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A more interesting finding emerged from the second question this substudy posed regarding the shared culture of fashion designers.
The question is answered by the two categories of design objectives and the production system. These categories were discovered as the internal and external aspect of the culture that surrounds the practice of individ-ual fashion designers; thus, they can be viewed as the macro perspective.
Five concepts contributed to identifying each category of the culture in relation to the practice. In other words, the data unfolded how these ten cultural factors are entangled in the practice of fashion design.
In conclusion, based on these findings, the definition of fashion design thinking reflects both sides of fashion design. It is proposed as iterative, holistic and contextualized activities of individual fashion de-signers while communicating with a specific section of the audience to turn material clothes into immaterial fashion.
As noted in Chapter 3, the results of Substudy 1, the construction of fashion design thinking, lay the foundation for Substudy 2, which intends to recover the meaning of the fashion design profession by ex-panding the role of fashion designers. Compared to the meaning-mak-ing aspect, the dressmakmeaning-mak-ing practice of individual fashion designers has been ignored due to the image-making tendency of the fashion system (McRobbie 1998; Kawamura 2005). As mentioned earlier about the dif-ficulty of understanding every aspect of design knowledge (Cross 2001;
Friedman 2003; Wang and Ilhan 2009), due to the complex entangle-ment of the practice and the culture of fashion designers, the complete unfolding of fashion design thinking is nearly impossible. However, in this substudy, the forgotten aspect of fashion design practice, the dressmaking tradition, has been partially uncovered and rediscovered through a systematic investigation as the warp of woven fabric for this dissertation. This expansion can be compared to earlier mentioned discourses on design thinking, especially management discourse (e.g.
Kimbell 2011; Johansson-Sköldberg, Woodilla, and Çetinkaya 2013). It
has helped enable designers to gain attention from broader fields due to the dissemination of handy tools used by designers in their creative methods to non-designers, such as managers. However, it failed to both continue the accumulated academic endeavor in design and introduce further applications of design practice (Badke-Schaub, Roozenburg, and Cardoso 2010). Accordingly, the investigation into the expanded role of fashion designers should embrace both categories of fashion de-sign thinking: their dressmaking practice and shared culture. Thus, it can be argued that the construction of fashion design thinking provides a vital part of knowledge in order to answer the main research question of this dissertation (how can the role of fashion designers be concep-tualized to understand their contribution to society as a profession?).
In the following chapter, on top of this constructed warp, the ways in which fashion designers are involved in the expanded domain will be demonstrated with an explanatory case.
05 T H E W E F T:
E X PA N D E D R O L E O F
F A S H I O N
D E S I G N E R S
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On the foundation of Substudy 1, which constructed the notion of fash-ion design thinking, a new thread is added as the weft to provide a new mood to the whole fabric woven together with the warp. The weft may not provide a main structure for the fabric but can offer a rich texture and a character. The second substudy, which aims at recovering the meaning of the fashion design profession and expanding the role of de-signers, serves the same function as the weft. For this reason, the case study approach was employed for this substudy to describe the ways in which fashion designers are involved through Pre Helsinki, a recently launched designer-driven platform seeking to internationalize Finnish fashion talents. As mentioned in Chapter 3 as advantages of the location of Helsinki, this case study was conducted concurrently with the dy-namic evolution of the platform and the Finnish fashion scene, which correspond to the discussion on designers’ new involvement in the spa-tial dimension in the study of design (Julier 2013; Manzini 2015). This condition motivated this case study to focus on placemaking as one of the potential expansions for fashion designers to apply their fashion de-sign thinking, among other possibilities.
In order to further contextualize this substudy while continu-ing this design discussion and comparcontinu-ing it with previous studies in fashion, this chapter will first introduce the theoretical foundations of placemaking. As findings of this substudy, practical descriptions of the Pre Helsinki case, characteristics of the platform and diverse involve-ments of fashion designers will be explored in relation to the placemak-ing practice of fashion design. It concludes with the clarification of the results of the case study. 19
19. A significant number of texts in this chapter were published in relevant journals (Chun, Gurova, and Niinimä-ki 2017; Chun and Gurova 2019). The publications were co-authored with senior researchers but I played the role of primary investigator. The co-authorship took place in the form of investigator triangulation while evaluating this substudy (Patton 2002).
To explore the expanded role of fashion designers as placemakers in the Pre Helsinki case, previous studies on placemaking in fashion need to be reviewed further. The sociological discourse found in fashion studies can broaden discussions on designers’ new practice in terms of both physical and symbolic places (Julier 2013; Manzini 2015), as it adds the perspective of fashion design. In fact, the relationship between fash-ion and place has been examined through different lenses, such as how fashion education and policy shape place, what particular styles are linked to certain places, and what roles production and consumption play in place development (e.g. McRobbie 1998; Skov 2001; Niessen, Leshkowich, and Jones 2003; Larner, Molloy, and Goodrum 2007; Pot-vin 2008; Crewe 2017). Among the many possibilities to connect fashion with the notion of place, this substudy pays special attention to the idea of making a meaning of place throughout fashion activities.
Placemaking, the key concept of this substudy, is adopted mainly from the study by Skov (2011). Expanding on her earlier studies on fash-ion in East Asian contexts, such as Japan and Hong Kong (Skov 2001, 2003), Skov examined industrial, cultural and governmental issues in the evolution of local fashion scenes in Europe. She argued that global fast fashion companies, such as Zara and H&M, have recently taken the role of dressing the public from fashion designers and introduced their expanded role in the spatial dimension of nations. She conceptualized placemaking as an ability of fashion design that “fills a cosmopolitan form with local content through displays and events associated with a heightened sense of here-and-now” (Skov 2011, 138). According to Skov, placemaking practice is relevant to a specific region, as it