From Amsterdam Wiki

Abstract

Fashion is often dismissed as a game to be played by the rich and vain, but all people, regardless of social standing, rely on clothing for more than just protection from the elements. Malcolm Barnard, the mind behind Fashion as Communication, suggests that fashion "as a verb, [in the sense] of â€¦ making or doing" is involved in the construction, experience, and understanding of cultural and hierarchical social relations. In the simplest Fredericksburg DUI lawyer sense, this explanation supports the social stratification due to price discrimination. However, in this research, involvement of fashion in Amsterdam is discussed in the construction, experience, and understanding of socioeconomic relations in the face of globalization. First, this paper looks at the Red Light District, where a local fashion movement attempts to break through past perceptions to reach a global audience. Next, this paper takes a look at streetwear, where a global fashion movement, by imposing a culture of its own, creates issues of identity that must constantly be reconciled. As a whole, this paper attempts to describe and articulate the intricacies of the local and global connections involving local-to-global and global-to-local relations between Amsterdam and the rest Villa in Phuket of the globe through our examples of fashion. Following the data collection and analysis of these two studies, deeper, bi-directional exchanges and tensions were discovered.

Introduction

Fashion

is often considered to be fickle due to its ephemeral nature. Yet in the everyday decision to don clothing lies a choice to create a statement. In some sense, fashion exists as yet another form of human communication. Through a focus on two case studies on fashion, this paper attempts to develop an understanding of the relationships between Amsterdam and the global market through the perspective of fashion.

The first case study is the Red Light Fashion Amsterdam project. In 2007, nearly one-third of the windows formerly used by sex workers to attract business in Amsterdam's infamous Red Light District were recently bought by the development company NV Stadsgoed with financial backing from the city of Amsterdam. The windows, instead of being left empty, were turned over to 16 well-known as well as struggling Dutch designers to live, work, and display their work with free lease for the year of 2008. The city's quoted goal in buying out 18 of the area buildings was to try to clean up the petty crime in the area. â€œPlatform 1012â€� protests were staged by a group of residents and workers in the area concerned that the city was taking steps to shut down the Red Light District and worried about the health and safety of the prostitutes left without secure workplaces. This current issue raises question about the future of the Red Light District, how fashion fits into the Red Light District, and how it reaches out to the numerous tourists who visit the district each day.

Introduction to the Red Light Fashion Amsterdam project taking place in the Red Light District of Amsterdam: 16 talented fashion designers have displayed their fashion since January 2008 in this famous tourist district. From the fashion front, Mariette Hoitnik, managing director of HTNK (fashion consulting agency), "...and beyond", Ignoor, and Edwin Oudshoorn are interviewed in regards to this new integration of fashion into the Red Light District.

The second case study is streetwear. "Streetwear" as one word, seems to imply some sort of urban clothing. While etymologically this is true, the "streetwear movement" study is only superficially linked to urban clothing and its connotations. Streetwear is most often characterized by high-quality, high-priced clothing and accessories notorious for "limited editions" and "hype." It is commonly found in the wardrobes of rappers, or in tiny boutiques found across the world. It is a very unique niche market as most truly urban peoples cannot afford it, and those who can have likely never heard of it. Yet at the same time there is a robust community which seems to be ever expanding with the aid of the internet, reaching more and more people outside its local urban context.

Beyond the physical, streetwear is more than "something one wears" or "fetish objects" (Barnard 2002) that "hypebeasts" with too much time and too much money obsess over. It reflects the culture of rappers to skaters, draws influences from haute couture to Asian pop culture, and despite all these differences, influences a global community that finds its members waiting in line at 7 AM to buy a pair of "exclusive" sneakers from a local store.

As a result of the enigmatic nature of streetwearâ€”in the sense that streetwear is difficult to define, and that streetwear desires to remain undergroundâ€”it has remained untouched by academic exploration and explanation. Yet with the advent of the internet, streetwear, since its inception in the early 1980s, has become a globally recognizable fashion movement. The relationships it has defined both locally and globally are unique amongst fashion, and certainly amongst academia.

Amsterdam is particularly important in this research because of its streetwear history. With brands like Rockwell, founded by famous graffiti artist Parra, Amsterdam streetwear stems from strong local influences. Since streetwear has its roots in "skateboarding & [sic] it's anti-establishment energy" (Shariff, 2007) Amsterdam also offers a unique cultural environment to study streetwear at its finest. Furthermore, Amsterdam is known for a vibrant streetwear community, with stores such as Patta, 290SQM, 8CHT, and Concrete bringing in products and knowledge from all over the world.

