Collaged Clothes

<p dir="ltr">Background</p><p dir="ltr">Adam Geczy and Vicki Karaminas argue that fashion practices that ‘place criticality at the epicentre of (their) concerns,’ can ‘destabilize ideologies, and encourage ways of rethinking self and identity,’ through clothes (What is Critical Fashion Practice? 2020). As such, this research adopted the critical visual art practice of collage – which Gioia Chilton and Victoria Scotti observe can be used to ‘jar us into new insights ... and rework old patterns of thought.’ (Snipping, Gluing, Writing, 2014) – to rethink relationships between wearers and fashion images. Similar critical applications of collage to fashion-based representations are evident in Elisa van Joolen’s 11”x 17” (2014) and Jane Morley’s Precarious Bodies (2018). </p><p dir="ltr">Contribution</p><p dir="ltr">Collaged Clothes applied critical and expanded fashion practices to investigate whether the way in which wearers integrate commercial fashion images into their wardrobes can be understood as a creative image making processes akin to collage. This proposition was explored by inviting wearers to produce a wearable fashion image using an innovative combination of collage and wearing. During the event participants were offered a range of iron-on fashion photographs and t-shirts with which to create a wearable fashion image, and to reflect upon this image by wearing it and composing a swing tag describing its representational effect. By facilitating wearers to engage actively with fashion images as makers, rather than passively as consumers, Collage Clothes critiques commercial fashion media practices and proposes an agential alternative. </p><p dir="ltr">Significance</p><p dir="ltr">Collaged Clothes was presented as part of the Dialogical Bodies, Artistic Research Exchange at the Swedish School of Textiles: University of Borås. This event brought together esteemed practice-based researchers from Europe, Asia, North America, South America and Australia including Tanveer Ahmed, Ida Falck Øien, Ruby Hoette and Elisa van Joolen. The program for this event was curated by double-blind peer review by a panel of leading artistic researchers from the Swedish School of Textiles, ArtEZ: University of the Arts and RMIT University. Collaged Clothes was funded in part by RMIT F&T’s Professional Development Fund and is the subject of an article in APRIA Journal, vol.8 (2025).</p><p dir="ltr">All photographs by Andrés Rehbein, rights owned by Remie Cibis. Featuring wearable fashion images created by Melanie Bower, Ingvild Rømo Grand, Anna Lidström, Santiago Útima Loaiza, Chinouk de Miranda, Collette Paterson and an anonymous participant.</p>