"IF THE CAP DOESN'T FIT, WEAR IT"
FASHION MAKING AS A PRACTICE OF ASSEMBLY BETWEEN VIVIEN WESTWOOD AND BRUNO LATOUR

The paper explores how hacking practices can form design public as social arenas for institutional change in structural systems, in this case the fashion system. Starting from the computer metaphor and Stallman’s quote ”hackers build things, crackers break them”. Similarly Bruno Latour expresses a new role of critique, opposed to the deconstructivist: "The critic is not the one who debunks, but the one who assembles. The critic is not the one who lifts the rugs from under the feet of the naïve believers, but the one who offers the participants arenas in which to gather."

It is a position not based on dialectic opposition, not anti-something, but of constructive disobedience. It can also be a point of departure towards the constructive, as in Vivien Westwood’s punkish saying “If the cap doesn’t fit, wear it”. This quote, seemingly very “anti”, is not a mere deconstruction or opposition, but suggesting a further action – “wear it!” and the assembly of a new fashion arena - punk.

The fashion system, as proposed by Kawamura (2005), is a rigid, institutionalized, stratified and hierarchical structure. But some areas, the connectors, are in fluid form, allowing trespassing and hijacking of mythical power from the system; Hacking. These form back doors, loopholes and passages connected to the main vectors of fashion, bypassing gatekeepers and top-down filters.

In the text I explore the fashion system in terms of flows and networks – and what this means for understanding hacking and other “subversive” fashion strategies through network concepts (Stalder 2005).

Starting from street subcultures such as punk to the contemporary practices of the Sartorialist blog, Fruit kids and FlashMob catwalks, all using fashion for creating arenas of micropolitical publics.

references:
Latour B. (2002) “"Why Has Critique Run out of Steam?” at http://www.ensmp.fr/~latour/articles/article/089.html 
Hebdige, D. (1979) Subculture: The substance of style. New York: Routledge
Kawamura, Y. (2005) Fashion-ology. Oxford: Berg
Stalder F. (2005) Open Cultures and the Nature of Networks. Novi Sad: Futura
Stallman R. “how to become a hacker” at: http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html