Streetwear Slideshow

Research Question and Conceptual Framework

The overarching goal of this project was to identify the role fashion played in the construction, experience, and understanding of the relation between Amsterdam and the rest of the world. The project looked at not only what fashion looked or felt like in Amsterdam, but also what metaphysical properties surrounded Amsterdam fashion, and its consequences. Because of the general nature of this question, the project looked at interactions between Amsterdam and the world through two very different fashion movements.

The first fashion movement studied was the Red Light Fashion Amsterdam Project. The goals of the project were to see how the project's displays fit in with the historical Red Light District and how they would affect the future of the Red Light District. Following that, this portion of the project then became an analysis of how the conversion from prostitution to fashion was proceeding in the face of global perceptions. Through observation of the interaction between old expectations of prostitution and new perceptions of fashion, the project goal was to gain an understanding of a local to global interaction between Amsterdam and the world.

"Amsterdam's busiest area - the Red Light District - is getting a makeover as part of a bid by the city's authorities to cut down on the number of sex workers. A new sort of window shopping has now arrived in the district, known as De Wallen - mannequins wearing designer clothes."

The other fashion movement that composed this project was streetwear, starting with its local roots with stores like 290SQM, and brands like Rockwell, and from there seeing how the development of a global streetwear industry affected streetwear in Amsterdam. The goal was to know not only how streetwear had developed in Amsterdam, but how different sectors such as stores, brands, and customers currently interacted. From comparisons of these sectors, it was hoped that an understanding would develop of how these identities and relations persisted in the face of the importation of a global movement to a local market.

To understand the role of fashion, the project took a cue from Malcolm Barnard's Fashion as Communication. In Barnard's piece, fashion meant more than just the way in which people wore their clothes, it existed "as a verb, [involved in] â€¦ the activity of making or doing." Specifically he suggested using fashion to understand the construction, experience, and understanding of cultural and hierarchical social relations.

In terms of this project, Barnard's piece first allowed the taking of fashion beyond the physical as necessitated by the group question. Next, it divided fashion's role into construction, experience, and understanding of relations, which was both a logical and efficient rubric to apply to the research. As a whole, Barnard's concept of fashion allowed the conceptual parts of the project to be framed, but with divergences content-wise.

Barnard focused mostly on cultural and hierarchical social relations, but because Amsterdam housed such strong local and global interactions, the project focus looked beyond the local cultural and social relations as prescribed by Barnard. In order to account for the larger socioeconomic focus, the project extrapolated from Barnard's original work.

Research Methods

Research methods for both groups were based on interviews and reading of space.

Red Light Fashion

The Red Light District Fashion group focused on interviewing two distinct sets of people directly involved or indirectly affected by the Red Light Fashion Amsterdam project. The so-called "new guard" (people who had just come into the district as a result of the project) was discovered through researching articles and websites about the Red Light Fashion Amsterdam project; interviews were set up with the founder of HTNK, a designer, and one of the designer's representatives. HTNK is the fashion consulting agency that originally pitched the idea of integrating designers in the district and the latter two fashionistas were involved with the Red Light Fashion Amsterdam project. The manager of the CODE Gallery Store, the central selling point for many of the involved designers, also granted an impromptu interview after the store (unmentioned in most of the literature about the Red Light Fashion Amsterdam project) was accidentally discovered.

Introduction to the CODE Gallery Store in TMF Reaction

The "old guard" was a category of people who had strong connections and backgrounds in the district, mostly people who worked there. These people were simply asked if they would grant short interviews. An interview with a representative from the Prostitute Information Center of the Red Light District and the International Committee on the Rights of Sex Workers in Europe was conducted to gain insight from an individual uninvolved with the Red Light Fashion Amsterdam project.

Both groups were asked specific questions about what they thought about the project, what they saw as the future of the Red Light District, and how the project aesthetically worked with the area surrounding the location. These interviews were coupled with a reading of the 16 fashion window "spaces". The readings of the "spaces" were done with the best weight loss pills goals of discovering how the displays fit in or attempted to fit into the district. Specific things looked at included how noticeable the displays were, what design elements, if any, connected to the surrounding district, and how passerby in the Red Light District reacted to viewing fashion alongside prostitution.

