Grand Marché SS19

B.A fashion program, project 05

the afterlife of our clothes

20.07.2015, West Africa, Togo

The streets are teeming with people and motorcyclists making their way through the market crowd. The hot dust underfoot swirls up and mixes with the colors of the surroundings. As I cross the street, I notice a boy leaning against his motorbike, talking to a street vendor. Emblazoned on his back are the letters “TSV Wendligen”, a football club from my hometown. A short time later, I see a boy walking through the crowd. On his back, the names of a graduating class are listed under the German headline:” Abiversal-  12 Jahre im falschen Film”. Like fragments of a familiar aesthetic, they blend into the crowd like foreign immigrants and disappear among the traditional colors and shapes on the streets of Lomé.

The design concept of "Grand Marché" is based on two thematic strands. One is the encounter with sports club t-shirts from my hometown on  West Africa´s streets. The second is based on the ideas of Transformationdesign by Bernd Sommer and Harald Welzer. At the core of their concept is the question of which responsibility affluent societies have towards emerging and developing countries considering the hyper-consumption within the climate crisis. They explore forms of rethinking and reflecting on hyperconsumption, and the critical role design plays in this. The aim is to use design as a medium of education to encourage consumers to adopt new product consumption patterns. The collection tries to transfer these thoughts into fashion and finds its impulse in the following quote: “But it is not only about material and energy, but also about the fact that buildings, neighborhoods, cities are cultural and social resources - they are the memories of a society and its members, they contain stocks of knowledge and experience as well as aesthetic ideas and images of people, of which it is by no means certain that they have already survived.” The idea of defining our exported clothes as survivors and having an afterlife in different countries and cultures is the connecting point for the collection concept.

"Grand Marché" deals with the global second-hand export to West African countries such as Togo, intending to educate the consumer about the global impact of the fast fashion industry. Aesthetic reflections are undertaken in the form of various cultural exchanges in the context of their socio-economic impact. As the statement T-shirts were the key piece of the encounter abroad, they are defined as key items of the collection. The conception picks up four T-shirt slogans from several encounters on Africa’s streets. While they are experienced here as culturally alienated fragments, the collection seeks reference points in West African culture. It attempts to translate the statements as ironic alienation in their new environment and find a link to their socio-ecological seriousness. Grand Marché: the place where the afterlife of our clothing starts.