FAMILY ALBUN: FASHION MEMORIES Paula Linke (USP) paulapivalinke@usp.br Sandra Franchini (UMICESUMAR) sandra.franchini@unicesumar.edu.br Ana Paula Furlan (UMICESUMAR) paulamoda@hotmail.com Abstract: The fashion needs to be thought beyond the borders of consumption, but also in its cultural aspects. Therefore, this paper aims to make an experience report of work done in the classroom, in the discipline of Creation Lab from the Unicesumar Fashion s course. The Family Album assignment seeks to relate the theory of memory and fashion integrating the development of a collection based on family history and reading its story. Keywords: Collection, Fashion, Memory. Introduction To think fashion beyond their relations with production and consumption is fundamentally required to comprehend the importance of this phenomenon in social relations and how it helps in identity construction. However, more than that, to think fashion, relating it to the past, is not only observing clothes, but also histories that are marked by determined moments where clothing takes a fundamental part. The big challenge is to pass around this differential look about fashion to the students from different courses, those whom are willing to study fashion in its most various aspects. Therefore, this text aims to make an experience report of the work done in the classroom, in the discipline of Creation Laboratory from Unicesumar s Fashion Course. The assignment consists on the fabrication of a family album and from this album develop a collection aimed to a specific public. The work provides to the learning process the rescue of memory and the perception of clothing as something meaningful. Therefore, this text divide itself into two theoretical sections. The first one makes a theoretical referential about memory and time and further on the steps of the family album development are described and the relations between theory and practice.
Fashion and Memory: To talk about fashion is not exactly talk about garments, clothing, trends and runaways. Fashion moves within social relations, in the construction of identities and manifests itself in culture. In the same way that fashion and clothing industry were looked as ways to express not only messages, but making part of social relations in a like manner, culture and its practices, does not simply express meanings and values, but like Williams says, are before all things, constituted of social order. This practices and products are not derivative, according to Williams, from a social order that already is established. On the contrary, this practices and products are important elements in its constitution (WILLIAMS apud BARNARD, 2003, p.63). There is therefore, clothing is not only noticed as a product of its time, but as an element that assists in social construction relations, norms and conducts. In this way, clothing is subjected to specific codes referred to time, social group and in the way that it is used. With the term Fashion, understands, specifically, the social phenomenon of the cyclic swift of costumes and habits, from choices and tastes, collectively validated and making it almost obligatory. According to Fashion, the term Costume, in the meaning of constant habit and permanent that determines the behavior, the conduct, the community way of being, of a social group, it referres to the concept of a system, of structure, or in other words, a set of various elements related to each other (CALANCA, 2008, p. 11-12). Fashion does not referrer only and specifically to garments, but to a set of elements that make part of life in society in a determined period. It express itself in a louder way in clothing, and through it, produces a set of signs that express meaningful distinctions. Fashion, like other cultural process, produces meanings, build individual positions and group positions as well, individual and group identities, builds codes that war with each other (VILLAÇA, 2006, p. 24). This process of building distinctive symbols and fashion signs occurs due the action of appropriation of several elements. The Fashion takes over regardless the light signs (fashion, body, object), as for the heavy signs (political, morals, economics, scientific) (VILLAÇA, 2006, p.25). In this way, when it power itself with this elements, there are a series of codes that are transmitted through clothes, codes used to difference itself, indicate the belonging to a group felling, indicate sex, age, social status, occupation, and others. In this current of thinking, clothing constitute an indication of how people in different time sees its position in social structures and negotiate the status boarder (CRANE, 2006, p.21).
