Subtropical Fashioning: Examples of Care and Community in Twentieth Century Fashion Systems 

Figure 1

Montage of artefacts from the Queensland Museum, from left, details of 1930s jacket, Mark Wilson drawing, 1990s, 1860s jacquard cloth (images Alice Payne).

The global fashion system, in its current state, is structurally unjust and contributes to environmental degradation and social inequity. Approximately 2-8% of global greenhouse gas emissions can be attributed to fashion and textile production (UNEP, 2023), and the industry is responsible for negative social impacts on workers, over 60% of whom are women (ILO, 2016). Propositions for system transformation involve shifting to a sustainable, circular, and regenerative economy, with industry think tanks (Ellen Macarthur Foundation, 2017; Global Fashion Agenda, 2022), as well as researchers and activists (Fletcher & Tham, 2019; Sharpe et. al., 2022) calling for change. Such a transformation will require a fundamental shift in the goals and practices of system participants globally, from industry producers to citizens. Change is also necessarily enacted locally, at diverse scales and through different approaches. In this article, we look to the past to inspire propositions that can inform future fashion systems. Through stories of artifacts from the Queensland Museum’s Social History collection, this article traces the alternative fashion systems of twentieth-century Australia to explore a fashion future that may be sustained.  

Drawing on a framework for fashion systems thinking established by Payne (2021), after Meadows (2008), we examine how these artifacts represent different ways of conceptualizing fashion. In this article, we utilize Payne’s (2021) three-part definition of a fashion system to expand the Eurocentric conception of fashion beyond ‘being fashionable,’ with all the waste and overconsumption that implies.  

These modes of fashion systems speak to Tony Fry’s (2009) notion of the Sustainment— the ongoing practices that may ‘make time.’ The Sustainment contrasts with the present ‘defuturing’ practices of modernity, which are actively undermining the capacity for a future for humanity and much of the living world (Fry, 2011). 

Examining the past to understand actions in the present and implications for the future is something that museums are uniquely positioned to do, offering opportunities for sustainability education (Logan & Sutter, 2012). In addition to museums examining their own practices, Garthe (2022) argues that museums can assist society’s broader transformation. Garthe positions the artifacts held in museums as ‘boundary objects’ that afford the transfer of information and knowledge in ways that offer “unique potential for societal understanding” (p. 31) Fashion, clothing, and textiles, with their close connection to bodies and practices, can be considered as particularly potent boundary objects. However, for the most part, fashion as displayed in museums has often focused on the high-end and spectacular fashion in the ‘blockbuster’ exhibitions of famous designers, and less often examined fashion in everyday life, positioned within a social history (Wallenberg, 2020). Similarly, the presentation of fashion in museums rarely explicitly links to unsustainability and the need for changed practices. A recent exception to this is the Victoria and Albert Museum’s 2018-19 London exhibition Fashioned from Nature, albeit with some analysis noting a missed opportunity for greater criticality in examining fashion’s inherent unsustainability (Pogson, 2019). 

Drawing from the premise of museums’ ‘boundary objects’ that can shed light on future practice, this article examines three artifacts as case studies. The three artifacts examined range from the 1930s to 1990s, and all have a social context based chiefly in Brisbane, Australia. In one narrative, a business from the 1940s is responsive to women’s needs through providing meaningful work in the community, producing most of the garments made to measure, rather than mass-produced. In another, the work of an exuberant designer from the 1990s celebrates queer culture, creativity, and resourcefulness. In a third, a mended chemise represents tenderness and care for one’s humble garments. Together, the three narratives express themes of care and community that are denuded in today’s dominant form of fashion system. Through these artifacts, it becomes possible to imagine other fashion systems that can be sustained at the scale of the home, the community, and the region. The artifacts represent ways to fashion oneself that are creative, resourceful, and grounded in care. 

WHAT IS A FASHION SYSTEM? 

For fashion researchers, a barrier to a genuine reimagining of fashion in the Sustainment has been the word ‘fashion’ itself. More than mere ‘clothing,’ the concept of ‘fashion’ is persistently bound to Eurocentric modernity (Entwistle, 2000; Wilson, 2003; Jansen & Craik, 2016), and therefore to the artificial change and desire for newness that propels consumer culture and its unsustainability (Payne, 2021). Although every human wears clothes, because the Western conception of ‘fashion’ is so tied to modernity and its ills, it is hard to imagine alternatives. 

