Contrast between east & west london

·      Building erased but history is not - site of Alias, Moses & Son - well lit shot, price tags, no haggling, ready made stock, alias also bought in bulk, stocking up, same way as high street companies do today, tailors, hosiers, mens clothing & womens/ children’s outerwear, 1000s of employees, major employer in the area - entrepreneurship & the way businesses reflect change, individual man behind it - big figure in jewish migrant community, moved sites around the east end & sell in west end - successful business man, production history, jewish entrepreneurship and its meaning to jewish identity, ready made clothing industry reflects the growth of technology, 1860s onwards - sewing machine, emergence of factory lines & high street - sewing machines allowed you to comission a homeworker, working class woman could pay by installments to have sewing machine @ home & fit work around home commitments 

·      Ateliers in west end followed old form of one man to one garment, in east end built up schlopp trade - factory line, one person on sleeves etc, paid by number of peices produced - mechanisation

·      Sweating! Reflected small work places & lots of people working together

 

Walk - consider noise, is there space for people to stand 

 

·      this area’s market have always had second hand clothing 

·      17th century

·      Brewery - changed identity of the areas

·      1680s - hugenots sought refuge here - changed atmosphere, had expertise in silk weaving, french styles & therefore to london fashion - technology, community history, changed style

·      Industry & it’s relation to an area

·      Followed by Irish weavers - building on what French had built here

·      Place of artistry & production

·      Humble residential address for hugenot family - now a fancy shopping area

 

Street is significant in way silk weaving was woven into area 

·      Not all buildings survive for multiple reasons - bombing, or investment

·      Hackney Wick - warehouse conversion 

 

 Petticoat lane market - part of wider discussion, markets are a key site / space of a particular fashion history in london - strong second hand shop history, not just a vintage movement today

London metropolitan archives have a great photography archive - shows range of people shopping together in 1900s

Interest in street names of area - 

We tend to think of reselling in terms of sustainability today, it actually started in east end in rag trade & second hand market - normally just elite society that we consider reselling & exchanges amongst families - eg fancy garments passed down, this actually happened in east end in rag trade 

 

 Commercial Street

·      1880s onwards, more demand for full pieces 

·      Styles changed more quickly, more consumption

·      By 1939, 50% of women’s outwear/48% women’s daywear was produced in this area of London 

·      More character here, things which have survived, more nooks & cranneys 

·      Was more council houses, council flats - 1980s Leigh Bowery lived here - major figure in 1980s club scene, weekly appearances at taboo, major club in west end, constructed amazing costume outfits & bodypaint, he saw this is a distinct idea - east end was where he was able to live a domestic & anonymous life, west end in covent garden was very different & other, interesting to consider the way this area welcomed different communities of people- 1980s, this was still an area where there was not the creative/ artistic culture there is today - Leigh recognised its potential but could only enact this aspect of his personality in west end

 

·      Leigh Bowery lived in between brick lane & commercial street - east end as day, west end as night - in 80s still that distinction- in 1990s, creative culture changed - artists moved to area, warehouse spaces turned into cheap studios and accommodation- to move young people into area - fashion - people from saint martins - influx of people consciously moving, networking - leads to new creativity- creates culture - new club culture & nightlife - people would stay here to socialise - late 90s/ naughties to now people come to visit 

·      East end has something completely different - people no longer go to west end

·      Place of production to celebrated creativity - a pilgrimage – eg: school trips, people interested in fashion, artists – rite of passage to visit here 

·      Subculture, migrant experience, start of fast fashion, rag trade, individual entrepreneurs

·      “In the early 1990s parts of Cheshire Street, the densest section of the Brick Lane weekly market, were closed off as whole rows of dilapidated cottages were renovated into designer shops.”

·      “Then the lorries and cranes moved in and an intensive period of building works began. The market shrank…Rents for stalls went up and so did the rents for local businesses, residential property and the studios in the brewery complex.”

·      high rent prices meant that many artists had to move out of the area

·      “Higher-paying tenants soon moved in – web and fashion designers, production and internet companies.”

