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World Clothes for Equal Dignity (WClothesED)
HumanDHS is primarily grounded in academic work. We are independent of any religious or political agenda. However, we wish to bring academic work into "real life." Our research focuses on topics such as dignity (with humiliation as its violation), or, more precisely, on respect for equal dignity for all human beings in the world. This is not only our research topic, but also our core value, in line with Article 1 of the Human Rights Declaration that states that every human being is born with equal dignity (that ought not be humiliated).
We agree with Professor Shibley Telhami, who advocates the building of bridges from academia as follows, "I have always believed that good scholarship can be relevant and consequential for public policy. It is possible to affect public policy without being an advocate; to be passionate about peace without losing analytical rigor; to be moved by what is just while conceding that no one has a monopoly on justice." We would like to add that we believe that good scholarship can be relevant and consequential not only for public policy, but for raising awareness in general.
Please see an article by Koichi Nagashima on what he calls a glocal approach to developing culture throughout the world. This article is written for architecture, however, it applies equally to other cultural realms.
We look for interested people, who would like to develop our WClothesED project. Please see our Call for Creativity.
Our World Clothes for Equal Dignity project is part of our quest to build bridges from social science to other areas of life.
When we look around today, we all wear more or less the same clothes, Western clothes. We, the HumanDHS group, believe that cultural diversity should receive more respect and attention, which, in the case of clothing, means that the diverse cultural heritage in clothing that we find around the world should be valued more and made more visible in day-to-day wear. At the current juncture in history, traditional clothes are typically worn only to festive occasions. We wish to integrate this heritage into future-orientated innovative and creative design for day-to-day use.
| December 7, 2007, discussing our World Clothes for Equal Dignity idea with Zuzka! Zuzka confirmed that we need to educate people to respect the richness of knowledge and skill that flows into many handmade products, particularly those that honor long artistic traditions. Please click on the picture above to see it larger. |
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An important point for HumanDHS is to deconstruct tradition, in this case traditional clothes design. We do not wish to accept everything as it is. Many aspects do not bolster our aim - equal dignity for all. Chinese footbinding is a drastic example of how women were intentionally mutilated and handicapped in order to fit into an image of feminity as cuteness and helplessness. We do not wish to preserve those aspects of tradition. Many clothes for women, both traditional and modern, carry "footbinding" aspects, in contrast to clothing made for males. Women typically can not breathe freely or walk forcefully. Corsets created a wasp waist that made women almost faint, Japanese kimonos and to a certain extent also Chinese qipaos have similar effects and hinder free movement, as do many modern clothes. Modern shoes make women walk in ways that signal fragility. Feminine beauty, elegance, and decency are conceptualized, in ways of méconnaissance and naturalization (Barthes, Bourdieu, Foucault), as lack of forcefulness. We wish to encourage women to opt for new definitions of beauty and elegance, definitions that lend them strength and power.
Clearly, future-oriented design entails more than just design. It means also awareness for fair trade, respect for the people who produce products, in this case clothes, and more personalized relationships between products and users.
Starting about 30 years ago, Evelin Lindner began to make clothes from materials she found around the world. She has subsequently developed a collection of clothes that combine materials and styles from different cultures in original ways, thus embodying cross-cultural fertilization. She always received ample attention when wearing her unique clothes, indicating, that seemingly, not only she, but many people around the world yearn for more diversity in clothing styles and for a greater variety of opportunities to express onself in distinctively individual and cultural ways. See her prototypes further down!
HumanDHS envisages to make copies of the prototypes for interested people and give them away for donations that fund HumanDHS's research activities. We wish to engage in building the Fourth Sector also in our work (please read more on http://www.kaospilot.dk/, and see also the Fourth Sector Network.)
Each copy is envisaged to be personalized in a unique way and linked to information about cases where humiliation has been diminished successfully and with respect (thanks to Dan Braha for his creative input; as medium the quick chip might serve, currently developed by the Memory Spot research team at HP). The donations will be fed into the research activities of Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies, such as the funding of scholarships for doctoral students.
Since Lindner's first ideas evolved about 30 years ago, she has discussed them with people in all parts of the world and from various cultural backgrounds. In these discussions, people have reflected on the complicated task ahead for humankind, namely to work for equal dignity for all people on the planet (this is the core message of Human Rights), and at the same time for less cultural sameness and more cultural diversity. Currently, globalization typically means but Westernization, the result being a rather uniform Westernized world where cultural diversity is being lost. Respect for the dignity of cultural varieties and local solutions is wanting. The complicated task at hand is to work for more egality (Lindner's word for equal dignity), and less sameness.
Brigite Pages wrote down the following (2004, Tokyo): "L'universel est constitué de particulier, l'universalité de particularité.
Comme l'univers de particules.
Uniforme = forme unique, à l'intérieur des différences des cultures particulieres."
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Everything on one pole... The picture is taken by Evelin Frerk, www.evelinfrerk.de. Please click on the picture to see more. |
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Everything on a hall tree... The picture is taken by Evelin Frerk, www.evelinfrerk.de. Please click on the picture to see more. |
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From left: Please meet Liu in Shanghai (April 2006), and the Abbas Higazi factory in Cairo (January 2007), or Conytex at Sekem (January 2007), potential links to tailors for our World Clothes for Equal Dignity project. Please click in the middle of the pictures to see them larger. |
List of people contributing to our clothes project
African (Indonesian-Dutch-Global) Collection
Japanese Collection
The following collections are not yet developed:
Indonesia
India
Gulf
Egypt
South America
Norway
Others
Links
Clean Clothes Campaign
The CCC is an international campaign, focused on improving working conditions in the global garment and sportswear industries, and empower the workers in it. There is a Clean Clothes Campaign in 11 European countries. These are Austria, Belgium (North and South), France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.
Established Clean Clothes Campaigns are autonomous coalitions with NGOs (consumer, research, women's, fair trade and youth organisations, solidarity groups, churches, etc) and trade unions as members in European countries, each with a secretariat, and each sending a representative to the European Coordination Meeting. Countries (2008): Austria, Belgium - Flemish-speaking Belgium, Belgium - French and German-speaking Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, UK.
Dignity Returns
"...in this place, there is no boss banging over or taking advantage of us. There is no threat and insult. Most importantly, here is our own factory..."
The Solidarity Factory Cooperative was created by former Bed and Bath factory workers. This followed a three-month struggle by workers for payment of money owed to them, following its unexpected closure in October 2002.
Ethical Fashion Show 2007
will take place on OCTOBER 12, 13, 14 and 15
at the Tapis Rouge
Review of the 3rd edition of Ethical Fashion Show 2006:
The venue was predestined for great things : the gold and rich red velvet decor of the Tapis Rouge gave a beautiful setting for the event's mission : showcasing fashion that respects people and the environment but that is also sexy, glamourous, luxurious and trendy
In 3 years, Ethical Fashion Show has become the must see event not only for buyers but also for all those searching for something different.
This third edition welcomed over 4000 visitors including 1500 for the open day. The two runway shows (Friday night's couture and Sunday's Ready to wear/sporstwear) were held in a packed room. The round tables were also very successful with some reaching more than 100 turnout. There were many designers who came from very far (Thailand, Mongolia, Chile, Peru, Bolivia, the USA...) presented unique pieces, using various techiniques, traditional or innovative: pleats, embroidery, dyes, prints, weaving but also recycling and reinterpreting classic designs. This year was rich in innovative materials: bamboo, Lyocell, Lenpur, Pina, corn...
Please read more at http://ethicalfashionshow.com/langues.htm#.
Susan B. Kaiser
The Social Psychology of Clothing: Symbolic Appearances in Context (1996)