In this article, we define a fashion system as the organized means by which communities of humans clothe themselves in time, place, and culture, using materials drawn from the earth and transformed through technologies and human labour (Payne, 2021). A fashion system comprises three attributes. First, there is fashion-as-culture; how one fashions oneself in one’s time and place, whether to fit in or to stand out, following the customs expected of one’s community, with the resources available, and with varying degrees of individual choice. Put simply, if you are human, you are always clothed in culture, and even being naked is a kind of fashioning. This notion extends the concept of fashion beyond modernity, to include many other representations and meanings of dress as ‘fashioning’ (see Welters & Lillethun, 2017; Craik & Jansen, 2016; Eicher & Sumberg, 1995). Second, there is fashion-as-industry: the processes whereby the stuff of the earth is fashioned into human dress—whether through animal skins stitched with bone needles, cloth woven in the home, or by industrial air jet looms. Third, there is fashion-as-change: how and why the styles of dress change. In some fashion systems, change can be very slow, barely discernible over a human lifetime; in other fashion systems, the speed is artificially fast (Payne, 2021). 

Framed in this way, via notions of culture, change, and industry, ‘fashion’ can be seen as a universal part of the human experience of being clothed, and a ‘fashion system’ is the organized means by which this occurs. This framing demonstrates that there are numerous fashion systems, and every human participates in them. Conceptualizing a fashion system in this way also means that its unsustainability need not be locked in; rather, the characteristics of, and relationships between, the three dimensions of culture, change, and industry can be reconstituted in ways that are just and life-affirming. 

Despite the diversity of possible systems, today there is arguably one dominant form of fashion system. The dominant fashion system follows a ‘fashion-as-change’ model that is artificially fast and in service to the dominant economic system of capitalism. Its ‘fashion-as-industry’ is enabled through globalized, opaque supply chains, rooted in colonial structures and rife with social and environmental injustices. Its ‘fashion-as-culture’ is, in many respects, shaped by artificial change and by the desire and individualism of the modern subject for newness. This dominant fashion system is therefore characterized by systemic unsustainability. This system cannot be sustained and is an example of ‘defuturing,’ to use Fry’s terminology. This unsustainability is ontological for the modern subject, that is, “causally and essentially the unsustainable has become elemental to existing and extending modernized human being” (Fry, 2011, p. 23). Although there have been decades of work to address the industry’s ills, and the term ‘sustainability’ is part of fashion industry parlance, the industry’s definition is not ‘the Sustainment’ of Tony Fry’s terms, rather, it typically refers to incremental improvements by industry that in fact may serve only to sustain the unsustainable (Blühdorn, 2016). To use Fry’s words, this fashion system is not ‘making time’; instead, it is destroying time. In Design and Politics, Fry speaks of the need for design that expresses “a beauty divorced from fashion,” meaning ‘fashion-as-change,’ a restless desire for change and newness with all the overconsumption and waste this provokes. 

Through the lens of the Sustainment, then, what is required are fashion systems that can make time, rather than ones that are future-destroying, by design. Propositions for these future fashion systems include the Wellbeing Wardrobe (Sharpe et. al., 2022) and Earth Logic (Fletcher & Tham, 2019), which frame systems that are plural, local, and just. By taking apart and examining these three aspects of fashion of ‘change,’ ‘industry,’ and ‘culture,’ researchers can imagine fashion systems that exist beyond that dominant form of fashion system, ones that are less bound to change and newness, that rethink the scale and location and form of industry, and that embrace the widest gamut of cultural meanings in dress. 

Historical research and knowledge of past practices to inform alternate approaches have proved fruitful avenues for informing the broader project of fashion and sustainability (for examples, see Gwilt, 2011; Twigger Holroyd, 2015; Twigger Holroyd et. al., 2023), and the analysis that follows extends on this approach. 

[RE] FASHIONING THE MUSEUM 

Over the past half-century, museums have shown a growing interest in collecting and exhibiting fashion, with these institutions playing an increasing role in disseminating ideas about fashion as a marker of individual and collective identity, creativity, and social and cultural belonging (Crane, 2000). Over the same fifty years, the study of material culture, rather than documentary evidence alone, has commanded increasing attention, emphasizing the importance of positioning and integrating objects into their social and cultural contexts. Referencing Igor Kopytoff’s (1986) influential essay in his edited volume, The Social Life of Things, anthropologist Arjun Appadurai stressed the pedagogical and illustrative value of objects that “move through many states and meanings in the course of their lives” (Appadurai, 2017, p. 402). 

Beyond the specific context of fashion, contemporary sustainability concerns have also influenced the approach of Australian institutions. We now turn to examine the past and present of the Queensland Museum, home to the artifacts discussed in this article. Situated beside the river, in the heart of Brisbane’s South Bank cultural precinct, Queensland Museum (the Museum) was founded in 1859 by members of the Queensland Philosophical Society to document the natural and geological world of the new colony and to collect the cultural material of its Indigenous inhabitants whose ways of living (and lives) were framed by colonial mindsets of violence and disavowal. Like many of its colonial counterparts, the Museum’s foundational objectives were grounded in British imperialism and structures of colonialism and Western supremacy, where Aboriginal and other Indigenous peoples and their objects were viewed as ‘ethnographic’ or ‘anthropological’ specimens or artifacts. The Museum’s directors and staff, whose ranks were filled mostly by scientists and anthropologists, placed little value on the names or lived experiences of those whose objects they collected, nor the complex cosmological and ideological contexts in which objects were made, worn, or used. 

