REVIEW OF MARIE RIEGELS MELCHIOR’S GUEST LECTURE: FASHION IN DENMARK THROUGH 400 YEARS

By: Sandra Jäger

This review is based on an open guest lecture Marie Riegels Melchior gave at SDU Kolding campus on September 13, 2022 following the publication of her two-volume study, Moden i Danmark gennem 400 år - 1900-2020 that was released in Denmark earlier that year.

Marie Riegels started the lecture by presenting her thoughts on why she wrote the book, how she divided the themes, and later went through the time periods addressed in the book. She explained trends in Danish fashion from 1900-2020. As Marie has an ethnographic background, the lecture was based on her findings in pictures, relics in museums, and other empirical artifacts. The goal was to showcase everyday culture through clothes in different contexts and time.

She explained that her interest is in the differences in dress, concerning gender, identity, religion, as well as understanding the clothing industry of a capitalist production system that accelerated over the last century. Marie argued that looking at history, and how people once could be “in style” in Denmark without constantly buying new, might offer ideas or innovation for the issues fashion faces with the climate crisis. The book’s structure is encyclopedic and chronological, focusing on “exclusively” Danish fashion; however, “exclusively” is a loose term, since most of the trends mentioned are documented as getting their inspiration from France, Italy, or Asia.

Unfortunately, early on in the presentation, Marie presented her definition of fashion, which was very traditional and Eurocentric. In her words, “fashion has existed only in the West since the 1300s and that only in the recent globalization of the world has fashion spread to other cultures.” This outdated argument implies that the capitalist, fast-paced, European and Western fashion system is the only one to be labeled as “fashion”. This Eurocentric argument has been disproven by Linda Welters and Abby Lillethun (2018, 2022), Sandra Niessen (2020), Tansy Hoskins (2022), and many others.

At SDU, I have been taught fashion studies from the perspective of decoloniality, using my own academic work to explore fashion in other cultures. When I raised these concerns during the Q&A with Marie, she argued that the historical sources available that she examined showed that the systematic change in style (the way she defines fashion) existed only in Europe and the United States, i.e. the West. Marie was dismissive of other perspectives and possibilities that there are other sources out there revealing another truth, and of the fact that the sources she mentioned have been developed and examined by Western academics, who created the colonized and Eurocentric definition of fashion. Marie acknowledged the work of scholars on de-colonizing the fashion system, and the fact that maybe the definition of the term “fashion” is flawed in its origin, but did not want to incorporate that into her own research.

This is highly problematic, and to support my argument, I refer to sections of Kate Fletcher and Mathilda Tham’s publication, Earth Logic: Fashion Action Research Plan (2019), who are also the founding members of the Union of Concerned Researchers in Fashion, an international network that was founded in response to the continuous green-washing discourse of Copenhagen Fashion Summit (now rebranded as the Global Fashion Agenda).

Fashion books at SDU library

Photo by Kat Sark

In the existing fashion system, the dominant focus is economic growth logic and the pursuit of profit. This constitutes a single focus and attention and reinforces human-centred priorities over the needs, and at the cost of, all others. By contrast, the values of Earth Logic explicitly promote plurality and multiple centres of attention and action. The interdependency of human systems with all others makes processes of change real and complex. Interdependency underscores the ways in which individual products or human choices, often made with little concern for or understanding of the whole, combine in cumulative, layered, holistic effects that influence entire systems. Embracing interdependency and multiple centres in unison is about refusing to “be in a bubble,” separate and remote from the unfolding of the real world. It changes both understanding and the purpose of research itself. We need to search, explore, practice, prototype, learn, share insights and make change at the same time (Fletcher & Tham 2022:32-34) [Emphasis by author].

Marie’s study does not engage with Danish imperialism and the colonization of Greenland. It thus draws more attention to what is excluded and why, than to what is actually in the books. For the new generations of fashion scholars, this approach is no longer ethical. As Fletcher and Tham explained,

Decentering fashion can take many forms. We can imagine fashion for hitherto unprioritized clients, by challenging able-bodyism, ageism, and sizeism in fashion. We can start fashion literally from nature, creating a studio in the local park or an area of wilderness. We can grow fashion expression from the craft of use (Fletcher 2016). We can honour fashion in non-Western geographies. We can train the focus of fashion on supporting race and gender equality. Each perspective offers new models and practices for relating with fashion as well as broadening and diversifying the base of fashion expertise. Genuinely giving space for a plurality of fashion voices requires profound attention to the space we allocate to dominant voices, making this space smaller, and genuinely reaching those not currently prioritised. This requires new models for funding bodies, education admission, recruitment to organisations, etc. It also includes sincere attention to citation politics, avoiding replicating the same, dominant narrative (Ahmed 2017). In this landscape it is especially important to remember that the fashion system as we know it today is recent and manmade. There is a pluriverse of possible fashion systems if we set fashion free (Fletcher & Tham 2022:53-55) [Emphasis by author].

The paradox of this traditional view that fashion is essentially a capitalist system, and the suggestion that a solution to overconsumption is looking into history of a time when this mass-producing system was not yet in place is conflicting. As Kate Fletcher and Mathilda Tham noted, “the majority of the environmental issues caused by the fashion sector are endemic, not incidental. They are a consequence of how the current model is structured. The better the sector performs, the worse the problems will get.” (Fletcher & Tham 2022:21). In some ways, it seemed Marie Riegels agreed that there is an environmental toll to capitalist and colonial fashion, but her refusal to connect sustainability and decoloniality is highly concerning. Her insistence to keep the Eurocentric view on what fashion is reinforces old, outdated paradigms and ways of thinking, but moreover, it also legitimizes the neo-colonial exploitation, injustice, and violence experienced in the Global South. This view is keeping up the status quo instead of furthering change for the better by understanding fashion outside of Eurocentrism and capitalism, and imagining new alternative and more just fashion systems.

Moden i Danmark books at SDU library

Photo by Kat Sark

Bibliography

• Fletcher, K., & Tham, M. (2022). Earth Logic: Fashion Action Research Plan. London: The JJ. Foundation. • Hoskins, T. E (2022). The Anti-Capitalist Book of Fashion. London: Pluto Press. • Melchior, M. R. (2022). Moden i Danmark gennem 400 år - 1900-2020 | Chik – Smart – Moderne. Gads Forlag. • Niessen, S. (2020). “Fashion, its Sacrifice Zone, and Sustainability.” Fashion Theory, Special Issue on Decoloniality and Fashion, Vol. 24: 6. • Welters, L., and Lillethun, A. (2018). Fashion History: A Global View. New York: Bloomsbury.

Bio:

Sandra Rosenkranz Jäger is a student in the BA in Design Culture and Economics program at the University of Southern Denmark (SDU). She has worked as an editorial member of The Critical Pulse for two years during her studies, as editor, illustrator, SoMe coordinator, and the contact person for the magazine. Her work includes perspectives on decoloniality in the fashion system especially on “sustainability” and gender theory, with earlier publications in the magazine such as “Why is Unisex Clothing so Masculine?” in the 3rd issue. Sandra also designed four covers (to date) for the magazine, as well as other original illustrations and artwork.