Creative Process Journal: Links

When I discovered this beautiful ultramarine blue bodice in an unmarked bin in the Ryerson Fashion Research Collection on Friday afternoon, I wanted to clap my hands with glee. The brilliance of the colour captivated me. Although it shows signs of stress and the inevitable decay, the colour has not faded at all. In fact, it looks almost as brilliant as this JCrew Schoolboy blazer that I purchased a few weeks ago for my back to school wardrobe. How uncanny is that?

Judith Clark said that: "Curating, though its ruthless selection inevitably creates new patterns of chronology.... It also encourages us to read time backwards, to read it from where we are standing, always in the present, acknowledging that this is our perspective" (162). Could this the connection I'm looking for - the part that makes the project relevant, fresh and alive?

It also brings to mind Walter Benjamin's concept of "Tigersprung", fashion's leap into the past to be reborn anew. In his work on Passangenarbeit otherwise known as The Arcades Project, Benjamin wrote "Fashion has the scent of the modern whenever it stirs in the thicket of what has been. It is the tiger's leap into the past" (qtd. in Lehmann 241).

This happenstance discovery feels like a metaphysical leap that expresses the eternal within the transient. Benjamin would describe that feeling as "Chock" - the "sudden realization of materialization of the metaphysical element in the world" (qtd. in Lehmann 227).

References:

de la Haye, Amy and Judith Clark. "One Object: Multiple Interpretations". Fashion Theory 12.2 (2008):  137-170. Print.

Lehmann, Ulrich. "Tigersprung: Fashion in Modernity". MIT Press: Cambridge, 2000. Print.

Creative Process Journal: Curation and Obsessions

From a curatorial perspective, finding a narrative from among the hundreds of dresses in the Ryerson Fashion Research Collection that come from different donors and span over a century of fashion history is a challenge. 

Garments represent important artifacts of material culture, giving evidence of the fashions and social history of a period. Museologist Susan Pearce describes the way objects can reflect our identity: "Objects hang before the eyes of the imagination, continuously representing ourselves to ourselves and telling the stories of our lives in ways which would be impossible otherwise" (qtd. in de la Haye 12). 

Clothing is material memory, carrying the marks and imprint of its wearer. Quentin Bell described clothing as being so much part of one’s identity that “it is as though the fabric were indeed a natural extension of the body, or even of the soul” (qtd. in Dant 85). The clothing that is kept beyond its fashionable life often has “symbolic qualities” and holds “personal memories” for the owner (de la Haye 14). In a poetic essay by Peter Stallybrass entitled “Worn Worlds: Clothes, Mourning and the Life of Things”, the author describes how the clothes of his late colleague Allon White triggered sensory memories. “He was there in the wrinkles of the elbows, wrinkles that in the technical jargon of sewing are called ‘memory’; he was there in the stains at the very bottom of the jacket; he was there in the smell of the armpits” (36). 

            If I draw on my obsessions as suggested by curator Maria Luisa Frisa, those centre on the traces of the former owners of these garment within the archive itself. Very few pieces have any associated photos or letters, making those that do have fragments of their history as evidence take on even greater importance, especially as some of them are extremely fragile. In my work, I've discovered: the wedding dress worn by Mary Suddon for her wedding in 1955 to Alan Suddon, an important collector of historical costume in Toronto, along with a box of bodices and gowns from the late nineteenth century donated to the collection by Alan Suddon; a set of three gowns designed in Paris and worn to the coronation of King George V; and, a Balmain gown labeled “Marie Antoinette” c.1957 donated by socialite Somer Rosenberg. 

There are also many historic pieces from the turn of the century that lack provenance but which bare traces of their former owners, in the faint stains of sweat under the arms, in the worn patches on the elbows, and in the shreds of silk that threaten to disintegrate into dust.  Yet there is a haunting beauty emanating from these pieces, an uncanny reminder of the former owners. 

Curator Judith Clark's reference to the "double loss of life" in terms of "the garment without its body, and the garment out of sight, embedded within an archive" (from The Concise Dictionary of Dress which has no page numbers) haunts me. In fashion exhibitions, the viewer almost never sees the archive. Garments are typically presented in a pristine state and evidence of the wearer, in terms of stains, rips or tears, would make a garment ineligible for display. 

It is this gap that excites me. The first time I went behind the scenes in a museum, at the musée de la Mode de la Ville de Paris in Paris,  my heart literally pounded in my chest as treasures in storage were revealed to me. Only a small fraction of a museum's collection can be made visible to the public. And now when I examine an unmarked bin in the archives or can share a garment to a student related to their research as part of my job as Collection Co-ordinator, I get that same heady frisson of excitement. This is what I want to share in an exhibition.... 

Dant, Tim. Material Culture in the Social World. Philadelphia: Open University Press, 1999. Print.

De La Haye, Amy. A Family of Fashion: The Messels: Six Generations of Dress. Eds. Lou Taylor and Eleanor Thompson. London: Philip Wilson Publishers, 2005. Print.

Stallybrass, Peter. "Worn Worlds: Clothes, Mourning and the Life of Things." The Yale Review 81.2 (1993): 35-50. Print.