Unsurprisingly, with the Museum’s collecting focus on natural history and anthropology, items described as ‘social history,’ from which our selected objects were chosen, were few, typically brought from England by new migrants or by travellers, and of relatively little interest to the scientists who worked there. The few hundred disparate objects that made up this category were subsequently relegated to a section with the unimaginative title, ‘Curios, Machinery, Weapons and Furniture’ (Mather, 1986). In its first hundred years of operations, the Museum’s ‘costume’ collection (including hats and shoes) amounted to less than one hundred items, brought mainly by migrants or travellers from places such as England, China, Japan, Egypt, and Europe. 

Collecting garments began in earnest in the late 1950s, though it was not until the late 1990s that the discipline of social history—the study of the lived history of objects—was incorporated into the Museum’s fields of research, with fashion and design emerging some years later as a sub-discipline considered worthy of investigation. 

Today, Queensland Museum, like others around the world, has a refocussed interest in researching and documenting the lived history, social meaning, and context of the fashion items we collect—the people, places, socioeconomic, cultural, and geopolitical influences that have helped shape the design, production, marketing, and wear of clothing over time. Yet, until recently, there has been little or no emphasis on fashion’s problematic relationship with the environment we inhabit and the lives of those who produce it. 

The aspects of fashion systems central to the Museum’s costume collection are the fashion-as-culture dimension—the social and historical meanings of dress for Queenslanders—and the fashion-as-industry dimension, focusing on how local businesses and supply chains developed and evolved through time. The fashion-as-change dimension is bound closely to Australia’s fashion-as-culture, as well as its geographic relationship as peripheral to the global centres of fashion (Heim, Ferrero-Regis, & Payne, 2021). For the Museum, the collaboration with QUT was an opportunity to begin reconstructing new narratives around the garments in their collection and to find new ways and contexts to connect to key social issues from the world outside the museum, telling stories that reflect the cultural and environmental shifts that are taking place around the world (Hickson, 2019). 

METHODS AND CONTEXT FOR ARTEFACT SELECTION 

In 2021, Queensland Museum’s social history curators, Judith Hickson and Carmen Burton, collaborated with Alice Payne, then Associate Professor at Queensland University of Technology, to produce short documentary films centred on eight textile objects selected from the Museum’s Social History collection. The Social History collection is a diverse array of artifacts, however, is distinct from the First Nations collection held in the Museum, and as such, artifacts related to First Nations’ peoples were not included in this study. We believe it important to note here that Queensland Museum’s naming conventions have shifted from earlier classifications of Aboriginal or Indigenous artifacts (including dress) as ‘anthropology’ to what is now termed its ‘First Nations’ collection. Today, the Museum’s First Nations’ costume collections include contemporary fashion that draws inspiration from traditional motifs, storytelling, identity, and culture, but is not necessarily regarded as fashion or art by its designers. 

There is much to learn from these artifacts, however given the often-extractive way that non-Indigenous Australians have drawn on or interpreted Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander knowledges and experiences, we respect that approaches and indeed definitions of what a fashion system may or may not be should be led by Indigenous curators and through community consultation. 

The authors’ selection was based on the learning approaches of an undergraduate course unit which examined sustainability concerns through the lenses of past production, consumption, and re/circulations methods and practices. Each of the eight objects selected for analysis linked to one of these three themes. Among the objects chosen were a silk shawl woven on a hand-operated jacquard loom in Ireland around 1860, a collection of ramie samples sent to Brisbane from England in 1906, an early 1900s, weighted-silk mourning dress, a 1912 silk wedding dress with a sheer overlay made of piña, or ‘pineapple silk,’ and a 1930s women’s suit trimmed with machine-embroidered cutwork-lace (see Figure 1, Figure 2). 

Representing one of the world’s oldest surviving crafts, the silk shawl embodies the intertwined histories of silk and of weaving—from evolving manufacturing technologies to networks of cultural exchange, traditions, ideas, and knowledge. The history of ramie, a natural textile derived from species of nettle plants, traverses thousands of years. In the early twentieth century, ramie manufacturing had progressed from labour-intensive handlooms to power-looms, and ramie was being promoted as ‘a new industry for Queensland’ (Brisbane Courier, 1906). The ramie samples were a marketing device to publicize the diversity of textile products made from ramie, ranging from sturdy sailcloth to silk-like fabrics as fine as ‘handkerchief linen.’ 

