Last night saw the scintillating final installment of the week-long Fashion Interpretations Symposium. The first part of the evening was dedicated to a roundtable discussion with the creators of Archivist Addendum, ‘a publishing project exploring the nascent space between standardised fashion editorial and academic research’. To open the conversation, which focused on the questions faced by contemporary fashion publishing and the practice of sharing academic research, co-founder Jane Howard read aloud an email she had written to herself in 2003 after leaving her position as first assistant to David Bradshaw. The email, referred to by Lisa Cohen later in the evening as ‘a manifesto for our times’, detailed the problems she witnessed working within the fashion industry and potential routes to a better system. Howard has been working with Archivist Addendum’s other co-founder, writer and fashion communication lecturer Dal Chodha, for a decade. They discussed the sometimes ‘pointless’ and ‘precarious’ fashion system and how their work hopes to remedy this with a slower, more adaptable approach. Archivist Addendum will be published as a collection of papers and photographs brought together in a box, some parts bound and some loose. This content-driven approach can offer a more appropriate format for each project and a more tactile experience, reminiscent of browsing an archive, for the reader. The duo hopes that by breaking free from the established format, Archivist Addendum can play a part in dissecting and rebuilding ideas around fashion and the archive. Judith Clark noted the material juxtaposition produced by using items from the past to present a future, recalling projects introduced earlier in the week that dealt similarly with archival materials.
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After the roundtable discussion, Rebecca Arnold led a reflective and emotive discussion with all contributors to the Fashion Interpretations research group. Many were quick to express their gratitude for the new and surprising connections made as well as the chance to work in collaboration with others. There was a focus on process: in particular, the welcome slowing down that occurs when taking a step back to consider medium – ‘the conduit to the content’. Finally, participants were grateful for the energy and ‘magic’ the project had generated.
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To keep up with what the Fashion Interpretations group get up to next (after a well-deserved rest), follow their Instagram page @fashioninterpretations. To get your hands a copy of the inaugural Archivist Addendum when it is published in January, follow @archivistaddendum on Instagram. Recordings of the entire Fashion Interpretations Symposium can be found on The Courtauld’s Research Forum playlist on YouTube.
by Lucy Corkish
