Folk fashion: understanding homemade clothes
- Submitting institution
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Nottingham Trent University
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 29 - 704729
- Type
- A - Authored book
- DOI
-
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- Publisher
- I.B.Tauris
- ISBN
- 9781784536497
- Open access status
- Out of scope for open access requirements
- Month of publication
- March
- Year of publication
- 2017
- URL
-
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
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C - Fashion and Textiles Research Centre
- Proposed double-weighted
- Yes
- Double-weighted statement
- In making its contribution of the ‘fashion commons’ to the fashion theory and craft literature, Folk Fashion disseminates research done over 4 years. The 6 months of practice-based research with 6 participants, generated 50 hours of audio, plus 12 interviews generating 20 hours of audio. These participatory activities built on 18 months of independent design research, developing methods of reworking knitted garments through iterative cycles of planning, sampling and reflection. The theoretical exploration of making and wearing homemade clothes is unique in the field of fashion and was pursued through a diverse literature including academic texts, websites and blogs.
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- This monograph addresses a significant gap in fashion theory and craft literature by exploring the contemporary experience of making and wearing homemade clothes. With a striking resurgence of interest in knitting, sewing and mending emerging in the last decade, this topic is of increasing cultural concern. Yet while a growing literature is focusing on the process of making, the wearing of homemade clothes has been largely overlooked. The role of homemade clothes in a sustainable fashion system is likewise little understood; the book critically explores this relationship and, looking to the future, considers ways in which making might further disrupt the consumerist status quo.
The book draws together a diverse literature including academic texts, websites and blogs, interviews and practice-based research with participants. While communicating rigorously conducted research, the text is written in an accessible style in order to appeal to individual amateur fashion makers alongside academic audiences. The blind peer reviewer noted the ‘important contribution’ of the book and its ‘strong, coherent and convincing argument’. The reviewer also praised the ‘highly original [and] helpful’ metaphor of the fashion commons, which Twigger Holroyd offers as a wearer-centric conceptualisation of the fashion system. The author’s expertise in amateur craft is further evidenced by invited reviews of related texts in the Journal of Modern Craft and Crafts.
Versions of sections of the text have been peer reviewed and published as ‘Openness’, a chapter in the Routledge Handbook of Sustainability and Fashion (ed. K. Fletcher and M. Tham, Routledge, 2014); ‘Identity construction and the multiple meanings of homemade clothes in contemporary British culture’, a chapter in Fashion and its Multi-Cultural Facets (ed. P. Hunt-Hurst & S. Ramsamy-Iranah, Inter-Disciplinary Press, 2014); and ‘Making it mine: personalising clothes at home’, a chapter in Design and Personalisation (ed. I. Kuksa & T. Fisher, Gower, 2017).
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -