Global Fashion & Design

About

Paris has been the self-proclaimed world fashion capital for more than three-hundred years. Fashion is essentially a phenomenon of the modern city and Paris constituted the perfect stage for its spectacle. This city has influenced the very notion of fashion itself, but also global aesthetic codes, and the way we consume and wear garments. Paris and its fashion myth have been instrumental in the development of a global fashion system. The relationship between this “fashion city” and its global context forms the subject of this course.

Behind the glamour of Paris fashion lays a highly complex globalised system of fashion, which will be explored via seven basic pillars: extraction, design, production, representation, consumption, wearing and disposal – the forgotten pillar. We will consider the correlations between these elements without which this system and essentially the processes of fashion cannot be understood. The starting point for this exploration is Paris, the modern capital of fashion per se, which we will investigate and question in relation to global fashion. How are Paris as a fashion city and its key figure La Parisienne discursively constructed? How are fashionable commodities produced, mediated, consumed – and what happens to them once they have gone out of fashion? How has the system of textiles and fashion changed in recent years – both in Paris and globally? What impact has its altered dimensions had on the bodies that work within the industry and those wearing and living with its products? These questions will be analysed in lectures, seminars, research projects and exhibition visits, and by making extensive use of film in addition to other visual media and textual sources.

Course leader

Paris and its fashion myth have been instrumental in the development of a global fashion system. The relationship between this “fashion city” and its global context forms the subject of this course.