The author proceeds claiming that the choices of clothing, reflects the ways for which members of social groups and different other groups with different social levels sees themselves according to the dominant values (CRANE, 2006, p.13). Fashion, through clothing, builds an image of the subject and marks the feeling of belonging or not to a specific group, marks genre, age and social occasions. The social elements that makes part of fashion are not always contemplated. Frequently, its aesthetic content is considered trivial and its social content is seeing as promoter of narcissism and self-contemplation on one side, and the unthinkable consumption of unnecessary needs on the other (CRANE e BUENO, 2011, p.57). This view around fashion must be contemplated, but the phenomenon must be understand within its cultural and social basis, not only related to vanity and consumption. Fashion and clothing, when creates images and messages that are transmitted through the body, reveals social meanings that varies according to the culture and historic time in which the image is created, either in the past or in present. The images of people with their peculiar ways of dressing consists in an huge mutating moving archive, absolutely accessible that can, therefore, serve for several exercises of reading images or practices for creating images (IMAGEMIZAÇÃO) (OLIVERA, 2007, p. 42). The author proceeds affirming that: It s exactly on the image plane that we know much of contemporaneity. For that reason, is required to understand it and recognize its meanings that got so complex such as our society, our way of work, of living, of having fun, and of dressing of course (OLIVEIRA, 2007, p.13). The image becomes an indicative, photography for example, becomes a document to be studied and at the same time a monument to be conserved. A support that maintains much of the memories from ascertained impressed moments, lives and ready to make the viewer remember moments and various facts that writes its self on the image. According to Jacques Le Golf (1994), it is needed to consider photography simultaneously as an image/document and as an image/monument. In the first case, it considers photography as an indicative, as a mark of a past materiality, in which objects, people, places inform us about specific aspects of this past life condition, fashion, urban or country infra-structure, work conditions and etc. In second case, photography is a symbol, in which in the past society established as the only image carefully selected to pass it on to the future.
In the same way, Ana Maria Mauad (1996) alerts that the comprehension of the photographic image, through the reader/addressee is given in two levels: internal to the surface of the visual text, originated from the spatial structures that constitutes such text, a non-verbal one; and external level to the surface of the visual text, originated from approximations and inferences with other texts of the same time, including verbal nature. On this level, it is possible to discover known issues and infer implicit information: When we look at an image, we don t realize it just as its visual structure, we also interpreted it. The image that offers itself for a reading is a way which the text, on which structure moves itself with basic elements such as contrast, color, the volume of the figures and space that involves them (ZANIRATO, 2003, p.216). The image when it is seen with a text gives possibility a wide range of reading, depending of the observer and his baggage. Photography is more than a support for an image, is also a source of memory that maintains present something that happened in the past and allows to relive events, through memories, since the image also stimulates the memory of the observer. To be more direct and clear, we don t have anything better than memory to give meaning to something that happened, occurred; it passed even before we stated that we could even remember it. (RICEUR, 2007, p. 40). In other words, from the moment of the reading of an image or a text, there is also a attribution process of senses. The same occurs with the memory. The individual is always giving meanings to its own memories. Therefore, it s understandable to see memory as an active and continue process of the construction of the past. (SANTOS, 2003, p. 71). The author moves forward affirming that: The argument to be defended is that the memory of the past is not only the memory that can be perceived in its process of construction, because it shows itself many times without being required, shaded, with undefined images, providing the important indication that something was forgotten and it got lost on the process of rememorize (SANTOS, 2003, p.190). The memory permeated through forgetfulness feeds from the past, organize the facts and restructure the memories that comes through various sensory stimuli, such as smells, sounds, images. Today the function of the memory is knowledge of the past that organizes, puts in order time, and locates itself chronologically. (BOSI, 1994, p. 89).
