Materializing fashion: designers, materials, ideas and the creation of designer shoes
- Submitting institution
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Nottingham Trent University
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 37 - 700405
- Type
- D - Journal article
- DOI
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10.1386/csfb.5.1.53_1
- Title of journal
- Critical Studies in Fashion and Beauty
- Article number
- -
- First page
- 53
- Volume
- 5
- Issue
- 1
- ISSN
- 2040-4417
- Open access status
- Out of scope for open access requirements
- Month of publication
- December
- Year of publication
- 2014
- URL
-
-
- Supplementary information
-
-
- 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
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- The novelty of this peer reviewed journal article lies in its insights into the creative process of shoe designers and their relationships to the commercial fashion system, a currently under-researched area. Its focus is the integral role that the materials, for example leathers and suede, that constitute the aesthetic exterior of shoes, play in the creative process of the profiled shoe designers. Through ethnography the paper explores shoe design, contributing knowledge to the field of design and materiality.
This paper stemmed from an extensive ethnographic study of 23 British luxury women’s shoe designers, which investigated how these practitioners created shoes for the fashion industry. The ethnography was supported by a multi-disciplinary secondary research drawing from material culture, anthropology, design theory, creativity, craft and fashion theory. The researched revealed how designers created shoes that were destined for the commercial system of fashion, while fleshing out how they each experienced and perceived their own creativity. The findings brought new interpretations to design demonstrating that it was not restricted to a linear process but was instead fluid, sensorial and material driven. At a personal level, the research demonstrated how design enabled creative freedom and expression, which was embedded within the materiality of their creations. This very individual motivation for creativity was quite distinct from the demands of the commercial fashion system. The paper interrogated the resulting tension between creativity and commerciality and how the designers negotiated this.
The paper builds on a previously peer-reviewed book chapter ‘Sequins, snakeskin and stilettos: Shoe design and the study of material agency’ in P. Hunt-Hurst and S. Ramsamy-Iranah, eds. Fashion and its multi-cultural facets (interdisciplinary press). A book chapter was published in the V&A’s exhibition catalogue for Shoes. This paper takes a different approach by placing more emphasis on the designers’ relationship to the fashion system.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -