Co-creativity; new ways of understanding 1950's fashion

Angela Partington University of the West of England

Co-creativity: new ways of understanding 1950’s fashion

• creativity: contextualised and collaborative

• collaborative interactions with consumers

• innovations in design practice derive from the relationships between practitioners and consumers

• the convergence of academic research and marketing

The democratisation of creative production?

Art and everyday life

Consumers have always used objects to transform themselves

Design has always been consumer-led

• Fashion ‘forecasting’• Cool-hunting• ‘bubble-up’ fashion-adoption • Stylistic proliferation

Understanding the production of meaning: post-critical methodologies

‘mass market’ fashion?

pleasures of spectacle: audience identity

Glamour vs Utility

Rita Hayworth 1940’s Dior’s New Look 1947

The Wild One 1953Chevrolet 1957Dracula 1958

‘Ruby Gentry’ 1952

Letty Lytton 1932

‘Written on the Wind’ 1956

Consumption: selective, eclectic and unpredictableIntertextuality: an effect of consumption

Creativity and Commerce‘Half a century of marketing science has had no impact on the 95%failure rate of new products’ (Brown, S., ‘Postmodern Marketing’, 1995)

‘Guitar music is on the way out’ Sony Walkman (1980) Teenage Mutant

(Decca Records 1962) Ninja Turtles (1992)

The C21st creative professional is a collaborator and mediator, a ‘hybrid manager’ who can ‘operate across disciplines’ (Cox Review 2005)

Hella Jongerius Dominic Anciano

M/M

Damien Hirst