Giles Deacon, summer 2009

Here a designer who I think is using the artificial to be authentic. He used the figure 'Pacman', which has also a scence of nostalgia, but has a virtual and technological background.

Norma Kamali

"I collected vintage clothing nearly everyday of my life when I was young, which is how I learned the craft of making clothes... I simply studied the techniques of good vintage clothing. In those days a dress could be $5 from a stall in Portobello Road. I used to go up to Harlem, in my high platform shoes and hot pants, and go to warehouses, dragging huge plastic bags full of vintage back on the subway. I built up my collection."

Authenticity & theatre

Saturday, the 25th of september, I visited a musictheatre performance about my subject. I thought it would be interesting to see what other people do with the subject and I thought it may help me in my research in some way. The play is called Onderhuids and is made by the theatre group the Fantasten.

ONDERHUIDS / UNDER YOUR SKIN is a physical musictheatre performance about social encounters and authenticity. We are all actors of our lives. Everyone uses different (sub)personalities every now and then. Sometimes consciously, like in social media. More often, however, unnoticed. For example when you’re standing in front of the mirror in the morning to decide which outfit you will wear, taking into account the agenda of the day.
Under your Skin is a mosaic of scenes that overlap, each demanding attention. In this schizophrenic maze, the four women desperately try to find out what is real and what is fake. The visually engaging scenes with live music, dance and theatre leave room for free association and above all, fantasy.

First of all I found the play was very beautiful, well acted, the women sung and danced very good as well. I found the play very intens too, I think because it was a very physical performance. What first struck me was the way the play started. The women all introduced themselfs by their real name. Which immediately gave a sence op authenticity, because they were not using 'character' names but just were themselfs and wanted to show this. Second was the way they dressed. In every scene they changed their clothes and all four women were wearing the same outfit every time, but all outfits were different too. For example: one time they all wore a red dress, but they all wore an other red dress; their own (authentic) red dress. The play showed the struggle of these four women to find their authentic self. Family and home were things they pointed out; things that make you who you are. The fact that some people pretend to be someone their not was also a fragment in the piece, qoute: "did you believe that or did she just made it up to look interesting?" The play ended with the conclusion: "It is what it is" and "staying easy".

Authenticity in society

For my research about authenticity I'm also reading about the subject without going on vintage right away. Therefor I started reading the book 'Authenticity' by David Boyle, which highlights the more social side of the subject.

'Authenticity' tracks the emergence of the New Realists who are not convinced by corporate technologists and globalizers, and are increasingly committed to real food, real culture, real politics, real schools, real community, real medicine, real culture and real fashion. The rise of local brands, real ale, reading groups, organic vegetables, slow food, poetry recitals, unmixed music, materiality in art and unbranded vintage fashions, are all symptoms of the same thing – a demand for human-scale, face-to-face institutions and real experience.



In the introduction of the book David Boyle pointed something out that really astounded me. For his research he visited the Japanese theme park Ocean Dome, which has an artificial beach with a sliding roof, a wave machine and it's heated to a steady 30 degrees centigrade; just a few hundred yards from the real beach! In the nineties, round the time it was build, the park attracted millions of visitors. Now, since 2007, the park is closed, because of the lack of interest in the beach, customers continued to stay out. I thought it was a great example for the trend of authenticity at the moment. People do'nt want artificial palmtrees, a drawn horizon and a fake flaming volcano. They want the real thing..

'vintage: clever dressing for knowing audiences' facebook

Today I started a facebook page for my research. The intention of this page is to post your favorite vintage item there and tell the story behind it (if there is one, otherwise you can also just post a vintage piece you just really really like). I started this page because I'm just interested in what you all might post and if you got real stories behind it or just love to wear/use it because of the look of it.

You can visit the page if you click here.

Definitely Different (3 min promo) from Contemporary Vintage on Vimeo.

"Taster for a TV series and online channel currently in development. Definitely Different is a character based format for exploring the unusual and revealing the unexpected. A key factor is authenticity, revealing each subject through a highly engaging real life figure that lives and breathes the theme. It lends itself to celebrating an infinite number of niche tribes and the 'life to history' format can be applied in a variety of cultural contexts."

Introduction

Ok, this week I started my research for my graduation. Which is difficult ofcourse, because, what is a good subject? What subject do I found intersting enough to investigate for this upcoming year? I was asking myself this question and thought a small and proper literary research would be a good idea. So I got myself off the couch and locked myself in the library of the Amsterdam Fashion Institute (AMFI). Here I found the article "Hooked on Vintage" in the magazine Fashion Theory by Valerie Steele. This I found interesting, because I wanted pick a subject which would really relate to myself.



"Wearing vintage could be considered as an viable option for expressing individuality. A person who becomes interested in recycled clothing at one level may begin to differentiate the authentic, exemplar model and move to another level – that of vintage."



Was what the article said. I became interested in the link between authenticity and vintage. Another article, called Dressed in History: Retro Styles and the Construction of Authenticity in Youth Culture by Heike Jenss, said:



"Central to the contruction of authenticity are objects that can transport the idea of authenticity, such as surviving originals that can be appropriated to perform a credible self."



But what is this link between vintage and the urge of being authentic? And how is vintage incorporated in our society? Who are dealing with vintage and what are their motivations? These are the questions I want to investigate in my research: with interviews, images, quotes, movies and other interesting pieces about the subject. And because I didn't want to keep the research all for myself I started this blog.



Hope you'll all enjoy it!