Creative Process Journal: Weekly Reflection

This past week, I've been documenting some of my reading on curatorial process, teasing out the fragments of how curators come up with exhibition ideas. It might not seem like creative work, but it is part of my practice-led research project called Memories of a Dress. Using the Ryerson Fashion Research Collection, I am exploring the idea that a garment has a object biography and a memory of its former owner.  

Practice-led research focuses on the "the nature of practice and leads to new knowledge that has operational significance for that practice." From what I can tell, there seems to be a gap in knowledge about the process of how fashion curation takes place. The articles in scholarly journals only offer hints at how curators come up with their ideas and unless I've missed something altogether, this process seems to be largely private. In undertaking this work here, I am making my process transparent  and thereby adding to the advancement of knowledge about curatorial practice. 

If I could, I would mount Memories of a Dress in a space that is raw, with exposed brick and pipes.  This wounded setting would be fitting to convey the idea of decay and that a garment has an end-life, just as its owner does/did. Unfortunately, the School of Fashion does not have a dedicated exhibition gallery and so the end result will be largely conceptual, with the possibility of selected pieces and images being presented offsite. 

In handling the rare and fragile historic pieces within the collection, I am haunted by the traces of the owners - the faint sweat stains under the arms, the worn patches at the elbows, the shreds of weighted silk that have literally turned to dust. There is such poignancy in these pieces. They are still beautiful, but not to a pristine, museum-like standard. 

As I deal with past and present donors as part of my job as Collection Coordinator, I am also sensitive to the emotional nature of such transactions. There is great delicacy required when a donor offers pieces from his or her wardrobe. Giving up a garment that holds memories of a special time, event, or person requires a willingness to let go of that tangible connection. And because of that, the act of accepting or rejecting that item for a collection requires great tact and diplomacy. 

My own experiences with death, tragedy and grief gives me a heightened sensitivity to the symbolic nature of the embodiment of memory in clothing. In the back of my closet, I keep my father's Fedora, four of my mother's dresses, my brother Peter's tie. I have nothing from my husband's father, my sister-in-law Carrie, or my dear friends Brian, Joe, or Diana, but I wish I did. Although I have transcended my grief, I cannot part with these objects and I am only too keenly aware of the delicate dance I play with potential donors. I am acutely sensitive, with a radar to grief, since I have taken that journey far too many times relative to my age. 

Dealing with donor requests taxes curators who are already stretched by tight budgets. I happened to across a written reference to the emotional nature of this work in an article by N.J. Stevenson called "The Fashion Retrospective" from Fashion Theory. In analyzing curator Amy de la Haye's work she wrote:

Reflecting a moment in time has become one of the central precepts of de la Haye's work. She found that interviews with members of the public offering donations to the museum could mean dealing with profound emotion and grief that was precipitated by the associations that garments had for them (230). 

In sharing the nature of my curatorial obsessions, this project makes me feel vulnerable and exposed. And yet, I know that in mining the nature of my obsession and documenting my process for this practice-led research, the end result will be richer and deeper.

For Further Reading on the nature of Practice-led vs. Practice-based Research:
http://www.creativityandcognition.com/research/practice-based-research/differences-between-practice-based-and-practice-led-research/ 

References:
Stevenson, N.J., "The Fashion Retrospective". Fashion Theory 12.2 (2008) 219-236. 

Creative Process Journal: Curation and Judith Clark continued

Judith Clark's curatorial work is so rich and so vibrant that I want to read anything I can find about her process. Although the article One Object: Multiple Interpretations (co-written with Amy de la Haye) is about a mass produced women's coat/uniform worn by the British Women's Land Army during WWII, there are fragments of her general curatorial philosophy when she writes:  It is fitting singular objects into historical continuums and possible future stories that endlessly capture my imagination. Quite simply what stands next to what and where does it stand within an infinitely renewable curatorial grammer? (159).

Clark also points out that late Diana Vreeland "very astutely identified" that the exhibition viewer had to identify with the object in some way and make a connection between "finding something desirable and finding something interesting" (159). She goes on to ask: "is curating about the clarity of connections, and if so, how are these made visual or literal? How can objects be presented as a way into different stories?" (160).

I did not see this exhibition about WLA coats from WWII and it might sound rather droll, but Judith Clark finds patterns and connections that leap off the page.  Drawing on Freud's work The Interpretation of Dreams, Clark presents the idea of a uniform as a denial of difference and symbolic of a disguise. She also makes connections to Alexander McQueen's dress-coat from Autumn Winter 2001/2002 and stylistic references to Coco Chanel's design for a coat from 1917. There is a dialogue between the past and present, invoking a non-linear exploration of time. She says "Curating, though its ruthless selection inevitably creates new patterns of chronology.... It also encourages us to read time backwards, to read it from where we are standing, always in the present, acknowledging that this is our perspective" (162).

Clark's words give me much to think about. Whenever I enter the Ryerson Fashion Research Collection, I step back in time, feeling the presence of the women who wore the garments that are entrusted into my care. How do I give them a voice, when in so many cases their stories have not been captured, leaving only the marks, stains and signs of wear that suggest a living body? What is the connection that links them as objects of embodied memory? 

References:

de la Haye, Amy and Judith Clark. "One Object: Multiple Interpretations". Fashion Theory 12.2 (2008):  137-170. Print.