·      “”Brick Lane disappeared behind a wall of scaffolding and once-empty shops re-emerged as coffee bars, estate agents and smart new galleries. Pavements were dug up and replaced with fake cobblestones. Leather manufacturers became vintage-clothes stores, selling at hugely inflated prices the second-hand stuff you could have bought from the Sunday market at a few pence.”

·      “Many Asian businessmen and some of the remaining Jewish traders couldn’t resist offers to sell up and move on.”

·      “Peeling Yiddish shop signs were torn down and bright new neon ones hung in their place. Remnants of the past were left lying in skips dotted along the street. A lot of the characters that had originally drawn me into the area started to leave Brick Lane in droves. They couldn’t recognize it any more: it had become something  other, a zone which they no longer belonged.”

·      history of settlers – Jews, Bangladeshis, Irish

·      “Huguenot silk weavers who came to Spitalfields in the seventeenth century, escaping persecution from Catholic France.”

·      “”…Irish labourers who arrived in the 1840s to escape the potato famine…”

·      jewish pogroms at end of 19^th and start of 20^th century led many jews from Ukraine, Russia to flee to East End 

·      “The area became the hottest new film and photographic location in the country. It was being recorded and rewritten by documentary makers, news crews, tourists, and photographers…They all came to document and consume in London’s ‘newly discovered’ and heavily marketed ‘ethnic quarter’.”

·      “vibrant and chaotic Jewish East End”

·      “It will never again be the first stop for the next new wave of migrants in London. The dockside, where many first arrived, is now accessible only to a privileged few who can afford apartments with private walkways and river views. Dilapidated properties in Spitalfields, once split into multiple rooms for cheap rent, have been restored and refurbished and are now worth millions. The Hasidic men in long dark coats with beards and sidelocks who occupied street corners, exchanging gossip and discussing business, were replaced by groups of Asian elders doing the same, wearing long white kaftans and open-toed sandals, their beards stained orange with henna. You will see these men shuffling quickly past the bars and clubs, trying to reach the mosque further down the road without attracting unwanted attention. Scuffles sometimes break out as racist abuse is hurled across the street as partygoers drink late into the night.” 

·      “The latest arrivals in Brick Lane, the ‘haircuts’ (as some of the locals like to call them), are the ones buying up old warehouses and turning them into vintage-clothing stores…”

·      “The weekends also see thousands of other incomers descending on Brick Lane from across London to visit the many bars, clubs and restaurants.”

·      “The noise outside the old brewery site steadily increases throughout the night as clubbers queue to into the Vibe Bar of 93 Feet East.”

·      “Resentment is building: last year a group of Asian men petrol-bombed a pub off Brick Lane known to be the haunt of white locals.”

·      “Brick Lane continues to be rewritten and reimagined but primarily with a focus on the violent and grim aspects of its history. Magazine features and television programmes report repeatedly about heroin addiction and gang warfare.” 

·      author of this book – ‘So many memories of this street have already been erased or forgotton: hidden behind newly erected buildings, buried under recently paved streets like unexcavated archaeological treasures. I have tried to exact them through a series of walks, conversations, archival research, sound recordings and photographic outings.” 

·      “I have heard how the street has changed from a thriving Jewish community to an area abandoned to violence and vandalism to Banglatown and currently a tourist and heritage site.”

·      resident of brick lane area, Jack Kaye speaking in 2004, “I worked in a workshop in Brick Lane from the time I left school until 1939. Brick Lane, Hackney, Virginia Road, Shoreditch, Gibraltar Walk, it was a cabinetmakers’ area. Fournier Street was full of the fur trade and Brick Lane was mainly tailoring.”

·      Rachel Lichtenstein adds to this, “When my grandparents lived in Brick Lane every shop in the street was occupied. There were printers, hairdressers, drapers, greengrocers and tobacconists. Milliners, leather manufacturers, wine sellers and boot repairers among others. Most of the shop signs were written in Yiddish and English and the street was known as ‘Little Jerusalem’. When war broke out everything changed, the East End of London was badly bombed and many left for safety in the countryside.”

 

·      interesting point: “I learned that the Latin inscription ‘Umbra Sumus’ above the great mosque, which was once a synagogue and before that a church, translates as ‘We are Shadows’.”