This organization process of the past takes us to the chronology of time, not necessarily to the meaning of things, however, images conserved through photography marks this two process. Time location and a big event to be remembered and eternalized through images support, the photography. The photography records moments and within these moments, we look at specific events that make part of life. In these moments, we look at people, scenarios, landscape, clothing, and other elements that makes the image. For the study of Fashion, not only clothing, but also the occasion, place and the way that it is used is fundamental. Besides that, for the fashion students, to glimpse the differences on clothing details through the years is a required knowledge in order to interpret not only the context that an outfit belongs, but also to understand the readings that comes from clothes from the past. It is required to enhance also the importance of reading a photography, its landscapes, persons, clothing, occasions and other information that makes it what it is. Through photography that records the past, the student must make a cautious study and discover the importance of the clothes, its occasional use, or in other words, find out a little about the meaningful signs of fashion. To enhance this look, the students from the 2th year of Fashion Course from Unicesumar performed the Family Album within the discipline Lab Creation that will be presented next: Family Album: Fashion memories The development of the assignment Family Album has as a goal, the creation of a collection, based on the memories of each student. In this manner, the student must perform a study about his family, which must contemplate the family origins until nowadays. Texts, figures and images must assist within the study in which will be used as a foundation for the collection development. The result is an album composed by two parts. The first one referrer it to the history and the memories of the family, the second part referrer it to the design. Table 1: Family Album Assembly order of the Family álbum 1) Cover.
2) Genealogical tree 3) Brief history of the family genealogy 4) Album papers (with pictures in rising order, the older ones to the more recent ones, and suitable decorations according to the aesthetic of the album cover). 5) Opening paper with the title indicating the collection development 6) Family Photography (copy of a photo of the album 13X18 or 20x25 colorful as a reference to the creation process, amplified and in good resolution. 7) Descriptive memorial of the creational process. 8) Reproduction of all the panels (A4, colorful, photographic paper). Theme. Target audience. Occasion of use. Shapes. Colours Materials. 9) 2 sketches: conceptual look, front and back 10) 12 sketches: comercials Source: Personal archive of the authors This structure allows a wide experimentation of the materials and ideas since the beginning of the development. Another factor is the targeting of the student insight look to the analysis of the images and the comprehension of the symbols present within, such as the conservation of the family memory through the construction of a personal archive, in which the family photographs are recovered through the research of the family history. The album must be handmade, since its cover to the papers that it contains. It can be developed in two sizes, A4 or A3, the choice of the size is student s criteria. As the work is handmade, students must learn to create visual harmony through the decoration and distribution of the information contained in the album. The cover must be handmade, such as the title, the colors and the components involved in the composition of the album. In the image below is possible to visualize the Album from the student Heloisa Gabriela de Souza, in which she developed her work through the composition of old papers shaped as letters. The structure of the album is an envelope of letters and for each page
a letter. The composition was aged using the less of the coffee and decorated with phrases simulating letters. Each page has the shape of an envelope that when it is open reveals its content. Image 1: Cover and the structure of the Family Album. Source: Personal archive of Heloísa Gabriela De Souza, student from Unicesumar Fashion s course. The experimentation process allows the composition of an album unique where the family memories get involved with the design and allow a composition where feelings, histories, shapes and colors come together and reveals the traces of the past. After the foundation of the album is structured, the genealogical tree of the family is made in which can be developed through diagrams or in an artistic way. The intention is that it be the most complete possible and contemplate the senior relatives, such as great-grandmothers, greatgreat-grandmothers from both families, mother and father sides. When searching for the family background to develop the genealogical tree, the student searches in the senior relatives the identification with all the ones that belong to the mother and father side. The next step is to tell the story of the family, where did they come from, trajectory, how they met, etc. The narrative must be brief, but complete. The following step is to assemble the photographic composition of the album. The students must make copies of the family photography s, searching in the grandmothers house, uncles and other family members the most amount of images possible in order to contemplate the majority of the relatives that are announced in the genealogical family tree. In the image below it is observed an artistic genealogical tree and one of the pages of the photographic archive from the family album of Rebeca Lopes Salomão, student of Unicesumar
