(RE)THINKING FASHION GLOBALIZATION
Seminar co-organized by
The Transboundary Fashion Seminar &
the Research Collective for Decolonizing Fashion
Bunka Gakuen University Tokyo
15-16 February 2019
There are few histories as entangled as ‘global fashion’ in terms of crafting identities, negotiating change, developing technologies and making communities. Diverse ‘world’ fashion histories have often remained largely undocumented, outside of global fashion histories, or framed as traditional, ethnic and/or unchanging; that is, stereotyped and stigmatized as non-fashion. This has meant that the social, political, historical and contextual ‘global’ narratives of these ‘other’ fashion histories have been excluded from global fashion discourses.
Too often, these fashion systems—perceived of as outside the dominant global fashion city networks—are seen to have only recently earned their rights to join a global fashion discourse, mainly due to socio-economic changes that have created a convergence with the West, and/or through their successful engagement with fashion as both consumers and producers. It is crucial to refrain from thinking that this has suddenly emerged in the past few decades as the result of globalization and the growth of new middle classes.
‘Fashion globalization’ too often refers to European fashion trends that have been adopted by the rest of the world due to processes of globalization, and generally ignores the large diversity of fashion systems around the globe in their own right, with their own histories and global connections. Fashion globalization, as it has come to be understood, frequently perpetuates Eurocentric biases in fashion discourse on a wider geographical stage. The seminar ‘Rethinking Fashion Globalization’ aims to explore processes of de-globalization, as much as it calls for new interpretations of global(ised) fashion.
The Seminar will include papers from any discipline and perspective that help to rethink theories of fashion globalization as well as papers that consider the alternate and multiple languages of fashion globalization. Panel strands include, but are not limited to:
Redrawing the Map
- when fashion moves between centres and peripheries
- fashion boundaries and borders are broken
- migration and its new modernities
- shifting long-held perceptions of fashion
Rewriting Narratives
- when and where and how new sartorial languages are used
- where and when new values are inscribed into fashion histories
- how histories are rescripted
Rethinking Fashion Discourse
- when fashion is inclusive, diverse and decentred
- how decolonial aesthetics are shifting global aesthetics
- sustainability, local economy and craft revivals an new micro-narratives
The Transboundary Fashion Seminar (TFS) was founded in 2014 by “Scientific Research on Transboundary Contemporary Japanese Fashion” (JSPS KAKENHI Grant 26370177, 2014-2016, Prof.Yoko Takagi of Bunka Gakuen University) and continues by “Research for Building Theories on Transboundary Fashion and for Promoting International Collaboration” (JSPS KAKENHI Grant 17K02382, 2017-2019). Since the 1980s, fashion has become a medium used to express individuality and, beyond the realm of clothing design, has deployed itself in various art forms. When we look at the process from production to consumption, a new cultural expression is being created when crossing national and regional borders. In this context, TFS consists of a number of collaborative seminars. Each time, a theme will be decided upon which focuses on “transboundary” aspects of fashion, inviting a variety of experts, academics, designers, curators, journalists, industrial professionals and students from home and abroad, to accumulate case studies and to form a global research exchange.
The Research Collective for Decolonizing Fashion (RCDF; formerly known as the Non-Western Fashion Conference) was established in 2012 to disrupt fashion discourse beyond the stubbornly persistent Eurocentric and ethnocentric underpinnings of dominant fashion discourse and to construct alternative narratives. The RCDF recognizes that fashion systems are diverse, span world cultures, and have long histories. It engages with critical investigation and dialogue into that often denied, forgotten or otherwise hidden diversity, as it explores interconnections among fashion systems outside the dominant fashion cities. It approaches diverse fashion systems around the world through multidisciplinary and multicultural forums and seeks through its research new critical paradigms within cross-cultural perspectives.
The TFS and RCDF propose that this themed seminar and publication will centre on new definitions, debates and approaches to an ‘old’ topic, acting as a reflection and refraction of what ‘fashion globalisation’ means. In this way, we consider redrawing maps, rewriting narratives, and rethinking ‘fashion’ as inclusive, diverse, multilingual, and decentred for a truly global fashion shift.
Download the seminar’s booklet here including the programme and abstracts
PROGRAMME
Friday 15 February 2019
9h00 – 9h30 Registration (c building 4th floor)
9h30 – 10h00 Welcome and introductions
10h00 – 11h00 Panel I: Global/Local
Moderator: Angela Jansen
Location: room C041
Yoko Takagi & Saskia Thoelen
Kimono Migrating Across Boarders: A Preliminary Study into the Discovery of Wasō Culture Outside of Japan
Kyoko Koma
Discourses of Several Actors on Globalising Non-Western Kawaii Fashion in the 21st Century
11h00 – 11h30 Coffee
11h30 – 12h30 Panel II: Global/Local (continued)
Moderator: Toby Slade
Location: room C041
Angela Jansen
‘Tribalization or the End of Globalization’: Rethinking Cultural Homogenization Through Fashion Globalization
Harriette Richards
Melancholia at the Margins: Place and History in the Fashion of Aotearoa New Zealand
12h30 – 13h30 Lunch
13h30 – 14h30 Visit Kimono Exhibition at the University Museum
14h30 – 15h30 Panel III: Mapping Fashion
Moderator: Kyoko Koma
Location: Room F48
Sarah Cheang and Elizabeth Kramer
East Asian Global Connections and Fashion Histories
Jenny Hughes
Body Mapping: Cross Cultural Influences in the Studio
15h30 – 16h00 Coffee
16h00 – 17h00 Panel IV: Mapping Fashion (continued)
Moderator: Sarah Cheang
Location: Room F48
Daan van Dartel
Surinamese Kotomisi: Multiple Identities of Fashion
Abby Lillethun and Linda Welters
Coats and Trousers: Redrawing the Map to Rescript the Narrative
Saturday 16 February 2019
9h30 – 10h30 Panel V: Fashion Systems
Moderator: Angela Jansen
Location: room C041
Chepkemboi J Mang’ira
#OWNYOURCULTURE – Decolonizing Fashion Through Traditional Jewelry
Osuanyi Quaicoo Essel & Malika Kraamer
Dress Fashion Posters in Consumer Fashion Choices and Preferences in Ghana
10h30 – 11h00 Coffee
11h00 – 12h00 Panel VI: Fashion Systems (continued)
Moderator: Sheila Cliffe
Location: room C041
Yuniya Kawamura
Ethnic Dress Styles as New Sustainable Luxury
Katalin Medvedev
Once Again, Politics Wraps Budapest Fashion Scene in a Shroud
12h00 – 13h00 Lunch
13h00 – 14h00 Panel VII: Migration
Moderator: Sarah Cheang
Location: room C041
Deirdre Clemente
“Our Clothes Told Everyone Where We Were From”: Nineteenth-Century Immigration, Ethnicity, and the Changing Language of Dress
Courtney Fu
Negotiating Identities: Fashions of Nyonyas (Straits Chinese Women) in Early 20th Century Singapore
14h00 – 14h30 Coffee
14h30 – 15h30 Panel VIII: Global Design Practice
Moderator: Yoko Takagi
Location: room C041
Jose Teunissen (by Skype)
State of Fashion: Searching for the New Luxury. Imagination, Sustainability, Embodied Practice, Craft Revival, New Narratives
Hazel Clark and Alla Eizenberg
Making the Ordinary Fashionable: New Sartorial Languages from Russia and China
15h30 – 16h00 Coffee
16h00 – 18h00 Final roundup discussion and book discussion
Moderator: Toby Slade
Location: room C041
18h00 Dinner
Research Collective for Decoloniality & Fashion 
Leave a comment