Early twentieth-century garments like the weighted-silk mourning dress hold valuable lessons in sustainable textile manufacturing practices. Historically, weighing agents such as tin salts were used to increase the weight of silk to produce heavier draped fabrics. Because weight, rather than length, often determined the price of silk and other fabrics, manufacturers regularly overweighted the fabric to increase profits. This practice resulted in weakening the silk fibres, causing the fabric to split and shred and rendering fabrics almost impossible to conserve (Miller & Reagan, 1989). Piña, or ‘pineapple silk,’ a silk-like fabric constructed from pineapple fibre, is relatively unknown in Australia today, but is gaining popularity in the sustainable fashion industries of pineapple-producing countries, such as India, Philippines (where it originated), China, Mexico, Nigeria, and Brazil (Ramesh & Ramesh, 2020). 

The dense cutwork-lace embroidery on the 1930s women’s suit, made by a young Russian immigrant dressmaker, demonstrated the potential for using this method for repair and remanufacturing of damaged garments, highlighting the opportunities to elevate simple garments to render them artisanal, elegant, and sophisticated. 

Things that were repaired in the past can show us how to mend things in the present. As the climate crisis grows and learning sustainable practices becomes increasingly important to young people today, the educational value of these objects becomes clearer. 

Figure 2

Montage of artifacts examined in the Queensland Museum, top left, pineapple fibre dress early 1900s, top right, ramie fabric samples, early 1900s, bottom left, detail 1930s cutwork-lace jacket, bottom right, early 1900s weighted silk jacket (Alice Payne).

In addition to the aforementioned items, the authors selected three objects—a 1930s shirtwaist dress, a military-style men’s jacket, and a cotton voile top—to offer an extended analysis in the sections that follow. They applied material culture methods to analyze the artifacts themselves (for example, see Mida & Kim, 2015), photographs, and other ephemera surrounding the artifacts, supported by stories gleaned from the online repository Trove and other secondary sources, as well as personal communication with curator Judith Hickson. 

PLAYERS & CO – DOROTHY DROUYN (1901-1942) 

The first item is a 1940s classic ‘shirtwaist’ dress made by a Brisbane firm, Players & Co (Figure 3, Figure 4). The decision to examine this object was for the production and re/circulation practices associated with the garment: ethical, community-based production, and the repurposing of existing materials for re/circulation. 

To all appearances, the dress appears to be thoughtfully constructed and well made with stripes carefully matched on sleeves, collar, pockets, and bodice, and a full, elegantly draped, bias-cut skirt (Figure 3, Figure 4). Inside, the seam allowances are noticeably unfinished and frayed, and the zipper appears slightly misaligned with its ends untidily held in place with black thread (Figure 7). In today’s fashion market, this garment would, potentially, be regarded as a low-quality, low-cost garment. Made from re-purposed curtaining material (Figure 6), the dress is an artefact of wartime rationing. This period introduced many changes in women’s attitudes towards fashion. Rationing inspired simple, classic designs, like the shirtwaist, which were intended to stay in fashion for a longer time. 

Figure 6

Close up of Shirtwaist dress, H50180 Dorothy Drouyn collection. Queensland Museum. Photographer: Peter Waddington. Copyright. 

Figure 7

Views of garment interior showing unfinished fraying seams. Photographer: Judith Hickson. 

In this instance, the concept of ‘fashion-as-culture’ presents a starting point to re-examine differences and begin a process of understanding a past generation and different fashion system—one less sensitive to ‘perfection’ (as seen in Figure 6) and more attuned to the social needs of women in the time and place in which it operated. 

In a decade marked by global economic and political upheaval, with mass unemployment and the looming threat of war, Players, under Drouyn’s leadership, grew and flourished, offering fashionable sportswear and smart-casual clothing designs previously not available in Brisbane. Staff numbers grew with demand. At a time when women’s work was strictly limited by lack of education and intense social pressure on married women to withdraw from paid work, the business employed about sixty-five women, mostly as seamstresses, many of whom worked at home, allowing them to care for their families and to contribute to their family’s income (Power, 1979). 

Players’ success appears to have been fundamentally underpinned by Drouyn’s sense of social responsibility, business acumen, her prescient understanding of global fashion trends, and her leadership style, which Dennis Drouyn (2022) described as similar to that which she exhibited as a team captain—constantly mentoring, encouraging and showing interest in each of her employees. In Dennis’ words, his aunt was “concerned for every team member… every player was positioned in the right place at the right time” (Drouyn, 2022). Dorothy Drouyn’s greatest strength was her ability to draw people together towards a common goal. Family, friends, and teammates were regularly co-opted for fundraising events such as fashion parades, comedy revues, and film evenings, with examples on display in Figure 8 and Figure 9. These occasions benefited sporting clubs, but also inspired those who participated to continue with Drouyn’s charity work, even after her death. 