Fashion s course. The decoration and composition are student s responsibility that must obey the structure given in the table above. Image 2: Genealogical Tree and family archive. Source: Personal archive of Rebeca Lopes Salomão, student of Unicesumar Fashion s Course. It is noticeable in this image the composition of the student s album, in which presents decorative elements more loaded. In the left there is the genealogical tree in which the relatives and its relations are represented. In the right it is observed one of the pages from the personal archive, the decoration is composed by several kind of elements, including the colorful that works as a foundation. The mixture of elements and materials gives the album a visual richness and at the same time visual integration through harmony and in the composition as a whole. The photos that the album contains the archive can be in Black and White and colorful, each page must contain from two to four photographs and the photos must be subtitled. The person, the occasion and the period must be indicated. As the owner of the photos does not always remember the period in which the photography was taken, the students must perform a study of the clothes present in the image and search in History of Brazil s Fashion books, looking to identify at least the decade in which it belongs or a time referential to the image. This process is extremely exhaustive and within is noticeable that marks social events that stay in history. Many times the dates of these events get lost, but the memory tracks time in a different way. The individuals normally record time relating it to an event in his life, before I bought my house, in the time that I had my daughter. Time refers to what is important for the individual and is not always marked chronologically, in dates (PORTELLI, 2002). Time memory s is social,
not only because is the calendar of work and the party, of the politic event and that strange fact, but also because affects in the way of remembering (CHAUÍ, 1994, p.31). To identify the photograph, its time and what happens on it is extremely important, because through the search of memories and family testimonials the students rediscover their history and create their own photographic archive. Memory works with time and the past, but this expressions of time and past are given in different ways. The memory is a work about time, but about the time lived, told by the culture and the individual (BOSI, 2003, p.53). The process of remembering brings back the past, which can be interpreted with the experiences of the present. Memory doesn t show itself like an instance towards the past. We should imagine it like a dynamic relation between the past and the present. The memory is an element rooted in the present (BOLLE, 1984, p.13). What catches more attention is that in the composition of the album, is that the construction of the archive brings facts and events unknown to the students for which they access the family memory of the elders. Therefore, it is up to enhance the individual memory, although the subject possess a series of memories, to evoke his past, it has frequent need to make an appeal the memory of others (HALBWACHS, 2004, p.58). In this way students, unable to remember clearly certain facts search refugee in the memories of other people, their dads, grandmothers, uncles and other relatives. The composition of the archive it is student s criteria in which it must be from the older photo to the more recent one, including himself in the photos and his current family, parents, brothers, sons. In these photos are also a reading process, many students put in one single page images of weddings in the same decade, birthdays, moments that marked a passage of their lives. Just as Le Goff (1994) affirms, it is necessary to consider photography simultaneously image/document and image/monument; as image/document due the reference that makes with the past and as a symbol of the moment to be conserved in the memory. It is required to highlight that many of the images referrer it to rituals of passages, wedding celebrations, engagements, 15 th yeah birthday and other meaningful moments on the subject s life and for each moment, clothing was picked cautiously. It is necessary to pay attention that: Body look appears like it is, not just like a sub product of social life, the combined effect of various structural and cultural determinisms, but as a fount and fundamental bet in the socialization dynamic. It can be considered as an imaginary and mystic instance, in the measure that reveals a relation between
the individual and the world, between the individual and others, between the individuals and society (CIDREIRA, 2005, p.111). Through this composition, besides having access to the memories of the family, the student enhances his own look for the different roles that clothing and fashion represent in the society. Therefore, the student starts to see what actually means to get dressed and how that changed throughout time and his own history and his mom memories, for instance, that tells with details the importance of the moment recorded through the photography, how the outfit was and the emotion that felt when she got dressed with it. If we admit that getting dressed is about covering someone else s body, and that the outfit with the particular choice for a private use, it is possible to deduct that getting dressed depends primarily on physical conditions such as weather and health, and the textile manufacturing shows that the garment reflects social factors such as religion beliefs, aesthetic, personal status, the willing of being different, or the willing of emulate his similar (BOUCHER apud VIANA, 2011, p.01). When the student develops this step, the student itself has his ability of looking enhanced and his sensibility, he also comprehends in clearer way that the designer s role is not only to draw clothes, but also to create dreams, because many times the object/clothes becomes an object of desire in which a specific dream becomes true, like a wedding dress for example. After the photographic composition, it begins the development of the collection. This is another step of the work and demands a separation, the students must make a marked division in the album establishing a new work phase. After the division, the students must choose a photography from the album as source of inspiration for the collection s development. The chosen photography must be amplified and laid in the center of the page. From these image a text must be elaborated, a descriptive memorial, explaining of what the picture is about, the emotions present in it, what it causes to the observer, the colors, textures, materials, scenarios, clothes, and people. In the memorial it must be explained how the student intends to work these information in his own collection. The students must perform a detailed study of the image composition, make a reading and transport to the paper all the information. This study demands, once again, the way back to the family roots of this past through the composition of a photographic archive in which a collection is created.
