Parsons The New School for Design, New York, October 2012 From open source branding to collaborative clothing Zoe Romano @zoescope @openwear_cc
May 08, 2015
Parsons The New School for Design, New York, October 2012
From open source branding to collaborative clothing
Zoe Romano@zoescope
@openwear_cc
PRECARITYis a term of everyday usage as
Precariedad, Precariedade, Précarité, or Precarietà
in a number of European countries.
It refers to the widespread condition of temporary, flexible, contingent, casual,
intermittent work in postindustrial societies.
What happens in Milano
Milano is the city in Italy with the lowest unemployment rate
Most of young people work in two main sectors
- SERVICE SECTOR - CREATIVE SECTOR
Service Industry Call CenterChainstoresPubsCatering/FairsHostess...
“Shit job”
Creative Industries
PressFashionDesignAdvertisingEvents
“My career”
6
“I’m a designer but I pay my rent working in a call center.”
“Im a journalist and I work in a pub to pay my bills”
“I earn 800 a month, work 10 hours a day. It’s fun and the money is enough. Ah, by the way... I live with my parents.”
Main ChallengesHow can we
- talk to the network of atomized workers- challenge the institutional actors (companies, chamber of fashion)
- become visible in the mainstream communication
during the main fashion event in Italy?
Precarity in the Fashion System
‣freelance‣micro-enterprises‣temp workers‣interns
SERPICA NAROis the anagram ofSAN PRECARIO
L’azione
Operation: Serpica Naro
Creation of the virtual subject
Activation of its antagonist
Channel of communication
www.Settimana
dellamoda.it
San Precario VS Serpica Naro
Entering Official Calendar of Fashion Week
Sometimes Fake means being more real than real
Sometimes Fake means being more real than real
Q: You said that you design the design, what does that mean? A: I design everything, when I wake up or when I sleep. It is a sort of perfectionism, I suppose. Even people who work for me need to let themselves be designed, there is no way around it. Design is no longer just the making of clothes, or products, even the creation of lifestyles is already outdated, not nearly enough. Today we create our own universes.
The Catwalk
Oh! We have a Trademark
Brand built to appeal
Values Cultural mix - Controversy -
Elitistic
Brand as symbolic apparatus to gather relations toward
consumer culture
Brand expressing who is nurturing it
ValuesSharing - Social innovation - Flexicurity not precarity - Alternative economies
Brand as tool to promote new values in society
What to do next
The brand creates value - how can we re-destribute it?
Over-production of creative workers - Which alternative can we build?
We lost skills - What’s the real value of garments?
Johanna Blakley
‣ Trademark Protection‣ Induced Obsolescence
Negative externalities:work and environment
2010
The Fashion System: a polarization
Big Brands Fast Fashion
A new trend: the rise of DIY and the makers scene
A brand made o empower a network of small producers and promote a different kind of fashion based on collaboration, sharing, short supply chain and else.
A Metabrand is not a Certification
A Metabrand is a bottom-up brand created buy a peer-reviewed network of small creators and
consumers who produce value for the brand and benefit from it at the same time
EDUfashion network was formed by: Poper (Slovenia), Ethical Economy (UK), Università Statale Milano (IT), Copenhagen Business School (DM), Fashion University (Slovenia)
★ Research on the Open Design and p2p fashion
★ Prototyping the community in 2010
2009 Let’s go EU application
★ Building and online and offline community to share knowledge, find support and collaborators to define a new model for crafts.
3 shared resources
★ A series of Collaborative collection with an open-source brand
★ Prototypes freely downloadable which members can produce and sell, benefiting from the social innovation created within the community.
Openwear is an open-source brand
★ A collective brand made open-source by a license
★ The pattern and the logo become a common of the community
http://vimeo.com/16541497
- Download
- Produce
- Customize
- Label with Openwear
Key point of experimentation
• Define the networked artisan as a new worker
fashion designer ------->networked artisan<------------ crafter/artisan
(highly immaterial) (highly material)
• Brand Open Source Copyright (Creative Commons License, GPL, etc.),
• Manufacturing becomes a distributed process (makers/manufacturers)
• Copy as a legitimate resource Fashion doesn’t protect the technical specification of the garments.
• The online community as a new Public Space
• Enterprise goes social: Social goals are primary, business is a way to achieve them
What about quality?Peer-reviewed Network
NETWORKED ARTISANS/STUDENTS/CONSUMERS
LOCAL HUBS(social enterprises)
EDU INSTITUTIONS(universities, schools,
learning centers)Suppliers
The new role of the freelance designer: she inhabits the global spaces of online communities and shares locally projects and infrastructures
Fablab: a place to make almost anything
How would it be a fablab for fashion?
• Seasonal collection
• Single supply purchase
• Selling in shops
• Building a fashion house
• University training
• Catalogue of items with no expiration date
• Group Purchase
• Online and offline collective shop
• Creating a mix of skills(to teach, work in collaborative projects)
• Continuous and informal training
YESTERDAY TODAY AND TOMORROW
How would if it was focused on open hardware?
Making it together is better than making yourself
‣ OPENWEAR.ORG
Twitter: openwear_ccFacebook: openwear
zoe romano @zoescope
THANK YOU!