Fashion archive fervour: the critical role of fashion archives in preserving, curating, and narrating fashion

Fashion items and artefacts across the 19th and 20th centuries were once considered unworthy of placement in museums and archives on account of their perishable nature and their association with the shallow pleasures of low culture. The perceived fragile and ephemeral nature of fashion garments and accessories has been reevaluated with material objects now considered worth saving for multiple purposes and uses. Awareness of the high social, cultural, economic, and historic value of physical fashion relics has resulted in the trend for fashion designers, brands, and museums to collate, create, and manage fashion archives. The article analyses the importance for both industry and consumer of preserving and accessing fashion archives in the 21st century in both digital and traditional ways. It highlights the benefits of collating a holistic multi-modal archive by combining material and textual cultural objects in various forms to portray and contextualize the lived social experience. A case study will analyse a selected educational fashion archive based in postcolonial Hong Kong. The contemporary fashion archive’s role is evaluated from the perspective of archivist and user regarding contested issues such as commercialization, curatorial objectivity, or controlled access, while evaluating future directions for the fashion archive as ultimate style repository

Reaching for the Sun, Moon and Stars: Experiencing Fashion Retail in the Neighbourhood in Hong Kong

The relationship between fashion and the city is founded on symbiotic assumptions representing and symbolising modernity in constructing and exploring urban identity. Manifestations of this situation are apparent in the way that fashion is played out globally in city spaces and places through an endless cycle of creation, dissolution and recreation of experiential retail space in new forms of urbanism. This dynamic process also operates on micro and macro levels, as clothing envelops the body in its material layering in the same way that urban buildings contain bodies within their frame. Both fashion and architectural spaces negotiate boundaries between public and private spaces while delineating identities in their broader societal locations. Consequently, this paper examines fashion retail through the lens of constructing and engaging with the consumer experience within a particular Hong Kong neighbourhood recently gentrified and rebranded. A case study approach is adopted featuring a grounded analysis of a selected retail zone in Hong Kong’s Star, Sun and Moon Street precinct. The analysis is based on interpretive interviews with situated retailers examining how constructed spaces are imagined and experienced when facilitating experiential value. This occurs in the combined process of place-making and selling fashion from physical, material, aesthetic, symbolic and perceptual angles and by employing sensory, experiential cues to generate participation and proximity. It further questions the generic effectiveness of sensory, experiential drivers in locating and engaging the beneficiaries of infrastructural and cultural imaginaries for fashion-based retail.</p

Transforming Sustainable Fashion in a Decolonial Context: The Case of Redress in Hong Kong

While the Global South is currently the dominant area of fashion production, there are increasing pressures to tackle sustainability issues, including environmental degradation, waste, employment exploitation, negative human impact and excess consumerism directed from the Global North. This article approaches the issue of sustainable fashion from a decolonial perspective focusing on attempts to reverse the mixed messages, counterproductive interventions, and often contradictory efforts to transform garment production and the fashion system into a more sustainable and ethical industry. Based on in-depth interviews with the NGO personnel and a thematic analysis of promotional materials, this case study interrogates Hong Kong based NGO Redress’ social marketing efforts based on events and mediated communication messages and content to promote sustainable fashion practices for producers and consumers in encouraging the reduction of garment and textile waste across the supply and consumption chain. The article evaluates attempts to transform sustainable fashion mind-sets and behaviors in post-colonial Hong Kong with the intention of ascertaining the impact of such approaches when implementing more sustainable practices and in determining their relevance for fashion players in the Global North.</p

Creative Cross-cultural Connections: Facebook as a Third Space for International Collaborations

Abstract: As industries are increasingly globalized, our students’ future workplaces require facility with cross-cultural collaboration, yet curricula often remain situated within the home culture. This chapter presents a qualitative case study on a collaborative project between students in London, Hong Kong, and Singapore. An overview of the process is given drawing on the experiences of the teachers and students involved, informing a discussion around the issues inherent in the internationalization of the curriculum. Tutors created a shared private Facebook group to connect London College of Fashion students with students at City University Hong Kong and LASALLE College of the Arts Singapore. Students worked on separate but aligned briefs that mirror contemporary working patterns and allowed co-creation of educational experiences beyond the geographic and time constraints of working internationally, specifically addressing issues around global and local communications. The Facebook platform was used separately and collaboratively to support students’ learning and the digitally mediated collaboration allowed for flexibility in when and how education took place, providing a third space for co-creation of learning: a global classroom

