The digitalization of cultural heritage has become an increasingly common practice among museums and online organizations. Many heritage digitalization projects are driven by an approach called ‘sharing is caring’; that is, the purpose of digitalization is accessibility, making what is considered to be valuable cultural heritage an accessible resource for everyone, while stimulating identity production and sympathy for that heritage. The digitalization of fashion heritage can be seen as part of this movement. In recent years, Europeana Fashion (launched in 2015) and the Google Cultural Institute’s Google Arts and Culture project, We Wear Culture (launched in 2017), have become major online platforms for the distribution of fashion heritage. The aim of the present article is to explore and understand how fashion heritage is performed by these two online initiatives and what constitutes fashion heritage in this context. The article is based on an explorative analysis of the two digital sites, interviews with the managers of each initiative, as well as insights from existing studies of cultural heritage and digitalization.
This article discusses the mobilization of the nation for fashion, based on how the relationship between fashion and nation unfolds in the case of fashion design practice and the fashion industry in Denmark. The otherwise globalized fashion industry is equally involved in what I term “catwalking the nation,” both as a way to construct a cosmopolitan nationalist discourse for the post-industrial nation and as a strategy for local fashion industries to promote collective identity in order to strengthen potential market share, which is the focus of this article. What may at first appear in the Danish case as an absurd and non-productive relationship is actually significant, I would argue, despite its complexity. It has the potential to stimulate critical fashion design practice and give fashion designers a voice, allowing them to take an active part in contemporary public debates on important issues such as nationalism and cosmopolitanism in the age of globalization
With their association to enterprise and innovation, creative industries have emerged as a legitimate concern in national cultural and economical policy in many countries across the world. In Denmark, the fashion business, in particular, has been hailed as a model for successful (post)industrial transformation. In this paper, we explore the birth of Danish fashion from the ashes of the country’s clothing manufacturing industry, suggesting that the very notion of Danish fashion is indicative of – and enabled by – a development towards a polycentric fashion system. The intriguing idea that fashion could emanate from Denmark and secure growth, jobs and exports even outside the fashion business has taken hold among policymakers, and compelled the government to embrace fashion as a national project. In investigating the emergence and rising stature of Danish fashion, particular at home, we first establish a theoretical frame for understanding the cultural economic policy and the motives, principles and strategies behind it. Then – drawing inspiration from Michel Callon’s “sociology of translation” with its moments of translation: problematization, interessement, enrolment and mobilization – we identify the actors and analyze their strategic roles and interrelationship through various phases of the development of Danish fashion. Callon’s actor network theory (ANT) is based on the principle of “generalized symmetry” – originally using a single repertoire to analyze both society and nature. We adapt this principle to study the realms of market, culture and politics within a common analytical framework. In our analysis, the state responds to industry transformation, interprets it and develops its own agenda. But it can hardly be said to develop policies for the industry. On the contrary, we suggest, fashion is mobilized to lend its luster to the nation, its institutions and politicians
The major part of this issue of Fashion Practice derives from a selection of the papers presented at the conference on the emerging topic of "fashion thinking" that took place at the University of Southern Denmark in 2014. These papers were selected following a call for papers and double blind peer review process. The editorial summary by the conference organisers, and guest editors of this special themed issue, provides the full context for this publication. We would like to thank Trine Brun Petersen, Maria Mackinney-Valentin and Marie Riegels Melchior for their work in preparing this edition of Fashion Practice. In addition, as general editors we have included two further Editorial 2 manuscripts that relate directly to the themes and topics emerging from the Fashion Thinking conference: a paper by Yinqing Zhang and Oskar Jhulin looking at fashion thinking in relation to mobile phone design, and a commentary by Kevin Almond on the role and status of pattern cutting practices within fashion research, complementing his coauthored paper from the conference (with Steve Swindells) "Sculptural Thinking in Fashion". We believe the articles in this issue contribute to some creative rethinking about fashion.
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