12th - 16th of May 2015
17th annual conference of IFFTI - International Foundation of Fashion Technology Institutes
“MOMENTING THE MEMENTO”
Polimoda, Florence 

At the end of Linda Loppa's tenure as director, Polimoda organised an international conference that, according to Linda’s vision, became a vibrant and multifaceted event: an academic conference, a set of exhibitive and performative events, a moment of collective brainstorming and generally, a statement about how fashion education can be rethought and redesigned. 

I collaborated with Linda on the talk sessions “In Conversation With” that took place in the Odeon Cinema, as well as on other curatorial aspects, which led to the realisation of the entire event. 

It all began much earlier. In 2012, there was a gathering called “SALON” organised by Linda, which I attended alongside Barbara Vinken, Filep Motwary, Stefan Siegel, Danilo Venturi, Alberto Salvadori, and several other panellists. 
Then, between 2014 and 2015, we began to meet more often with Linda, to envision how an academic conference could become a way to re-evoke the Florentine Fashion Biennial organised by Germano Celant, Ingrid Sischy, Franca Sozzani, and Luigi Settembrini in 1996/97. The twentieth anniversary of that great event, a real milestone for the history of fashion curating, would be a year later, in 2016, and we were totally aware of that. 
Danilo Venturi wrote an essay titled “Momenting the Memento”, which provided a conceptual spark and also served as the title for the entire event.
Linda formed a small group, inviting Francesca Tacconi from Pitti Immagine, Alberto Salvadori from Marino Marini Museum, myself, and a few more collaborators to serve as a jury and review the applications. We were gathering in a small room behind Linda’s office, which gradually became our “dream” place. Walls were covered with images, prints from portfolios, various visual references, and keywords BODY | SPACE | DRESS | IMAGERY | CALLIGRAPHY | CRAFT that were central to the curatorial and conceptual framework Linda envisioned.

Jessica Bugg
Dr Jessica Bugg is Dean of the School of Media and Communication, London College of Fashion, University of the Arts London and was awarded a PhD from the same institution in 2006. Previously, she was Associate Dean Research and Innovation in the School of Fashion and Textiles and the ERA (Excellence in Research Australia) 2018 Leader for the College of Design and Social Context at RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia. With over twenty years of leadership, teaching, and research experience in graduate and postgraduate education in the UK and Australia, she has led, developed, validated, and examined Undergraduate and doctoral programmes in Fashion Design, Design for Performance, Fashion Promotion, and Imaging.
Jessica is an experienced PhD supervisor and examiner and has supervised three PhDs and one Master's by Research to completion. Her research leadership is evidenced in her previous academic research facing roles and in her own internationally recognised practice-led research that has been submitted in REF 2014, ERA 2015, and ERA 2018. She is an active researcher and leader in her field, holding positions on editorial boards, publishing extensively, reviewing for high-profile journals, and serving on steering committees, including the Critical Costume International biennial conference.
As a designer and visual artist working with fashion, performance, art and film, Jessica’s interdisciplinary research is concerned with the phenomenological experience of dress and developing embodied methods for clothing design and communication in the site of the body. Drawing on physical experience, memory, cognition, haptic and sensory perception, she collaborates with wearers, other artists and audiences to heighten and understand communication through design.
Jessica's work has been screened and performed in internationally significant venues, including the ICA, APT Gallery, London, ACMI Australian Centre for Moving Image in Melbourne, and the Wye Gallery, Berlin, for Berlin Fashion Week 2013. She has curated exhibitions including Fashion & Performance: Materiality, Meaning, Media at the Design Hub Galleries, Melbourne 2015 and an earlier iteration for the Arnhem Mode Biennale 2013. Her designs for contemporary dance have been performed at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, Barge House South Bank, the Linbury Space, Royal Opera House and The Place, London.
https://jessicabuggdesign.com/

2015

DR. JESSICA BUGG: NEW FORMS OF FASHION CAN AND HAVE EMERGED OUT OF INTERDISCIPLINARY APPROACHES

Dobrila Denegri: Seeing a film “Perceiving Dress: Optical Laces”, as well as some of your prior works, one gets hypnotised and seduced by the mesmerising effects of the rhythm and the movement of the body, which appears almost fused with the costume. It reshapes the morphology of the body itself, leaving the viewer with the impression that if the movement of the dancer stops, the sense of the costume is also lost, or transformed into something else.  
Can you tell us about the process which leads you to create a certain garment/costume, and how you would actually denominate a product of your work: a dress, an image, a performance, or as an encounter between all these elements?

