CRAFT WORD – essays celebrating Craft Victoria’s 40th anniversary

010110: The End of an Age of Excess?
By Anthea van Kopplen

This essay is a provocation. Questioning the current excesses of contemporary lifestyles.

The manner in which Western civilisation lives, Dr Ian Lowe reiterates, demands high levels of resource use to supply the energy and material needs of society. Marc Auge identifies these lifestyles in terms of their excesses. As a measure of excess, fashion design is an exemplar; embodying one of the defining characters of excess – the individual ego.

Fashion design uniquely highlights the excesses of the ego. Fashion's focus on the individual supports a culture of self-awareness. Recently avatars have enabled the ego to enter new domains. Avatars are conceited manifestations of ideas in human form. In a modern sense the avatar drives contemporary fashion. Fashion design is individual expression placed onto the human form. The body imitates and brings ideas to life. It could be a woman's finely tailored worsted wool pinstripe suit, a man's simple white shirt or a sculptured brass breast-plate etched in silver. All individual ideas, all pandering to the ego.

Masahiro Nakagawa, Tokyo Recycle Project, 2005

Further to the excesses of the ego, Auge defines contemporary society by excesses of time and space. Space is not discussed here. The reference to time is not the notion of having too much time. Time and excess is a reference to constant connection with others through wireless communications and the expectations that come with those connections. Time is a constant stream of information. In this context the question arises; which piece of information is significant? Events in time flurry for attention: fashion, sport, war and natural disasters all occurring simultaneously. Which is more important in a social and historical sense is difficult to say. It is this that Auge questions.

Baudrillard states the first time something occurs and is recorded is an important historical reference point. The second and subsequent times, Baudrillard notes are "grotesque avatars" of the first. The current age of industrialisation and excess supports a culture of repetition and as such defines much of how we come to know things and their significance. In an increasingly populated and built environment some things are beautiful. Mostly, however, they are ugly manifestations of original ideas. "Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable," says Oscar Wilde, "that we have to alter it every six months." Caricatured resurrections sustained only by the legendary precursor. It is this current period of industrial repetition, the Supermodern (so called by Charles Jenkes and Marc Auge), the grotesque avatar resides over a culture of excess.

Since the Enlightenment, society has lauded the individual and so as in the past, now and into the future self-expression remains central to everyday practice. As such, as populations grow and competition for time and space increases the age of excess continues to be relevant. Moving forward, excess considers social and environmental objectives in the design and making of things. The path of the "popinjay" designer is vain, chattering and conceited. The designer's ego enmeshed with basic democratic rights of freedom of expression. It is possible for social and altruistic parameters of design to guide the values of the popinjay. As Supermodernity highlighted the most common of social dispositions, disengagement from values, moving forward the basic value is meeting needs before wants.

It is generally understood, contemporary fashion design meets wants before needs. It is this practice (observes Baudrillard, Galbraith and Auge) that leaves the supply of society's needs in peril. Society's supply of fresh air, food and water are no longer abundant and available for everyone, instead they are the right of the privileged, implying the privileged deserve more rights. Discourse on needs, said Baudrillard, is based on the "naïve assumption" that happiness is a goal to be pursued. Happiness is fleeting and transient – not constant – and it is because of the pursuit of this mythical consistency that excess prevails. Fashion has the guilty purpose of designing and making things to fill the void and create happiness (Richard Florida). Many current social cultural value systems feel no guilt in support of this practice. The acquisition of objects for reasons of satisfying the self in pursuit of happiness is the basis of our current "affluent society" (Galbraith and Hamilton) generating enormous monetary wealth.

The Age of Excess prevails, in support of these monetary systems. Between 2008 and 2010 the world recession reduced CO2 gas output by 2%. The culture of over-abundance and an oppressive culture of waste stalled but given time will grow again. As such, what is asked of society, at forums such as the Copenhagen Summit, December 2009, is that as we progress renewable resources lead the way. Waste becomes a key energy and material concern. (Braungart and McDonough styled an equation for this proposition, waste=food.) Along this kind of path excess may continue. A rounded meter of existence where the beginning is the end is the beginning. Mimicking natural bio-systems. Already growing societies identify and act upon cyclical and renewable passive energy sources using continuous agrarian bases and natural renewable energy such as the sun and wind.

It remains true, that those who wish to remain in touch with progress and maintain professional standing must engage with advances in knowledge. Over the past ten years a growing number of designers and makers are turning to agrarian energy and material resources as the basis of their materials. The SupermodernGorgeous! exhibition, 2002, brought to our attention a group of designers whose empathy for the planet and its inhabitants was part of their practice. Participating designers enthusiastically met the challenge of re-use, recycle and minimising material waste in the production of their exhibits. SupermodernGorgeous! was a significant exhibition in a Supermodern context because participating designers continue to pursue design paths engaged in resource and waste use, recycling and minimisation. While others have followed. Fashion designers and academics such as Nicola Cerini, Laurene Vaughan, Aurelio Costarella, Pearl Rasmussen, S!X, Material by Product, Bowling Arm (Simone Le Amon and Charles Anderson), Sam Parsons, MüCKE and Masahiro Nakagawa. These are some of the designers using waste in the form of pre-loved garments and techniques of construction that reuse, recycle, reconstitute, re-invigorate and maximise resource opportunities. Waste product brings progressive alternative sustainable solutions to a culture of excess.

As society moves forward through time within current systems of excess, each of us must acknowledge the responsibility freedom of expression brings. The Age of Excess stalled but it will continue. Waste is the key. Happiness is earned. It is not a right and should not be at the expense of others. The luxury of heuristic design solutions if fashion is to continue at its current pace relies on acclimation. Aim higher. Self-expression entwined with collective environmental and social values in the proliferation of original beauty – not grotesque avatars.

Anthea van Kopplen is a fashion designer, curator and part-time lecturer at RMIT University. For the past 12 years van Kopplen's design and research arena has centred on sustainable design and fashion. Her latest project, EnvelopE is a Design and Retail Thinktank; an experimental design business testing social and environmental principles of sustainable fashion design. The practice encourages user engagement with fashion design in a workshop environment. The workshops explore individual style by teaching participants how to stitch, print and re-design garments and accessories. This year, in collaboration with other artists and designers EnvelopE appears in the L’Oréal Melbourne Fashion Festival, in March and State of Design, in July 2010.