How can it be that these days a T-shirt costs less than a large cup of coffee, a dress as much as an ice cream and a pair of trousers the same as a cinema ticket? And what does the price tell us about the lives of the people who make these clothes? Fast Fashion. The Dark Side of Fashion takes a critical look behind the curtain of the global textile industry and aims to inspire people to actively engage with the subject of fashion consumption and its social and ecological consequences. The exhibition was designed by the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg in 2015 against the backdrop of the major fires in textile factories in Pakistan and Bangladesh. Only after the death of hundreds of people was the world’s attention drawn to the problematic working conditions under which a large part of our fashion is produced in low-income countries.
Just as the name says, fast fashion is fashion at virtually break-neck speed: today not even two weeks have to pass from design to delivery of a product. And as fast as design, production and commerce is, so rapid is wear and tear – cheap fashion is fuelling rapid textile consumption and has spawned a new type of fast fashion consumer.
Seen economically, fast fashion is a model of success for global corporations and allows for enormous profits. But this is often only possible because it is at the expense of people in the producing countries – produced under partly wretched working conditions, with incomes below the poverty line and an extremely poor environmental balance. On the other hand the textile industry does do some “pioneering work” in many countries: it gives many people with no education the chance to work and earn and encourages other industries to follow suit.
As a counter model, the slow fashion movement is becoming ever more important. Producers and consumers are trying to be more responsible and have more respect for people, resources and the environment. But it is not only about careful production methods and the choice of some very rare and valuable resources, their skilful manufacture, fair pay and fair trade. It is also about cultural identities and indigenous traditions, about craftsmanship which has become a rarity, and about alternative approaches to a socially sustainable economy.
The exhibition brings fast and slow fashion together. The first part of the exhibition was designed by the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg and divides the complex of themes around fast fashion into several stations. Fashion & Victims presents the worlds of textile workers in low-income countries and the world of bargain hunters in our affluent society. Global & Local shows the production steps of a product and the chain of countries involved. Want & Abundance follows the trail of our discarded fashion to the used clothing markets in Haiti and Africa. Pay & Profit illuminates the discrepancy between minimum wage and subsistence pay and the precarious situation of textile workers, for example in Turkey, Bulgaria and Morocco. Chemicals & Ecological Footprint is about what we wear on our skin: clothing which has been processed with up to 7,000 chemicals and produced with life-threatening pesticides.
Next to examples from different fashion segments, Fast Fashion. The Dark Side of Fashion presents nine contemporary artistic works of various genres, which take a critical look at fast fashion and its consequences. In this way scientific research, documentary material and artistic reflection complement each other. Works from the fields of photography, film and video art will also be shown.
The second part of the exhibition is the complex of themes around slow fashion and is compiled from the collections held by Cologne’s Rautenstrauch-Joest Museum: this part is about fashions which represent traditional and modern textile design in selected regions of origin, and at the same time is about alternative materials and environmentally friendly manufacturing processes. This type of fashion is enjoying growing cultural, social and economic attention: Kantha embroidery from north India and Bangladesh; Alpaca textile products from Chile; the “slowest material in the world” – IKAT from east Indonesia; Bilum clothing from Papua New Guinea; Lotos silk from Myanmar; Brokat weavings from Thailand; Batiks from Indonesia; Bast textiles from Uganda, Faso Dan Fani from Burkina Faso.
The exhibition takes the visitor through the whole consume process, from the catwalk to the photo studio, from the shop window to the changing room. Video installations and photo walls by several artists, infographics and displays put together by scholars, environmentalists, designers and media experts – and, of course, fashion articles all give an explanatory as well as graphic insight into the fast pace of the industry, the global network of this branch, and the living conditions of textile workers on the one hand and the consumption patterns of textile consumers on the other. A catalogue pools together 30 scholarly essays about ecological, economical, ethical, social and artistic interrelations.
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