In the picture below, it is possible to see the pages from Rebeca Lopes Salomão s Album. It observes the choice for the inspirational photo, a wedding photo, which represents a rituals passage and one of the sketches developed by her, after the elaboration of all the panels with inspiration on this photo. Image 3: Photo of inspiration and sketch Source: Rebeca Lopes Salomão s personal archive, student of Unicesumar Fashion s course. After this study, which actually is the theme of the collection, it begins the composition of the panels. The first panel to be developed is the theme; all the study was performed around the chosen picture must be transported in images through a theme panel that reflects the ideas of the descriptive memorial. After the development of this panel, it is required to think on the target audience and in the occasion of use of the clothes to be developed for the target audience. The composition of these panels is student s criteria, such as the shape s panel. The color panels are made based on the theme from which the colors are extracted. The material panels goes with the same logic; the intention is to search for textures and fabrics that are connected to the theme panel, creating a visual harmony. After the conclusion of the panels, it begins the collection s creation. Primarily the students must develop two conceptual sketches and from them develop a commercial collection formed by twelve models. Finishing the practical part of the discipline, one of the conceptual looks must be manufactured for a fashion show. After it is done, the photograph of the dress/garments must be part of the album as a closure. With the finishing of the album, the student possess in his hands a family archive rich in photos and at the same time a design work, where the family history, the memory and fashion dialogs to remember the family paths.
Final considerations More than just create a discussion about the memory and its theories, this paper searches to present some practical applications of the knowledge within. The assignment Family Album related to memory, fashion, the reading of the image and to the design is an exercise that increases the ability of the student to look to other fashion s perceptions. It was contemplated in this brief narrative the relation of the memory, the fashion, and the photography as an image and how it can be explored in the classroom. The memory related to the past and the experiences lived that stays in the photographic images permits various readings of the past, readings about the cultural look, the clothing, the genre, anyway, it permits an infinity of use and studies that allows the student to comprehend the past. One of the fashion related use of this work, in which the student forces himself to enhance his look about clothing, the occasions and their importance through their own history reveals a universe on which design takes over. On comprehending the occasions of use and the people that use them and how they do it, the students amplifies their look to the development of collections because they do this experimentation throughout the whole assembling of the family album, amplifying its own sensibility and at the same time recovering, through the search of images and memories, the history of his own beginning. References: Books BARNARD, Malcolm. Moda e comunicação. Rio de Janeiro: Rocco, 2003. BOLLE, Willi. Cultura, patrimônio e preservação. Texto I In: ARANTES, Antônio Augusto. Produzindo o passado: estratégias de construção do patrimônio cultural. São Paulo: Brasiliense, 1984. BOSI, Ecléa. Memória e sociedade: lembranças de velhos. 3º Ed. São Paulo: Companhia das letras, 1994. BOSI, Ecléa. O tempo vivo da memória. SP: Ateliê editorial, 2003. CALANCA, Daniela. História social da Moda. São Paulo: SENAC, 2008.
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