In contrast to today’s mainstream fashion industry, Drouyn enacted a style similar to contemporary notions of ‘servant leadership’ (Spears & Laurence, 2001; Senjaya & Pekerti, 2010), leading not from a position of accumulating wealth and power, but from a desire to better serve others, with a focus on the growth and well-being of people and the communities to which they belong. In recognizing that the genesis of these values and of Players’ success lay in times of hardship and war, forcing change, creativity, and adaptation, Drouyn’s story and that of the dress presents a starting point for re-defining a new fashion system amid decreasing resources, increasing global conflict, and in a world facing unprecedented climate change. 

STORY 2 – HAIRY DOG AND MARK WILSON  

Turning now to another era, the 1990s, the second artifact is reminiscent of the Beatles’ Sergeant Pepper-era— a wonderfully colourful, military style, man's jacket made of lime green cotton twill with gold plastic buttons down its centre opening, gold lurex shoulder pads, decorative front, and 'fringing' made of rows of bobby-pins attached with safety pins. The selection of this object linked to sustainability themes through the small-scale production, the consumption practices closely linked to marginalized communities, and the re/circulation practices of inventive reuse. 

The Brisbane fashion scene in the 1990s was strictly divided between conservative middle-class young urban professionals and alternative subcultures: grunge, punk, mod, and goth, inspired by a queer underground arts and dance party culture. This allowed designers and makers more freedom to express their personal styles through fashion and body adornment (Hartogh, 2022). 

The jacket’s creator, Mark Wilson, was fifteen when he began designing, making, and selling his fantastical, theatrical garments under the brand ‘Hairy Dog’—a name chosen, like his clothing designs, for its ability to shock. The earliest costume in the Museum’s collection was made when Wilson was only twelve. The jacket (Figure 10) was made around 1990, when he was just sixteen. The materials were often salvaged from many places, indicating a resourcefulness that could be seen as specific to Brisbane fashion design practice even today, given the far smaller industry eco-systems for accessing wholesale cloth and other supplies compared with the larger industry and fashion centres of Melbourne and Sydney (Payne et. al., 2018). 

In his designs, Wilson sought to combine and contrast fabrics and textures, and often used fabrics considered ‘tacky’ or unfashionable. He was not a person who followed trends or fads but was idiosyncratic in his design ethos, drawing inspiration from everyday objects and people he admired (Queensland Museum, n.d.). His trademarks were vivid colour and the avant-garde—visionary, experimental, theatrical designs that occupy a liminal space between fashion and the contemporary art world. His quirky creations included circus-style sportswear, cropped jackets with raffia trim, bright vinyl minis decorated with sheriff stars, gold lurex shorts, sequinned jogging shirts, and offbeat denim dresses with ‘saddle-bag hips.’ Figure 12 shows Mark Wilson in his sewing studio in the 1980s. 

Figure 12

Mark Wilson in his sewing studio, c. 1980s. Copyright: Queensland Museum.

The Australia that Wilson grew up in was, in his words, “unfair,” “conservative,” and “backward” (Wilson, quoted in the Courier Mail, 1992). During the 1980s and 1990s, Brisbane was still viewed as dangerous for the LGBTQI+ community, with a prevailing climate of censorship and repression and intense homophobic sentiment promoted by a right-wing state government (Robinson, 2010). Even after homosexuality was legalized in 1990 by a reformist Labour government, attitudes among the population did not change apace. To describe Mark Wilson as courageous, then, is an understatement. Wilson’s designs set out to challenge the conservative aesthetic and change fashion practices of the time. In Wilson's words, his work intentionally defied a “mainstream depiction and idea of beauty and glamour by presenting to the public clothes which express my passion for depicting the ugly or unlikely into images of comical beauty” (Wilson, 1992). In other words, as explained earlier, Wilson almost perfectly embodied “a beauty divorced from fashion” as proposed by Fry. 

Wilson emerged from a difficult childhood with a determination to define and to be himself within a largely intolerant society. Like Drouyn’s story, and that of many others, struggle and hardship were the impetus and driving force for his creativity and success. The fashion-as-industry in which he participated was small-scale, with one-off designs manufactured locally and inventively from materials to hand. 

Although independent designers in present-day Brisbane may struggle to make a sustainable living, by supplementing their practice with other jobs (Heim, Ferrero-Regis, & Payne, 2021), like Wilson, they are embedded within and help to sustain their wider creative community. 

Since 1990, although often seen as lagging behind other states’ reforms, Queensland has experienced significant changes to laws affecting LGBTQI+ people, including the legalization of consensual sex between males in 1991 and protection of sexual and gender identity under both state and federal anti-discrimination laws. Yet, Wilson’s story still resonates strongly in a world where the LGBTQI+ community’s hard-fought acceptance and freedoms are being challenged across the globe, and where beauty, glamour, mass production, and conformity remain the hallmarks of global fashion. Wilson’s designs helped create a fashion-as-culture for his community that continues to resonate today. 

