You might ask, why are we making clothes for ourselves?
and Wardrobe Planning brings the act of clothes-making directly to the public. Our roles expand to designer, maker and consumer, playing with the relations between labor and commerce. The project is a reaction to, and critique on, the distance that exists both socially and geographically between the majority of consumers and their garment-makers, which enables irresponsible consumption habits.
Using the skills and knowledge acquired in academia and industry, we expose our working environment, our joys and our struggles. We perform the making of seemingly ordinary garments, and for once, we enjoy the fruits of our labor. We become central to the “transactions that take place between artefact, maker and user” (1) Collectively, we take control of the entire process, whilst amongst ourselves, we try to let go of ego and embrace a co-creative approach, under the shared label, ‘and Wardrobe planning’.
During our preparatory work sessions in Helsinki and Tallinn earlier this year, we started to understand ourselves a little better. We wondered if the common occurrence of people not knowing what to wear, while overstuffing their wardrobes with low-quality, disposable solutions, could be caused by the lost dialogue between wearer and garment. Endless offerings in the vitrines and online do not help. Could it be that the maker of the garment is dislocated so far off, that the dialogue becomes disconnected with no traces to be found?
1. Ellen Sampson, 2018. The Cleaved Garment: The Maker, The Wearer and the “Me and Not Me” of Fashion Practice, Fashion Theory, 22:3, 341-360.
