Fashion Talks

{Apologies, rather long post and almost no photos}

Yesterday I met a friend and visited the “Fashion Talks” exhibition at the Communications Museum in Frankfurt, conveniently snuggled on the south bank of the river Main, just next to the Film Museum and the Architectural Museum. 

 

The exhibition, albeit small, was filled with interesting facts about fashion and raised important issues like globalisation, cheap labour, the boom of the DIY culture and the desire for individualism.

It was interesting to see a video about clothes created by a British designer that changed shape achieved by using a collection of cables, rods, motors, microcontrollers and batteries to transform the shape of a dress. I thought it was quite innovative – although the collection is from 2007.

We stared at tartans for long time and found out that there are as many as 10 000 different tartans available, both belonging to Scottish clans and also international or others created for various occasions. There is an Amnesty International Tartan, with the colours describing the multi-racial and international compass of Amnesty International's work. There is an Afghanistan tartan designed  to mark, but in no way celebrate the worldwide struggle against the opium industry.  There is even a German tartan for Americans with German Ancestors – yeah I know, unbelievable. One of the exhibits was tartan created after the death of Princess Diana. The tartan was beautiful and it was quite amazing how it really reminded of the late Princess.

 

The biggest part of the exhibition was dedicated to denim and jeans and as a big jeans fan, it was quite interesting to find out how Jeans were created and that LEE was the first brand to introduce jeans with zips. Levi’s produced a special pair for Coca Cola – which was pretty horrible I must admit.

However I was stunned to discover that before a pair of jeans reaches the shops it has travelled an estimated 50 000km backwards and forward between, Asia and Eastern Europe where various process have taken place, 8 000litres of water per pair have been used, and the average worker has received as little as 50c for their labour.

How sad that jeans, the very symbol of Western youth culture is now associated with sweat shops around the world and are produced by people who would have aspired to own a pair of jeans and who are themselves in their twenties, yet spending their youth working long hours, often in bad conditions for the pleasure of the Western society, respectively us. I feel so helpless!

There was a little bit on the subject of DIY, and it showed how clever companies have ventured into the whole DIY movement by producing items that can be customised like the Adicolour trainers below.

 

All in all it was a nice exhibition which provided a lot of information, raised a lot of questions in my mind and reinforced my belief in DIY.

After a nice bowl of soup it was time to go home and I had the opportunity to snap a few images of Frankfurt with its skyscrapers on the background of a glorious blue sky.

 Hope you are having a nice week!

Love,

Irina xx