STORY 3 - GAY WELCH 

The final example examines the practices of an individual wearer, highlighting the need to foreground use practices within the fashion system (Gwilt & Rissanen, 2012). Gay Welch was a fashion model in the 1950s. She was probably one of, if not the first, Australian woman to be a model for the big fashion houses in Europe, including Christian Dior and Coco Chanel—the epitome of fashion’s Eurocentricity. The Queensland Museum holds a collection of her clothing related to her work, as well as scrapbooks of newspaper cuttings from her modelling career (Figure 13). The significance of the collection lies not only in the garments themselves—which include items from designers such as Dior—but also in what is revealed in the wardrobe and its related ephemera. For example, several of the designer garments are far from pristine, displaying ad hoc repairs and signs of a well-worn life. We chose one of these artifacts as a ‘boundary object,’ linking it to sustainability themes through the consumption and use practices it demonstrates. 

Figure 13

Gay Welch Scrapbooks - Queensland Museum collection. 

Of Welch’s wardrobe, the garment selected was not one of her extensive designer clothing pieces, but rather an everyday cotton voile top, possibly acquired in her travels to India, and then returning with her to her home in Brisbane. The fine cotton top also is particularly suited to the sub-tropical climate of Brisbane, which could be why it displays such a long period of wear and repair. What is interesting about this top is how often it has been patched and darned; it was clearly much loved and treasured over many years. The original fine embroidery of the maker has Welch’s darning and patching sitting over the top. 

In fact, many of her garments—even the haute couture items—were loosely altered and repaired by hand, likely by Welch herself. 

There is a contrast here between the new, pristine styles that Welch was modelling for Dior and Chanel and the humble, resourceful care practices visible when examining her wardrobe. In some ways, this contrast could be reflective of the frugal mindset of the post-war years during which Welch grew up, providing insights for wearers today into what care practices may look like. 

Figure 14

Close up of Gay Welsh Cotton Voile top, film still, Alice Payne.

To bring these stories together, this paper has examined three fashion system stories, each demonstrating different approaches to fashioning in Brisbane during the twentieth century. How might we, today, draw on these examples to forge our own alternative fashion systems? What principles or ideas could potentially be translated, and how? Drouyn, Wilson and Welch were each participants in a fashion system that was context specific to their time and place, shaped by its modes of production, culture, and norms. Despite this, their approaches to fashion offer insights into principles and methods that could be centred in future fashion systems. Some of these examples from the past are models for fashion systems that are far less bound to the dominant mode of capitalist consumption and growth. 

In Mark Wilson’s work, we see a ‘fashion-as-culture’ that centres community and creativity. In relation to the concept of sustainment, he shows a resourcefulness in using what is at hand to create witty, playful items that are expressive of culture and of community. They are colourful, joyful, and not bound to the vagaries of the dominant system’s ‘fashion-as-change,’ which relentlessly pursues change for change’s sake. To support an alternative fashion system, a principle that emerges from Wilson’s story is to recentre the designer-maker in this system. More than the solo entrepreneur marketing their label, Wilson was a creative practitioner embedded in the specifics of his micro culture, a conduit for his community’s self-expression, freedom, and creativity as much as a producer of garments. A second principle supports a circular approach, where fashion is produced through the resourceful gleaning of materials. 

In Dorothy Drouyn’s business, we see a ‘fashion-as-industry’ that is resourceful and putting people first, with a business approach responsive to women’s needs by providing meaningful work within the community and producing garments made to measure rather than mass-produced. Already the social enterprise movement in contemporary fashion is a parallel with Drouyn’s work, and the small-scale operations closely connected to a local community offers an approach to business that is more than making frocks. 

As seen in Welch’s example, this includes extending the garment’s lifetime as long as possible with tenderness and care for humble items. A further principle for alternative fashion systems, then, includes a reformed view of how change and newness are configured. Rather than an artificial approach to fashion change dictated by global trends, each story points to different rhythms of change that are more closely connected to the individual or community’s rhythms. 

There are limits to what can be learned from past approaches, given the different context, culture, politics, and technologies of the contemporary time. In the twenty-first century, the dominant fashion system and its pristine products can seem totalizing. Today, garments are designed by algorithm, manufactured at inhuman speed and colossal scale. In contrast to the vast machine of ultra-fast fashion, the examples in this paper may appear folksy and quaint. The value, however, of analyzing these stories lies in the opening up of alternatives and reminding the contemporary viewer that things were not always as they are now. 

Together, these narratives express themes of care and community that are absent or denuded in today’s dominant form of fashion system. As boundary objects that carry the stories and practices of the past, these artifacts act as aids to imagine other fashion systems—ones that can be sustained at the scale of the home, the community, and the region. They represent ways to fashion oneself that are creative, resourceful, and founded in care. 

