The JOIN Collective Conversation Magazine is the result of a JOIN Collective Clothes workshop at MA Fashion Strategy. During this workshop the students of generation 29 together explored topics such as ownership, identity, (intellectual) property, production methods, alienation, mystification and value creation and used the JOIN Collective Clothes manual to make a garment piece. At the end of the workshop the pieces were put together, photographed, reflected upon through text and brought together in this magazine.

JOIN Collective Clothes is an initiative by fashion designer Anouk Beckers and graphic designer and art director Beau Bertens. Initiator Anouk Beckers on JOIN Collective Clothes: “What if we open up the fashion system and explore it as a non-fixed entity, a system where people can playfully join in, where everyone is invited to create fashion together?”

The fashion industry focuses mostly on designer status, brand identity, commodities as magical results of invisible processes and an adoration of values such as originality and ‘the new’. And although it is often perceived as something that is not for everyone, fashion surely is a collective practice. By making and wearing clothes together, the design and research project JOIN Collective Clothes proposes fashion as a collective practice.

The base of JOIN Collective Clothes is a modular clothing system that consists of four different shapes which can be combined into a full outfit (a sleeve, a top, a trouser leg and a part of a skirt). An easy-to-use open source manual invites people to get started in designing and making the pieces themselves. This manual can be downloaded at www.joincollectiveclothes.com. The pieces made by various makers from all over the world, subsequently form an ever-growing collection that can be seen on the JOIN Collective Clothes website.

The project encompasses a series of workshops and designer commissions. Everyone is invited to join one of the 4-hour workshops to design and make a garment-piece. At the end of the workshop, the results from the participants are joined into one complete outfit. The process is playful, but at the same time it critically questions the characteristics of the fashion system.

Type: softcover\ Dimensions: 210 mm x 297 mm portrait\ Pages: 72\ Art Direction: Anouk Beckers\ Introduction text: Anouk Beckers and Chet Bugter\ Contributors: Charlotte Verdegaal, Eliza Lachkova, Julia Berg, Lindy Boerman, Lu Lin, Sophia Buter, Tanyatorn Lauwanichpat\ Text editing: Hanka van der Voet and Femke de Vries\ Graphic design: Anouk Beckers and Julia Berg\ Release date: Autumn 2019\ Binding: folding\ Edition: 100\ Color: color copied\ Printer: copy machine ArtEZ University of the Arts at the Kortestraat 27, Arnhem\ Language: English\ Made possible by: MA Fashion Strategy at ArtEZ University of the Arts\ Production: Warehouse\ Production assistant: Chet Bugter, Julia Berg, Seok Park