitted their research abstracts for peer review, whether or not they were selected to present today. Mary Gibson, whose knowledge about how to put on a symposium seems infinite. Naomi Arnst and Eileen Trestain, for all their hard work in planning and making this Symposium possible, as well as fellow board members who have given much assistance in countless ways. Judi Dawainis, for her enthusiasm, support and for creating such a fabulous publication for this event.

The Apprentice Shoemaker

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Adapting the Traditional with the Contemporary: Fashion Artefacts as Technique Exploration

in Practice-led Design Research Jenny Leigh Du Puis, Cornell University,

Thesis Advisor Dr. Karla Teel, Auburn University

In an artisan’s practice of traditional handcraft technique there can exist difficulties with adapting contemporary technologies and materials, especially if there is not a great amount of overlap with their existing technique. If, however, conditions exist where the contemporary technologies and materials are in some way resonant or familiar to the artisan’s existing tools and materials, they may then experience more ease with adapting to these technologies and materials (Du Puis, 2018). In this study, part of a master’s thesis on the integration of traditional techniques with contemporary technologies and materials in handcraft, the researcher explored how a traditionally trained artisan learns and uses contemporary technologies in their practice. To explore the phenomena, the following research questions were developed.

• RQ1: What are the design and fabrication considerations needed when incorporating traditional techniques with contemporary technologies, techniques, or materials into a traditional fashion practice?

• RQ2: What are the limitations and implications of incorporating traditional techniques with contemporary technologies, techniques, or materials into a traditional fashion practice?

• RQ3: What design interventions emerge as a result of the research? The researcher engaged in practice-led research to develop technique samples and garments using silk dyeing and creating digitally printed fabrics through the website Spoonflower.com. All methods were documented via textual and visual means, including video and photo recordings, notes, and a design journal comprised of sketches, mood boards, build plans, and dye samples. In this way, the researcher relied on their prior experience as a costume designer and technician to not only explore through practice but also to ensure that all methods used could be replicated in the future. Results of the study include the development of digitally printed polyester chiffon fabrics in four different styles using traditional and contemporary techniques. Dyes also used for fabric were treated like watercolors, painted onto paper, and then photographed. These digital photographs were uploaded to Photoshop and the minor color-corrections edits made. Finally, the edited images were uploaded into the Spoonflower.com website and a four-way mirrored repeat pattern was selected. Through this process, the researcher used their traditional technique knowledge of painting and dyeing to develop digitally printed fabrics in a way that bridged the gap between handcraft and a completely

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digital process. Adapted practices such as this present a way for traditionally trained artisans to use familiar techniques to learn contemporary technologies and materials. Limitations for the study include the use of one digital printing service, restriction to one type of fabric, and the researcher’s own lack of knowledge in digital image manipulation. Suggestions for future research include utilizing a wider range of printing companies and fabrics, and exploring a fully digital process.

Du Puis, Jenny Leigh. “Fashion, Forward! A Practice-led Exploration into the Confluence of Traditional Techniques and Contemporary Technologies in Fashion and Making.” Master’s thesis, Auburn University, 2018. Auburn University Digital Archive. https://etd.auburn.edu/handle/10415/6184

Rorschach, a mirrored digital repeat of original dye painting. Painting, repeat, and image by Jenny Leigh Du Puis.

Notes

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Americana: Music, Style, and Craft in the Age of Instagram Kerstin Heitzke, New York University

Country music is identified with the American working class. However, the 2010s has seen the emergence of “Americana” music, an alternative to mainstream pop-driven country: featuring artists who hark back to tradition but speak to contemporary issues. With this return to tradition is also a return to craft. This research explores how the intersection of Americana music with the Maker movement has created a subculture built on progressive values and an embrace of heritage style. Instagram has strengthened the growth via the Explore page and recommended accounts. Utilizing Andy Bennet’s scholarship on music subcultures in the age of the internet, this project offers a differing view on how the Internet, specifically social media, creates subcultures. Algorithms result in a curated experience for each user, creating a de-facto community. For members of the subculture, an idealized American past is reclaimed through small denim manufacturers, handmade leather goods, and custom bandanas and cowboy hats. Makers who create these goods have embraced Instagram to exhibit their practice. Demonstrations of methods of production litter the feed, paired with personal stories. Users are able to see the interconnectivity of accounts through follows and comments. Instagram stories create a more intimate experience, forming a sense of familiarity. Instagram amplifies related accounts for follows, further building the curated experience. Americana musicians and their connections, both personal and business, are seen in comments and tags. Makers are either invited or apply to show their goods at music festivals, pop-ups or be sold to stores that curate this style. By analyzing the Instagram accounts of influential makers in the Americana scene and their connection to musicians, I will demonstrate how Instagram has created an environment where new subcultures can grow and flourish and how makers are using the platform to tap in and grow their practice.