Jessica Bugg: Fashion and performance are increasingly experienced through mediated forms, on screens, in photographs and film, and this can disembody the viewer from the materiality and lived experience of garments. My current work explores how designers can connect to wearers through design and questions whether there are ways to bring viewers back into an experiential and immersive engagement through mediated forms such as film and exhibition.
“The Optical Laces” garment and film were developed through a live interaction between dancer and dress. The dress is designed to encourage the dancer’s sensory engagement through the optical aesthetic, tactile qualities, movement and sound potential. The dress, movement and film are developed through embodied interactive design processes that draw on a dancer's experience and perception of dancing with the dress and an analysis of her physical and sensory experience and perceptions. I have worked with the editor and musicians to apply the dancer’s experience and feedback to the edit and film production. 
The work seeks to immerse the viewer through the mediated context of film by tapping into experiential and embodied knowledge. I suggest that empathy and memory of materiality can reawaken lived tactile and kinaesthetic experience through the active process of not only watching a dress in a film in a passive manner, but by literally feeling and touching through vision. In the final work, the dress, movement and image become one through the embodied approach to design and in the viewer’s engagement with the work in the context of the body. The different elements function as a totality through the embodied design and communication methodology that has been developed. 

DD: What is the value of interdisciplinary research and practice within the frame of fashion education? 

JB: My work develops embodied design and communication methodologies, and I work with the active and communicating body in live performance, film and exhibition. Works are produced through different methodologies as appropriate to the project; however, they always stem from the body itself as a site-specific context for investigation and communication. This attention to the body as a whole is sometimes lacking in contemporary dress practices such as fashion and costume design, and I see a need to connect designer, wearer and viewer more fully in the production of work and meaning. 
By developing practice through the body itself and trans-disciplinary thinking new processes and methodologies can emerge that can extend the practice of clothing-based designers and communicators. This extends the potential to reach wider audiences and offers more developed methods that are appropriate to specific contexts. Fashion graduates are increasingly working in a wider range of contexts where their methods and skills can be employed to different ends, and it is critical to develop methodologies as appropriate to shifting contexts and platforms for communicating and consuming fashion. 
Fashion and dress have the capacity to perform as they literally touch our bodies physically, psychologically and socially, affording wider applications in a range of disciplines. As educators and academics, we can provide a methodological context and teach skills and processes, as they exist within specific traditions of practice. This provides a context from which students and practitioners can be encouraged to actively engage and define their position and practice through a critical, questioning and experimental practice that permits cross-disciplinary dialogue and collaboration and new ways of working. 

DD: Do you think that new forms of fashion can emerge out of these interdisciplinary approaches, or maybe have already emerged, but still are not perceived fully, because we don't know how to collocate them, or how to define them? 

JB: Yes, I believe new forms of fashion can and have emerged out of interdisciplinary approaches. Fashion benefits from its relationship to other disciplines, whether that’s film, performance, art, science, technology, or psychology, for example. This cross-pollination between fashion and other disciplines extends potential for innovation through collaboration and trans disciplinary practice. I question the need to collocate or define practice and process in fashion too tightly, by enabling fluidity, fashion designers’ skills can be employed to different ends through exposure to different processes, audiences, contexts, collaborations and potential applications. 
Fashion as a bodily practice can be consumed in a myriad of ways; it can enhance the physical, physiological, psychological and social body and has the potential to connect with people on an embodied level. The development of interdisciplinary methods in fashion design affords new contexts, communicational potential and applications and opportunities for consumption, and this in turn enables a broader understanding of fashion and its significance to people and society.

DD: Towards what should we, as a collective, aspire to?

JB: Collaboration: with other bodies, disciplines, ideas and society. 

DD: Towards what should fashion creatives aspire?

JB: Embodied design approaches: a deeper awareness of the body in practice, process, production and communication.

DD: Toward what should an individual aspire?

JB: Experience: To engage with the world and with others through materiality and creative practice.

Published at the Polimoda website during the IFFTI Conference

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