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Bachelor of Art (Hons.,), Fashion Design, RMIT University, Melbourne, Victoria. Winner of The John Storey Memorial Scholarship for Overseas Study, RMIT University. Student exchange to Ravensbourne College of Design & Communication Chislehurst, Kent, UK. Work placement at Vivienne Westwood production and design studios (London). Winner of the Young Designers Award, Mercedes-Benz Spring Fashion Week, Melbourne, Victoria, 2000. Established design studio and made2measure/ready2wear clothing label, 2000. Sessional lecturing in fashion at RMIT University, Melbourne. Sessional lecturing in fashion at Swinburne University, Melbourne.
"Thrift-shop dressing recycles fashion's waste, exploiting the use value that remains in discarded but often scarcely worn clothing ... It is thus a highly visible way of acknowledging that its wearer's identity has been shaped by decades of representational activity, and that no cultural project can ever 'start from zero'." (Kaja Silverman, "Fragments of a Fashionable Discourse").
The paper '(not)starting from zero' seeks to investigate the re-materialization, reterritorilization, and recontextualization of op-shop clothes as fashionable immersive media through elements of eclecticism, intertextuality, and spatio-temporality. The second-hand nature of the relationship of these garments to time and the consumer may disturb the acts of repetition that classify fashionable dress, e/scaping the 'performativity' (Judith Butler, Bodies That Matter) of idealist structure, ritualised production.
The paper will present an analysis of the fragmentary dis/locating mix and match eclecticism of op-shop fashion, and the idea that fashion is constituted as elements that operate intertextually, signs not operating exclusively but being (in)dependent of each other, operating orthogonally across a range of macro and micro conditions. No longer is the time of production of a garment its 'fashionable' ground, for it is now fixed and fluid both in time and space, the pre-loved and pre-read garments intersecting with bodies along a shifting spectrum. Identity and op-shop fashion may re(as)semble the absent and the present with their traces and memories "answering the desire to create and recreate endless new meanings out of the heritage of the past," (Barnard) but never, no never, (not)starting from zero.
The paper will be presented by Dr Marcus Bunyan while Melbourne fashion designer Paul Anthony will create a range of garments from recycled clothing and fragmentary materials to be shown in a multimedia presentation to accompany the talk.
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