@ft.lonesome

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Community Inspires: Oneida Community Plate Advertising, Paris Couture, and American Design 1940-41

Kaila K. Temple, University of Delaware, Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library Lois F. McNeil Fellow, Winterthur Program in American Material Culture

Oneida Ltd.’s 1940-41 advertisement campaign for Oneida “Community Plate” flatware is a unique and fascinating moment in fashion and consumer history. This campaign, which appeared in a variety of publications, utilized clothing designs by well-known Paris-based designers of the period to sell silver plated flatware. The juxtaposition between the accessible, middle-class flatware that democratizes design and the couture gowns, available for purchase between the equivalent of $800-$2,000, is striking.1 This paper explores the visual messaging of these advertisements within the context of design history and material culture, and seeks to use these images as a window into concepts of American national design and identity as they manifest in the clothes people wore and the goods they brought into their homes. Oneida Ltd. grew out of the Oneida Community, a religious communal utopia based in Upstate, New York. The community produced various items for sale before and after its dissolution and transition to company, but today its name is firmly associated with its most successful venture, affordable silver-plated flatware. The Oneida name is still widely recognized, often raising responses such as “that was my grandmother’s silverware pattern.” Throughout its communal and corporate history, Oneida prided itself on the quality of life for its residents and workers, and viewed the quality of its products as a direct result of the contentment of its laborers.2 Many of the ideals that the Oneida community was founded on, such as self-determination and equality, have permeated our national identity as uniquely American values.

1. Vogue; New York Vol. 96 Issue 5 (September 1, 1940) 58-59 2. Vogue; New York Vol. 96 Issue 5 (September 1, 1940) 58-59 Marin Lockwood Carden, Oneida: Utopian Community to Modern Corporation (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1969) 114.

Notes

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Digital Transnational Circulations: Indian Block Print Patterns in the Age of Instagram

Nandini Gopalarathinam, New York University's Dual Degree M.A./M.S.

Indian artisans have long been involved in transnational exchange through handcraft, especially textiles. Today, exchanges between Indian artisans and foreign markets are taking place in an increasingly digital world, on platforms like Instagram, creating a new digital transnational space. Instagram has changed our visual culture with its tools and format and that in turn is influencing what people are producing in the real world. This paper examines two slow fashion Western brands—SZ Blockprints and Block Shop—both involved in the sustainable production and selling of handcrafted Indian block print goods in this new digital transnational space. A qualitative approach to studying Instagram is adopted as the goal of this paper is to apply a historical perspective to the textiles and apparel being created by SZ Blockprints and Block Shop. As a theoretical model for discussion on how Indian hand block print textile patterns and techniques are being re-contextualized and are circulating in the digital age, this new version of exchange is placed into the long history of India’s transnational textile trade with Europe and the Americas. This was done by using Philip Crang and Sonia Ashmore’s exploration of anthropologist Arjun Appadurai’s Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective, and what they call the British Asian “transnational space of things” and “circulatory regimes” of transport, transformation and exchange in their paper, "The Transnational Spaces of Things: South Asian Textiles in Britain and the Grammar of Ornament.” This space, as they define it, encompasses everything from the craze for seventeenth century chintzes, material representations of India in international exhibitions and department stores of the nineteenth century; into twentieth century trends like the craze for “exotic” dress that shaped the counter-cultural movements of the 1960s. (1) Their work provides a methodological framework to think about digital transnational circulations and a mapping of current design, style, and pattern through the lens of Instagram and the online marketplace. Selected images from the Instagram accounts of both brands as well as images of more “traditional” Indian block print textiles are looked at for comparison. Examining these images from the brands’ Instagram accounts allows for a discussion of how these new ways of producing, marketing and consuming fit into the longer history of India’s textile exchanges with the West, as well as the complex role of authenticity and tradition in these exchanges. How is this new type of exchange affecting the types of Indian block print patterns being produced and contributing to new ideas of authenticity? In this new digital transnational space, are these new forms of circulation and exchange detrimental to how we understand the centuries old craft of Indian block print? Understanding the answers to these questions will reveal how slow fashion brands are using social media to bring the

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labor and processes of making back into view in the contemporary consumer marketplace, as well as the positive and negative effects on handcraft of circulations in digital transnational spaces. This research will be valuable to those who are interested in how technology and social media are irreversibly altering how we interact with fashion and the fashion system. 1. Philip Crang and Sonia Ashmore, "The Transnational Spaces of Things: South Asian Textiles in Britain and the Grammar of Ornament,” European Review of History: Revue Européenne D’Histoire, 16 vol 5 (2009): 655-678.