The researchers came in with the bias and assumption that the Red Light Fashion Amsterdam project suppressed the culture of the Red Light District and, furthermore, worsened the working conditions of the prostitutes in the area, who may have had to take their work to the streets instead of the safer window location. This was partially due to the fact that the initial point of entry to this research was through information about Platform 1012, the protest group that raises awareness of the rights of sex workers in the Red Light District in response to the start of the Red Light Fashion Amsterdam project. When looking back at the original questions, they appear to reflect a certain agenda with biased questions against those involved with the fashion project. After an interview with a Prostitute Information Center representative and two visits to interview the CODE Gallery Shop manager, further understanding of both "sides" of the issue (Platform 1012, the protest, and Project 1012, the cityâ€™s work in the district) shed light on shifts in political ideology that may be behind the removal of almost one third of the windows used by prostitutes. For each interview, at times even during the interview, questions were carefully reviewed, reworded, and revised to be unbiased and actively open-minded. This approach was also applied later on, in reading the space of the Red Light Fashion Amsterdam displays.

In regards to following human subject guidelines, no pictures were taken of the windows used by prostitutes in the Red Light District in respect of the sex workers' jobs and for privacy reasons. In order to observe anonymity and guarantee confidentiality, no names will be used in the Google Earth presentation in the Rotterdam conference or in the final deliverable. Pictures were solely taken of fashion displays of the Red Light Fashion Amsterdam Project and the CODE Gallery shop to visually record the observed aesthetics as collected data.

Photographs - CODE Gallery Shop

Streetwear

To study streetwear in Amsterdam, a holistic approach was taken. Every store affiliated with or resembling streetwear was analyzed in terms of space, products, employees, and customers. After a general exploration, the data gathering process was two-fold, and involved looking at the various store elements as well as interviewing store representatives with impromptu questions during store visits. Interviews were conducted with employees and owners, whoever was accessible and willing to share their knowledge.

Initially, accessibility was a concern, because streetwear shops are not known for their hospitality. Limited hours and expectations of unfriendly staff made it somewhat difficult to approach workers when beginning research. However, this issue was soon overcome as, unlike streetwear employees in other parts of the world, store owners in Amsterdam seemed excited to answer questions about their shops and even went above and beyond in most cases to be friendly. A secret Nike shop opened in honor of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing was discovered as the result of a successful interview. To protect the privacy of those interviewed and their shoppers, only pictures of store signs, clothing, and shoe lines were taken and no pictures of people were taken. Privacy was also respected, only asking questions that pertained to the specific store and its displays.

Analysis and Discussion

Red Light Fashion

The Red Light District Fashion portion of the project focused on three objectives: the future of the Red Light District, how the d

isplays aesthetically fit into the Red Light District, and also how this project connected to a global audience and market.

Aesthetically, the displays fit into the district in varying degrees. Two different interviewees, one involved with the Red Light Fashion Amsterdam project and one outside of the project, admitted that the displays were usually met with confusion. People were simply not expecting to see high-end fashion displays amongst the red lights. Observation of the people walking by the Red Light District displays confirmed this; although observation of people is not the most reliable method, overwhelmingly, very few people even noticed the displays. If one person stopped to look at or take pictures of the window displays, a few others might glance at it briefly, but the majority seemed disinterested in even the most ornate decorations. An interviewee inside the project conjectured that the Red Light District was not yet "a creative hot spotâ€¦ it will take a couple of years." Currently, however, fashion in the Red Light District is not quite accepted. People who have come to see the Red Light District are simply not interested in the surrounding fashion.

Based on a reading of the 16 spaces, conclusions were drawn about the designer's feelings on their role in the Red Light District. Observations focused on the designer's attempts to blend in to the Red Light District. These attempts were split into three categories: overt attempts, blending, and no attempt. Overt attempts made an obvious homage to the district, the most noticeable of which was designer Daryl van Wouw's display. Although the lower portion of his display was fully devoted to his streetwear, the windows above the display had pictures of red lights painted by the designer. In addition, a motif was a picture of a man wearing headphones, which appeared on one of the displayed sweatshirts, on the fabric that composed the background of the display, and also in the windows on the second story of the building. The design element of triangulation was used in this case to tie the display together, but it was also interesting to note that in the lower windows, the man wearing headphones appeared in grey and pink, reflecting the clothing, while the design in the upper windows was black and red, perhaps a reflection of the district.

Many of the designers blended their new ideas with the old spaces. Because the spaces given to the designers for the year came with the caveat that not overly much could be changed in case the windows returned to their former use, it was interesting to note how the designers were able to balance this with their own ideas. Conny Groenewegen, for example, left the space she was given mostly as it was, and simply added her own touches. The room that her display was in was kept white, but she had painted on the walls various things that might be found in a designerâ€™s workspace: an ironing board, shelves, iron, shoes, phone, etc. Although the phone was somewhat hidden by other elements of the design and so her nod to the district was not as obvious, the number shown as being dialed on the phone was â€œ900-SEXâ€�. She also had made the space her own through removable elements, such as mannequins, a rustic looking desk, and laying down a new yet rather temporary looking plywood floor. As a whole, she integrated the old ideas of the space with her own, new stylings.

