The Hacking-Couture
workshops are thorough research
laboratories where a lot of time is
spent on understanding the code of
a brand, its history, collections and
expressions over time. The open
library becomes an interface to the
real brand as well as a meeting
point for discussions during the
production process. The partici-
pants recycle their garments into
new forms of “true” codes. Here,
at Garanti Gallery, González
explains how garments can be
“Guccified”.represents the physical process of wearing fashion, of presenting it, embodying it,
although most often resulting in an image and as something seen. Fashion code
works as a set of situated instructions, but not mathematical or mechanic. It guides
imagination and representation, frames what seems possible to wear, what would
be acceptable within a certain context as well as fitting for one’s body.
But we must not forget that the code as situated instructions also guides the mate-
rial and the sensual, and this perspective has the last years come to balance the
previous total focus on looks and visual semantics (Küchler & Miller 2005; John-
son & Foster 2007). Fashion concerns more senses than the eye and highly de-
pends on the fit, cut, fabric and seams. It also guides how the body acts within the
physical exoskeleton of clothing. It affects posture and movement and physical ac-
tions. Through the pressure on the body it also controls our thoughts, so bril-
liantly articulated by Umberto Eco in his essay on tight-fit clothing, Lumbar
Thought (Eco 1986).
Nevertheless, fashion code is of course also different from computer code. The
fashion code is imitated or mimicked, but not exactly copied, even if that is sug-
gested from the code-key of fashion – the fashion magazine. On its pages garment
names and telephone numbers to the shops are presented next to the image. The
magazine is in this sense presenting a desired line of repetition, or what Tarde
would call a “ray of imitation” (2000). The mass produced fashion image radiates
fashion memes.
This last step, of turning the garments back into image, is very apparent in González’
own photos and videos in which she performs brands and steps beyond the mere
representation of a sewn garment. Here she reenacts the whole array of the brand
image; the posing, make-up, lighting, and context. Her end results are photos that
make the full hack visible, as the hacked garments reproduce the whole mythology
of the brand. A mere collage technique of images could have been an alternative to
her workshops, still playing with the visual code, but this would not have been
enough. The important thing is how participants work with the physical material,
become craft-conscious, going from image to physical garment and back to image
again. When they leave their photos behind on the wall at the gallery as part of the