Parsons The New School for Design, New York, October 2012 http://sds.parsons.edu/blog/2012/09/26/stephan-weiss-memorial-lecture-zoe-romano-on-open-source-branding/

1. Parsons The New School for Design, NewYork, October 2012
From open source branding
to collaborative clothing
Zoe Romano
@zoescope
@openwear_cc

2. PRECARITY
is a term of everyday usage as
Precariedad, Precariedade, Précarité, or
Precarietà
in a number of European countries.
It refers to the widespread condition of
temporary, flexible, contingent, casual,
intermittent work
in postindustrial societies.

3. What happens in Milano
Milano is the city in Italy with the
lowest unemployment rate
Most of young people work in
two main sectors
- SERVICE SECTOR
- CREATIVE SECTOR

4. Service Industry
Call Center
Chainstores
Pubs
Catering/Fairs
Hostess
...
“Shit job”

5. Creative Industries
Press
Fashion
Design
Advertising
Events
“My career”

6. 6
“I’m a designer but I pay
my rent working in a call
center.”
“Im a journalist and I work
in a pub to pay my bills”
“I earn 800 a month, work
10 hours a day. It’s fun and
the money is enough.
Ah, by the way... I live
with my parents.”

7. Main Challenges
How can we
- talk to the network of atomized workers
- challenge the institutional actors (companies, chamber of fashion)
- become visible in the mainstream
communication
during the main fashion event
in Italy?

8. Precarity in the Fashion System
‣freelance
‣micro-enterprises
‣temp workers
‣interns
SERPICA NARO
is the anagram of
SAN PRECARIO

9. L’azione
Operation: Serpica Naro
Creation of the
virtual subject
Activation of its
antagonist
Channel of
communication
www.
Settimana
dellamoda.it
San PrecarioVS Serpica Naro
Entering Official
Calendar of Fashion Week

10. Sometimes Fake means being more real than real

11. Sometimes Fake means being more real than real
Q: You said that you design the design,
what does that mean?
A: I design everything, when I wake up or when I
sleep. It is a sort of perfectionism, I suppose. Even
people who work for me need to let themselves be
designed, there is no way around it. Design is no
longer just the making of clothes, or products, even
the creation of lifestyles is already outdated, not
nearly enough.Today we create our own universes.

12. The Catwalk

13. Oh! We have a Trademark
Brand built to appeal
Values
Cultural mix - Controversy -
Elitistic
Brand as symbolic apparatus to
gather relations toward
consumer culture
Brand expressing who is nurturing it
Values
Sharing - Social innovation - Flexicurity
not precarity - Alternative economies
Brand as tool to promote
new values in society

14. What to do next
The brand creates value - how can we re-destribute it?
Over-production of creative workers - Which alternative can we build?
We lost skills - What’s the real value of garments?

15. Johanna Blakley
‣ Trademark Protection
‣ Induced Obsolescence
Negative externalities:
work and environment
2010

16. The Fashion System: a polarization
Big Brands Fast Fashion

18. A new trend: the rise of DIY and the
makers scene

20. A brand made o empower a network of small producers and promote a different kind of
fashion based on collaboration, sharing, short supply chain and else.

21. A Metabrand is not a Certification
A Metabrand is a bottom-up brand created buy a
peer-reviewed network of small creators and
consumers who produce value for the brand and benefit
from it at the same time

22. EDUfashion network was formed by: Poper (Slovenia), Ethical Economy
(UK), Università Statale Milano (IT), Copenhagen Business School (DM),
Fashion University (Slovenia)
★ Research on the Open Design and p2p fashion
★ Prototyping the community in 2010
2009 Let’s go EU application

23. ★ Building and online and offline community to share knowledge, find
support and collaborators to define a new model for crafts.
3 shared resources

24. ★ A series of Collaborative collection with an open-source brand
★ Prototypes freely downloadable which members can produce and sell, benefiting from the social
innovation created within the community.

25. Openwear is an open-source brand
★ A collective brand made open-source by a license
★ The pattern and the logo become a common of the community
http://vimeo.com/16541497

26. - Download
- Produce
- Customize
- Label with
Openwear

27. Key point of experimentation
• Define the networked artisan as a new worker
fashion designer ------->networked artisan<------------ crafter/artisan
(highly immaterial) (highly material)
• Brand Open Source Copyright (Creative Commons License, GPL, etc.),
• Manufacturing becomes a distributed process (makers/manufacturers)
• Copy as a legitimate resource Fashion doesn’t protect the technical specification of
the garments.
• The online community as a new Public Space
• Enterprise goes social: Social goals are primary, business is a way to achieve them

28. What about quality?
Peer-reviewed Network

29. NETWORKED ARTISANS/STUDENTS/CONSUMERS
LOCAL HUBS
(social enterprises)
EDU INSTITUTIONS
(universities, schools,
learning centers)
Suppliers

30. The new role of the freelance designer: she inhabits the global spaces of online
communities and shares locally projects and infrastructures

31. Fablab: a place to make almost
anything

32. How would it be a fablab for fashion?

33. • Seasonal collection
• Single supply purchase
• Selling in shops
• Building a fashion
house
• University training
• Catalogue of items
with no expiration date
• Group Purchase
• Online and offline
collective shop
• Creating a mix of skills
(to teach, work in
collaborative projects)
• Continuous and
informal training
YESTERDAY TODAY AND TOMORROW

34. How would if it was focused on open
hardware?

35. Making it together is better than
making yourself

36. ‣ OPENWEAR.ORG
Twitter: openwear_cc
Facebook: openwear
zoe romano @zoescope
THANK YOU!