Material Histories: Cuttings, Combings, Fettlings and Flock: Fashionable Consumption and Australian Wool ‘Waste’
We live surrounded by material things. Some are mundane and utilitarian, others exotic objects of desire, but all our belongings have something to say about who we are and how we live. Objects reflect both culture and history. Individually and collectively, they shape our lives, link us to others and connect us to the past. Yet objects are often strangely absent from accounts of past lives. This seminar series aims to unpack some of the stories that objects can tell about the present and about the past. We also hope to provide a forum for discussion for those of us interested in material histories. We aim to cast the net widely, with no limitations on either time or space.
Australia’s wool industry produced vast amounts of fine fleece from the nineteenth century, spurring clothing industries globally and driving fashionable consumption. Yet wool processing and clothes manufacturing also generated waste – products like cuttings, combings, fettlings and flock. Salvaged then sold to waste merchants, these materials had a second life. This paper explores fashion and its resulting waste by drawing together the mail order catalogues produced by the Melbourne department store Foy & Gibson and the invoices it issued for the wool waste leaving its mills and clothing factories. It considers the value of these waste products in their second life.
Speaker: Dr Lorinda Cramer is a lecturer in Cultural Heritage and Museum Studies at Deakin University. Her work explores the worn and material histories of Australian wool, the gendered dimensions of dress and textiles, and historical examples of sustainable fashion and waste in museum collections.
Material Histories is presented by Old Treasury Building in partnership with Deakin University and Australian Catholic University.
‘Cuttings, Combings, Fettlings and Flock: Fashionable Consumption and Australian Wool ‘Waste’’ is presented as part of the PayPal Melbourne Fashion Festival’s Independent Programme.