·      Leslie Kay speaking in 2002, ‘The Brick Lane I knew as a child was all Jewish places, herring people with their barrels, delicatessens, the whole street was Jewish. The hoardings above the shops weren’t long enough for the names: Hertzberg, Rosenbloom, Egelnick, Waxenblatt…After the war and that bombing the Jews moved away and it’s all Banglatown. I know why the Asians want to live here, same as us, because they’ve always had enemies and when you’re young you feel safe. When I was a child Brick Lane was my refuge.’

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Those attributes which I am less confident in are agility, connectivity and enterprise. In terms of agility, I often can be stuck in my approaches and somewhat regimented. Whilst this can be positive, when something does not go as planned this can make me uneasy. Although I eventually adapt, this may take me longer to come to terms with than others. Connectivity is an attribute I am also less confident in because I often lack the confidence and means to network collaborate with people across different disciplines and those in the industry. Nevertheless, I have managed to successfully collaborate with people from different courses already on this unit.  Furthermore, my supervisor for Fashion on Foot, Susanna Cordner, is someone who I have effectively engaged and collaborated with. She herself is an industry professional and former assistant curator at the V&A. Enterprise is also something I am less confident in myself about because I would not say I possess a business mindset. Also, I am not always comfortable taking risks and am not experienced in measuring various indicators for business strategies. That being said, I am willing to embrace these challenges along the way. 

The three most relevant creative attributes I selected include storytelling, enterprise and proactivity. All of these attributes are relevant to my course and particularly Fashion on Foot, in addition to my future career prospects. Namely, storytelling is relevant to journalism in the way it is about conveying information to audiences in an engaging way. The same can be said of storytelling in Fashion on Foot, in that erased fashion histories can be retold and resurfaced in a humanising and unique way, leading to inspiration and new perspectives. Certain fashion stores and garments can also be humanised through storytelling, thus going beyond their tangibility. It is important to remember that fashion is not merely abstract, yet it relates to people's lives in terms of livelihood and leisure. Proactivity is relevant to Fashion on Foot in the way personal drive and ambition is needed to bring this public facing project to life, and in the process give the fashion histories and stories the credit they deserve. The project will not take off by itself, yet needs direct intervention and the courage to interview shopkeepers, residents and consumers in East London. Proactivity is also particularly relevant to my future career as a fashion journalist, as journalists need an inherent courageousness, motivation and adversity to pick up the phone and interview subjects, and to take on challenging subject material. 

There is definitely a difference between how I ranked confident and relevant attributes. My confident attributes relate to those which are my strengths and inherent qualities forming part of my character. Such attributes have also been nurtured through practices. In terms of the relevant attributes I selected, those relate to the skills I need to develop to thrive throughout collaborative challenge, which will be encouraged and nurtured through practices.

Clarified output of project
- Creating a walk, pinpoint version on Google, output could be the walk or something independently accessible online, do test run together – could have pins with videos  

Susanna recommended historians and fashion curators to look at:
Fashion historians and curators to look at: 

 

Next steps

 
Group discussion 

- Bermondsey – fur factory  

- Spitalfields – big thing, now forbidden  

- British Library Archives or Jewish Museum – get contact – families in east London, exhibition, a furrier  

 

Decided on setting up an Instagram – entitled 'East End Fur', which will be attached with a with guide  

 

·      Allocated more roles based on our skillsets 

·      Me - powerpoint and accompanying notes, also worked on ethical sensitivities and wrote up Danny’s transcript

·      Considered how we would talk about the changing identity of fur and its ethical sensitivities whilst also celebrating and honouring its place in fashion history, particularly in East London 

·      Worked under pressure 

·      Found a balance between the privacy element of our interview subject and the information we seek to convey. We decided that we will not include the address of Danny Tabi. Also, we will share only what Danny is comfortable sharing, and can measure this by looking at his previous interviews and information already online about him. Whilst we have done a greater level of research, in order to respect him and his privacy, we have not necessarily been able to document all of this. 

·      Decided on a date for walking tour and decided a timeframe by which we want to have all our work completed. Negotiated this between us to work around our differing schedules.