We acknowledge and thank the Queensland Museum and Carmen Burton, who worked on the videos and stories with us, and to thank Queensland University of Technology’s filming team led by Richard Hearman. 

Appadurai, A. (2017). Museum Objects as Accidental Refugees. Historische Anthropologie, 25(3), 401–408. 

Blühdorn, I. (2016). Sustainability—Post-sustainability—Unsustainability. The Oxford Handbook of Environmental Political Theory (T. Gabrielson, C. Hall, J. M. Meyer, & D. Schlosberg, Eds.), (pp. 259–273). Oxford University Press. 

Brisbane Courier. (1906, June 9). A New industry for Queensland: Ramie Cultivation. Brisbane Courier, p. 15. 

Clarke, T., and MacNeil, P. (2023, March 22). ‘Cultural Expression through Dress’: Towards a Definition of First Nations Fashion. The Conversation, https://theconversation.com/cultural-expression-through-dress-towards-a-definition-of-first-nations-fashion-201782. 

Crane, D. (2000). Fashion and its Social Agendas: Class, Gender, and Identity in Clothing. The University of Chicago Press. 

Courier Mail. (1992, February 20). Hairy Dog Bites Back. Courier Mail, p. 27. 

Daily Standard. (1932, December 16). Catering for Sportswomen: Unique Outfitters. Daily Standard, p. 5. 

Drouyn, D. (2022). Personal Communication between Dorothy Drouyn’s Nephew, Dennis Drouyn and curator Judith Hickson. [Conducted as part of the requisition process]. 

Ellen MacArthur Foundation. (2017). A New Textiles Economy: Redesigning Fashion's Future. Ellen MacArthur Foundation. https://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/a-new-textiles-economy. 

Eicher, J., and Sumberg, B. (1995). World Fashion, Ethnic, and National Dress. Dress and Ethnicity (J.B. Eicher, Ed.), 295–306. Berg Publishing. 

Entwistle, J. (2000). The Fashioned Body: Fashion, Dress, and Modern Social Theory. Polity Press. 

Fletcher, K., and Than, M. (2019). Earth Logic: Fashion Action Research Plan. JJ Charitable Trust. https://earthlogic.info/.

Fry, T. (2009). Design Futuring: Sustainability, Ethics and New Practice (Australian ed.). University of New South Wales Press. 

Fry, T. (2011). Design as Politics (English ed.). Berg Publishing. 

Garthe, C.J. (2022). The Sustainable Museum: How Museums Contribute to the Great Transformation. Routledge. 

Gwilt, A. (2011). Producing Sustainable Fashion: The Points of Positive Intervention by the Fashion Designer. Shaping Sustainable Fashion: Changing the Way We Make and Use Clothes (A. Gwilt and T. Rissanen, Eds.). Earthscan. 

Gwilt, A., and Rissanen, T. (Eds.) (2011). Shaping Sustainable Fashion: Changing the Way We Make and Use Clothes. Routledge. 

Hartogh, E. (2022, September 27). Interview with Evelyn Hartogh, former friend of Mark Wilson and fashion model [Personal communication]. Interviewed by historian M. Bellanta, Australian Catholic University. Evelyn gave permission for her name and comments from the recorded interview to be freely used by researchers. 

Hickson, J. (2019). Seizing the Zeitgeist: Capturing the Spirit of Our Times in a State Social History Collection [Conference paper]. Queensland Museums and Galleries Conference. 

Heim, H., Ferrero-Regis, T., and Payne, A. (2021). Independent Fashion Designers in the Elusive Fashion City. Urban Studies, 58(10), 2004–2022. 

International Labour Organization (ILO). (2016). Weak Minimum Wage Compliance in Asia’s Garment Industry. 

Jansen, M. A., and Craik, J. (2016). Modern Fashion Traditions: Negotiating Tradition and Modernity through Fashion. Bloomsbury Publishing. 

Kopytoff, I. (1986). The Cultural Biography of Things: Commoditization as Process. The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective (A. Appadurari, Ed.), 64–94. Cambridge University Press. 

Labrum, B. (2014). Expanding Fashion Exhibition History and Theory: Fashion at New Zealand’s National Museum since 1950. International Journal of Fashion Studies, 1(1), 97–117. 

Logan, R., and Sutter, G. C. (2012). Sustainability and Museum Education: What Future are we Educating For? The International Journal of the Inclusive Museum, 4(3), 11. 

Martin, R. (1988). American Ingenuity Sportswear 1930s–1970s. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. 

Mather, P. et al., (Eds.) (1986). A Time for a Museum: The History of the Queensland Museum 1862–1986, (p. 222). Queensland Museum. 

