Fashioning Things with Burnham (in Time)

In 2017, as part of Canada 150 celebrations the Veronika Gervers Research Fellowship  and The Social Science & Humanities Research Council of Canada generously supported the international conference , Cloth Cultures: Future Legacies of Dorothy K. Burnham.

This presentation explores Dorothy Burnham’s potential in fashion in the 21st century, with focus on sustainability. Burnham’s rigorous analysis of the thinking embedded in objects is highly relevant in the rapidly developing landscape of technology, and in our fast changing relationships with things and how we make them, how we fashion them. A key driver of Burnham’s inquiry – Why did someone make this like this? – is essential in understanding how to create sustainability and eliminate unsustainability in fashion in the 21st century. The presentation explores several practitioners whose work embodies Burnham's research, pointing towards time as layered, diverse and non-linear.