Bibliography: Appadurai, Arjun. Social Life of Things:Commodities in Cultural Perspective. West Nyack: Cambridge University Press, 1986. Crang, Philip and Sonia Ashmore, "The Transnational Spaces of Things: South Asian Textiles in Britain and the Grammar of Ornament,” European Review of History: Revue Européenne D’Histoire, 16 vol 5 (2009): 655-678.

SZ Blockprints. “Practice, Precision, Patience, Process.” Instagram. May 19, 2017.

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Seattle Style: Fashion/Function Clara Berg, Curator of Collections, Museum of History & Industry (MOHAI)

Seattle Style: Fashion/Function was a costume exhibition presented at the Museum of History & Industry (MOHAI) from May 4th to October 14th 2019. It was the first to survey the history of clothing and dress in Seattle, and a key challenge was presenting an exhibition about fashion in a city famous for being unfashionable. The public’s perception of Seattle’s style is centered on grunge and outdoor gear, so the curatorial team needed to acknowledge these stereotypes while encouraging the visitor to see beyond them. The goal was to present a diverse exhibition which blended high fashion with practicality, historical (19th & 20th century) designs with contemporary, and familiar local stories with unexpected ones. It also included topics typically underrepresented in costume exhibitions, such as plus-size clothing, nonbinary garments, factory worker experiences, and designs from indigenous artists. This diverse approach may resonate with other CSA members who are planning similar exhibitions. Selected Bibliography: Berg, Clara. Seattle Style: Fashion/Function. Seattle, WA: Museum of History & Industry, 2019. Korsmo, Elizabeth. “Not Really So Primitive as One Might Be Led to Believe: Interpreting Early Seattle Dress.” M.A. Thesis, University of Washington, 2018. Mears, Patricia. Expedition: Fashion from the Extreme. New York: Thames & Hudson, 2017. Phinney, Susan. “Seattle is a Fashion Industry Player,” Seattle Business Magazine, March 2012. seattlebusinessmag.com/article/seattles-fashion-industry-player

Black/White image made from original image:: Shirt with World’s Fair Print, 1962

MOHAI, 2009.62.2, Gift of Ann Kjerulf

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BIOGRAPHIES OF PRESENTERS

Jenny Leigh Du Puis is a PhD student in Apparel Design at Cornell University, where she is conducting dissertation research on the topic of Safety and Function in Attire for the Extreme Physical Performance of Circus Arts. Prior to returning to academia, she had a wonderful decade-long career as a professional circus and theatrical costume designer and technician, working for such companies as Circus Smirkus, Cirque du Soleil, Spamalot! Las Vegas, Hairspray International broadway tour, as well as freelance design for clients and philanthropic events. She is continuing this professional practice throughout her academic career by working with circus companies and schools as a costume designer and consultant, and blending her passion for the work with her dissertation topic. Kerstin Heitzke is a New York-based independent scholar. With a background in retail merchandising, she was awarded an M.A. from New York University’s Costume Studies program in 2019. During this time she co-curated an exhibition at NYU’s 80WSE Gallery, exploring the idea of authenticity within fashion through separate case studies. She is interested in the intersectionality of craft and art, and how media influences craft and dress. Her research explores craft in art movements and fashion, the influence of music and musical instruments on dress, and the impact of Instagram on contemporary culture. Kaila K. Temple received her B.A. in Art History with High Honors from Smith College in 2018, and is currently a second-year M.A. student and Lois F. McNeil Fellow in the Winterthur Program in American Material Culture at the University of Delaware. She has held fellowships and internships at Maine Historical Society, Historic Deerfield, and Colonial Williamsburg, among others. Her research interests primarily lie in eighteenth-century and early nineteenth-century America, but frequently finds herself excited by all types of textile and dress histories.

Nandini Gopalarathinam is a fashion professional turned aspiring fashion historian and archivist. After years of working and traveling all over the world as a visual director for brands like Donna Karan Collection, Limited Brands, and Anthropologie, Nandini decided to take a deeper dive into the historical, cultural, and social contexts for fashion. She recently graduated from New York University's Dual Degree M.A./M.S program in Costume Studies and Library and Information Science. Her research interests focus on the intersection of global culture and trends in fashion and textiles. In early 2020, Nandini commenced research for a textile project highlighting current weaving traditions and techniques from the Coromandel Coast region of India. Clara Berg is the Curator of Collections at the Museum of History & Industry in Seattle (MOHAI). She oversees the care the museum’s extensive collection of 3-D artifacts and does research and presentations about its contents. She is a graduate of the Fashion and Textile Studies program at FIT in New York City. Seattle Style: Fashion / Function was her first exhibition.

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Notes ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

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Fabric Mill

Mass production sewing room pre-industrial revolution

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The Shoemaker