Some designers seemed to completely ignore their location in the district. Many simply set up panels that wholly covered the traces of the rooms behind, bringing their fashion to the forefront. Designer Edwin Oudshoorn had the most noticeable approach in regards to covering up what used to have been in the space. His fantastical display featured a completely re-wallpapered room, brightly lit with chandeliers and candelabra. The room was filled with antique furniture and live flowers, but the focus was on a spinning mannequin wearing one of the designerâ€™s creations. Pulled back curtains hung in the windows, giving the impression of looking in to someoneâ€™s private residence. His display contrasted sharply with the Red Light District, with none of the recognition that characterized the other displays in regards to the atypical location.

Had these displays been anywhere but the Red Light District, it is doubtful that they would be receiving the kind of attention that they are; worldwide, numerous articles have been written about the dichotomy of fashion and prostitution. This recognition is something that some of the designers seemed to embrace, while others completely ignored the surrounding area. Through this conclusions were also drawn, in part, about the future of the Red Light District; very few of the designers tried to fully cover the area their work was displayed in. Instead, incorporation of the Red Light District into many of the displays seemed to point towards an acceptance of the area, and therefore a continuation, at least in part, of its traditional use. One conjecture for the future of the Red Light District was a blend of prostitution and fashion as the district continues to evolve. All of the interviewees saw no future in which prostitution in the area would die out completely, and most of the â€œnew guardâ€� seemed interested in simply making the project work with the area, not changing the area completely.

This global recognition has given designers the opportunity to get their fashion out to a broader audience. The vast majority of people funneling through the Red Light District are tourists; because of the location of this project, these designers have an opportunity to spread their work to a much larger audience. In addition, it was mentioned in many interviews that this opportunity was a jumping off point for many of the designers to spread their fashion worldwide. Being successful does not necessarily equate to being rich in the fashion world. Giving these designers a year of free rent and the space to display in is an incredible boost. Even the most well known designers (for example, Daryl van Wouw) took up the offer to live and work in the district because the economics of fashion mean that an opportunity.

A running theme throughout the interviews, however, was a theory providing reasons for why the buildings had been bought out. The cityâ€™s stated goal of cleaning up the area was applauded but considered suspect by most of the interviewees, both within and outside of the project. Although none of the interviewees felt that the red lights would dissapear, the motives of the city were mentioned on more than one occasion in conjunction with the future of the project.

Streetwear

As a whole, the streetwear scene in Amsterdam is vibrant. At a local level, stores like 290SQM organize events from their in-store offices for the rest of the community, and their fixed gear bike experts provide repair services for Patta's bike enthusiasts. Most of all the skate shops in the area carry the brand Rockwell, doing their best to get the local brand from the small studio above Patto to the streets of Amsterdam. Most impressively, people on the streets have an understanding of a sneaker typology, and are able to identify certain sub-cultures with certain sneakers, like the AM1 for "old school guys," and the AM90 for the "trashy urban types." There is a definite sense of an informed streetwear community, one more sophisticated than is found in most major American cities.

Even with the strong presence of streetwear in Amsterdam, the local streetwear culture is unique. Unlike the employees of most streetwear stores, those in the Amsterdam stores are all friendly and helpful: perfectly willing to share knowledge about products and brands. As another favor to customers, all of the stores have sale itemsâ€”which is considered taboo in the streetwear industry as it contradicts the notion of "exclusivity." Streetwear in Amsterdam feels like streetwear before the explosion of "hype" and its related bad customer service.

Despite the unified culture of the streetwear community, it is apparent that the global streetwear industry is creating tensions in the market. Stores compete for attention from brands for exclusive rights, causing owners to express their exasperation with not being able to carry certain items. Nearly all brands in Amsterdam were placed in stores through discussions between global brand executives and shop owners in order to maintain the notorious one store pairing concept. Also, when Nike unveiled their city-wide Olympics marketing campaign, some stores enjoyed the cohesive aesthetic brought by Nike to the stores of Amsterdam, but other stores complained about being "converted into Nike stores" at the loss of their own identities. Whereas personal relationships define the local market, the presence of the global streetwear industry gives priority to professional relations in the end.