Mida, I., and Kim, A. (2015). The Dress Detective: A Practical Guide to Object-Based Research in Fashion. Bloomsbury Publishing. 

Miller, J., and Reagan, B. (1989). Degradation in Weighted and Unweighted Silks. Journal of the American Institute of Conservation, 28(2), 97–115. 

Payne, A. (2021). Designing Fashion’s Future: Present Practice and Tactics for Sustainable Change. Bloomsbury Publishing. 

Payne, A., Ibanez, I., and Pearson, L. (2018). New Materiality: 'Making Do' and making Connections. In Soft Landing (A. Piper, U. Raebild, and N. Nimkulrat, Eds.). [Cumulus Think Tank: Publication No. 3 of Cumulus International Association of Universities and Colleges in Art, Design and Media], 35–50. 

Pogson, K. (2019). Exhibition Review: Fashioned from Nature: Victoria and Albert Museum London, April 21st, 2018 to January 27th, 2019. Fashion Practice, 11(1), 141-146. https://doi.org/10.1080/17569370.2018.1507171. 

Power, M. (1979). Women and Economic Crises: The 1930’s Depression and the Present Crisis [Revised version of paper delivered at Women and Labour Conference, Macquarie University, May 1978]. The Journal of Australian Political Economy, 4(3–12), 5. https://search.informit.org/doi/10.3316/ielapa.800219774.

Queensland Museum. (n.d.). Mark Wilson, Artist’s Statement. Mark Wilson Archive, Queensland Museum. 

Ramesh, R., and Ramesh, B. (2020). Pina Fabrics – An Alternative Low-Cost Green Product for Sustainable Livelihood. Juni Khyat (UGC Care Group I Listed Journal), 10(9), 15-19. 

Robinson, S, (2010). Homophobia as Party Politics: The Construction of the ‘Homosexual Deviant’ in Joh Bjelke-Petersen’s Queensland. Queensland Review, 17(1), 29-45. 

Sendjaya, S., and Pekerti, A. (2010). Servant Leadership as Antecedent of Trust in Organizations. Leadership and Organizational Development Journal, 37(1), 643- 663. https://doi.org/10.1108/01437731011079673"https://doi.org/10.1108/014377310110 79673. 

Sharpe, S. A., Brydges, T., Retamal, M., Pugh, R., and Lavanga, M. (2022). Wellbeing Wardrobe: A Wellbeing Economy for the Fashion and Textile Sector. The European Environmental Bureau. https://eeb.org/library/wellbeing-wardrobe-a-wellbeing-economy-for-the-fashion-and-textile-sector-summary/. 

Spears, L. C., and Lawrence, M. (Eds.) (2001). Focus on Leadership: Servant-Leadership for the Twenty-First Century. John Wiley & Sons. 

Truth. (1947, April 13). Dead Sportsgirl’s Will Made Court Puzzle: ‘Players’ to be Wound Up. Truth, p. 32. https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/203126203. 

Twigger Holroyd, A. (2015). Openness. The Handbook of Sustainability and Fashion (K. Fletcher and M. Tham, Eds.). (pp. 253–261). Routledge. 

Twigger Holroyd, A., Gordon, J. F., and Hill, C. (2023). Historical Perspectives on Sustainable Fashion: Inspiration for Change. Bloomsbury Publishing. 

Wallenberg, L. (2020). Art, Life, and the Fashion Museum: For a More Solidarian Exhibition Practice. Fashion and Textiles, 7(1), 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40691-019-0201-5. 

Welters, L., and Lillethun, A. (2017). Fashion History: A Global View. Bloomsbury Publishing. 

Wilson, E. (2003). Adorned in Dreams: Fashion and Modernity. Rutgers University Press. 

Wilson, M. (1992, April 3). Mark Wilson, Curriculum Vitae Statement. Queensland Museum Archive. 

UN Environment Programme (UNEP). (2023). Sustainability and Circularity in the Textile Value Chain: A Global Roadmap.  

Author Bios

Article Citation

MLA: Payne, Alice, and Judith Hickson. “Subtropical Fashioning: Examples of Care and Community in Twentieth Century Fashion Systems.” Fashioning Sustainment, special issue of Fashion Studies, vol. 3, no. 1, 2024, 1-29. 10.38055/FST030106. 

APA: Payne, A., & Hickson, J. (2024). Subtropical Fashioning: Examples of Care and Community in Twentieth Century Fashion Systems. Fashioning Sustainment, special issue of Fashion Studies, 3(1), 1-29. 10.38055/FST030106. 

Chicago: Payne, Alice, and Judith Hickson. “Subtropical Fashioning: Examples of Care and Community in Twentieth Century Fashion Systems.” Fashioning Sustainment, special issue of Fashion Studies 3, no. 1 (2024): 1-29. 10.38055/FST030106.