In World 42 a positive-post-popularist world emerges from fragmentary protectionist, political movements (e.g. Brexit). Here new norms of multi-localism reject ‘mass-production’ due to a lack of social, political and environmental transparency, provenance and pedigree, favouring instead locally derived ‘base-lines’. Neighbourhoods grow and construct a singular garment locally that is offered as a ‘base-line’ type.
Users can explore infinite interpretations within the axis of culture and/or functionality – uniformity and/or diversity through mass-micro re-configurations. Clothing is used to enact a socio-political paradigm where locality catalyses and reinvigorates positive notions of diverse-uniformity, sub-culture, tribal-pragmatism and eco-logic and an ever evolving valuable, hyper-local vernacular.
What if …
fashion could be used to redirect and reform locally situated, cultural value – heading towards methods to support new vernaculars of place?
Issue targeted:
Working with and inspired by communities and activists in different regions of the world consumer demand and culture appears to often desire and demand the same homogenous product (brands), dismissing local variations and types. This (generally speaking) relates to a loss of sub-cultural diversity and stymies the proliferation of socio-economic and environmental eco-systems and the many values that more place-based creativity, production, use and ‘fashion’ expression can offer.
Inspiration:
The many examples of global (often artisan) local resource and production methods that may already offer ‘answers’ to the many problems and criticisms the industry faces. Ranging from examples of symbiotic production methods using ‘natural’ resources that can support bio diverse ecosystems to the explosion of creative, subcultural archipelago-of-ideas that form around islands of creativity and inventiveness in different regions in one place, when I grew up in the late 1970’s and 80’s.
This World was contributed by Nick Gant (located in Brighton, UK) using a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International licence which allows others to share and adapt the work in any medium and for any purpose, providing that they credit the author and share their material using the same Creative Commons licence.
Does this World remind you of something?
I am keen to hear about any historical or contemporary real-world examples – whether individual practices, subcultures or mainstream activities – that this fiction brings to mind.
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