Interdiscursive collaboration in public relations contexts

Interdiscursive collaborative construction of professional genres (Bhatia, 2004 & 2010; Bremner, 2006; Smart, 2006) within the framework of “communities of practice” (Lave & Wenger, 1991) can be viewed as a useful instrument for developing writing expertise to initiate novice writers into the conventions of corporate writing. Drawing on evidence from public relations (PR) writing contexts in Hong Kong, the paper focuses on the dynamics of participation in collaborative PR practice and on the deconstruction of the collaborative process as evidenced in the deconstruction of various drafts (from brainstorming to the final product) and through the perceptions of some of the key PR practitioners in the industry. The paper will have implications for our understanding of interdiscursivity in genre theory (Bhatia, 2010) and for the collaborative writing process within the academy as well as in the workplace

Developing global citizenship: Co-creating employability attributes in an international community of practice

This book chapter discusses how creative industries graduates' employability skills and attributes are fostered through international collaboration. The creative industries have come to represent not only ‘soft’ cultural power but also a substantial contribution to national economies in the 21st century (DMCS, 2015). In the post-industrial knowledge economy universities are reframing what a career in the creative industries is or could be. The University of the Arts London is the largest art and design institution in Europe and its alumni practice their diverse crafts internationally and across disciplines ranging from fine arts to management. The Fashion Business School is one of three discipline-related schools at the London College of Fashion and its graduates join an industry which requires facility with working internationally and across disciplines with colleagues in design, operations, finance and promotions. Many of the established working practices of creative industries have been adopted more widely in a drive for innovation in the wake of the digital revolution which has seen a move towards less formal organizational structures and value placed on ‘diversity and divergence of opinion’ (Mathe, 2015: 135). Added value is sought through restructuring businesses to take advantage of the benefits of ‘Co-ordination, collaboration, outsourcing and open-source software’ afforded by hyper-connected living (Mathe, 2015: 135). Increasing pressure to meet the expectations of multiple stakeholders has driven the employability agenda and made it a priority in the 21st century for all higher education providers (HEA, 2016). Universities recognize the power of social media to engage alumni and boost employability prospects by building a network of graduates with a shared affinity for the institution (Lavrusik, 2009). At a less reductive level, the change that social media promised for pedagogy is one that sees students as ‘active co-producers’ of knowledge and also one where the learning process is a ‘participatory, social process supporting personal life goals and needs’(McLoughlin & Lee, 2007:664). A notion developed further as one of the ability to create ‘Personalised Learning Environments’ for students which reflect their lived experiences and create multiple online learner communities (McLoughlin & Lee, 2010: 29). Thus, social media interaction is promoted not only to enhance digital literacies necessary for 21st century job market but also to enhance self-efficacy through fostering Communities of Practice (Junco, 2012). With an increasing need to prepare our students for the globalised workplace and their future professional life, notably in the creative and communication industries, the role of education as a boundary spanner between cultures is critical (Byram & Fleming, 1998). Yet, it is important to recognise that inter-cultural empathy amongst students is not engendered by merely ‘connecting up’ with culturally different others. Rather, the inter-cultural interaction should be based on active engagement – necessitating reflection, analysis and action and these extended and ‘deep’ encounters should be facilitated by the educator (Byram, 2008). The chapter will discuss an example of a global classroom project which simulates some of the complexities of working in the modern fashion industry. Students from London College of Fashion work collaboratively with peers studying in Asia at three partner institutions: City University Hong Kong, LASALLE College of the Arts and RMIT Vietnam adopting multiple roles as researcher, advisor and expert reviewer and co-create learning outcomes which support the development of attributes and capabilities required by the future creative industries. A detailed case study will describe and evaluate this flexible informal collaboration which adopts a blended learning approach and has established a Community of Practice with over 450 students internationally. The successes enjoyed with regard to each institution’s employability and pedagogic aims as well as the cultural and practical difficulties faced will be explored. To further support the discussion the University of the Arts London employability initiative the Creative Attributes Framework will be introduced