Looking at the development of streetwear unveiled new relationships between Amsterdam and the rest of the world. Streetwear has grown from local hip-hop, skate, and graffiti sub-culture clothing into a worldwide empire, and cities like Amsterdam have become colonies: affiliated and dependent on the empire, but culturally unique. As expected, on a global to local level the industry imposes itself on the local markets, directing trends, and trying to bring a uniform culture to a city with its own style. On the other hand, there is an unexpected element of exportation to Amsterdam's streetwear, as stores and brands like Patta & Rockwell attempt to reach a global audience through internet blogs and shops. From a local to global perspective, streetwear in Amsterdam is still growing in its own right. Though the global to local relationships were most apparent, there is certainly a bi-directional exchange of streetwear fashion worth exploring in the future to enhance understanding of fashion's role in connecting Amsterdam to the rest of the world.

Bibliography

Streetwear

Barnard, Malcolm. Fashion as Communication. London: Routledge, 1996. Streetwear History with Fats "Fatsarazzi" Shariff. Monday,

December 10th, 2007. www.streetwear-websites.com/. Sunday, June 1st, 2008. <

http://www.streetwear-websites.com/articles

/streetwear-history/>.

Interview with 290SQM Employee.

Personal Interview. 8/1/08-8/11/08

Interview with the owner of Concrete

Personal Interview. 8/11/08

Interview with a Patta employee

Personal Interview. 8/11/08

Interview with an 8CHT employee

Personal Interview. 8/11/08

Interview with the director of Streetwear Couture Society

Personal Interview. 8/9/08

Interview with employees of the Nike Concept Store

Personal Interview. 8/9/08

Interview with Nike Marketing Team

Personal Interview. 8/11/08

Red Light Fashion

"Amsterdam: Turn Out the Red Light?" DutchAmsterdam.nl. 9 Feb. 2007. Amsterdam

Tourist Information. <http://www.dutchamsterdam.nl/269-amsterdam-turn-out-the-red-light>.

"Amsterdam's famous Red Light District to be cleaned up." DutchAmsterdam.nl. 17 Dec.

2007. Amsterdam Tourist Information. <http://www.dutchamsterdam.nl/250-amsterdams-famous-red-light-district-to-be-cleaned-up>.

"Amsterdam's red-light district gets a fashion makeover." DutchAmsterdam.nl. 20 Jan.

2008. Amsterdam Tourist Information. <http://www.dutchamsterdam.nl/262-red-light-fashion>.

"Amsterdam's red-light district gets a fashion makeover." Red Light District. 27 Jan.

2007. Www.redlightamsterdam.nl.<http://lacocherapintoresca.rediffiland.com/blogs/2008/01/27/red-ligh

district.html>.

Asthana, Anushka. "Amsterdam closes a window on its red-light tourist trade."

Guardian.co.uk. 23 Sept. 2007. The Observer.<http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/2007/sep/23/travelnews.amsterdam >.

Celeste, Charles. "Red hot and Dutch: The designers who are moving into former

brothels in Amsterdam." 26 Feb. 2008. Independent. <http://www.dutchamsterdam.nl/277-red-light-district-fashionamsterdam>.

"Gallery Store Art & Fashion." CODE Gallery Store.

<http://www.codegallerystore.com/>.

Interview with a Fashion Designer Representative Involved with the Red Light Fashion

Amsterdam (RLFA) Project. Personal interview.

Interview with Fashion Designer Involved in the Red Light Fashion Amsterdam (RLFA)

Project. Personal interview.

Interview with Founder of HTNK (in partnership with the Red Light Fashion

Amsterdam project). Personal interview.

Interview with Manager of the CODE Gallery Shop. Personal interview.

Interview with Representative from the Prostitute Information Center of Amsterdam.

Personal interview.

"Majority of Amsterdam locals support new approach to Red Light District."

DutchAmsterdam.nl. 24 Dec. 2007. Amsterdam Tourist Information.

<http://www.dutchamsterdam.nl/251-majority-of-amsterdam-locals-support-new-approach-to-red-light-district>.

"Red Light Fashion Amsterdam." I-amsterdam.

<http://www.redlightfashionamsterdam.nl/>.

Sterling, Toby. "Dutch Fashion Shops Open in Ex-Brothels." International Business

Times. 19 Jan. 2008. Politics & Policy > Europe. <http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/20080119/dutch-fashion-shops-open-in-ex-brothels.htm>.

Data Collection - Photographs

LINKS to photos on Picasa of the 16 Dutch window fashion displays & "CODE Gallery" store in the Red Light District in relation to the Red Light Fashion Amsterdam project: