Young people with a migration background as consumers or designers of fashion

For the last “Fashion-Talk” meeting in Vienna, April 16^th, I made an online-research about the topic ‘young immigrants as consumers or designers of fashion’. I also had two days in Vienna to finish my research by talking to relevant people and taking some pictures. 

I travelled through the whole city centre and found some interesting places and shops there. To me Vienna seems to be a very modern and international city. 

In the city centre you can find a lot of fashion shops, boutiques, and retail chains.

You can compare these shops to the shops in

Germany, so it is also possible to combine the research about Germany with pictures from Vienna.

If you walk through the many small side streets you can find some second hand shops and also international fashion.

	Introduction People with a migration background, especially juveniles, unfortunately are often associated with a low level of education, low-paid jobs and at least crime. But in fact they have a great chance to benefit from their multicultural background, their language skills and their skills in intercultural communication. Many immigrants use these advantages to make creative work, although in Germany it is not easy for young immigrants, even with a high graduation, to find a traineeship. Especially for women with a migration background it is hard to find work in Germany.
			24% of all 20 to 24 years old persons in Germany  are immigrants. 39% of the 20 to 24 years old persons, without a   general qualification for university entrance an without a traineeship, have a migration background Result: In Germany young immigrants without a job qualification are highly over presented.

 

 Young immigrants as consumers of fashion

Because most of the juveniles with migration background have a low level of education, you

could say their identification with their friends and with their ethnical background were more distinctive than between German juveniles. The Shell-Study of 1997 shows, that juveniles with a low graduation identify themselves more often with special groups.

One important way to show the membership to a special group is to have the same style and wear similar clothes. Their ideals are often musicians or actors found on TV. Hip Hop musicians e.g. are often Afro Americans with dark skin, so to some juveniles’ minds it is also cool to have a migration background.

 

On the one hand many immigrant juveniles try to accommodate to the German members of their peer-group by wearing the same clothes, but on the other hand many German juveniles are wearing Hip Hop clothes to show their membership to this kind of subculture dominated by immigrants.

Fashion is not longer affected only by the upper class, trends and styles of youth subcultures or immigrants also influence it.

In some shops you can find display-dummies with a North African or Asian appearance. A producer of these kinds of display dummies 

explains, that shops showing these dummies want to express internationality. These dummies, either with a North African, an Asian or a Latin American appearance, are mostly produced for young-fashion shops.

Gudrun M. König, professor for Art and Culture from the University of Dortmund points out, that the prestige of immigrants enhanced because of the high educated immigrants, who came to Germany with a green card. The different nationalities of display-dummies also express the development of society. 

The biggest part of immigrants in Germany is Turkish. Because of their Islamic religion especially women have some rules about their clothes. That’s the reason why there are more and more Islamic-clothes shops in Germany. 

These shops sell e.g. head cloths, long skirts, tunics and Abayas, a kind of long coat.

Some Muslim women want to show their religious affiliation by wearing Islamic clothes. It doesn’t mean automatically religious repression.

Also young Muslim women, who are emancipated and modern, wear this kind of religious clothes to show their membership to the Islamic religion. They are proud to be Muslim and with these clothes, which cover the whole body, they find a way to show it.

I made these pictures in Vienna. In Austria you can find Islamic-clothes shops as well. In these shop windows you can see the Islamic fashion in bright colours with a modern look.

 Examples for immigrants as designers

In Bamberg there is a project called “Mode macht Mut” (“fashion encourages”), which helps women with a migration background to work as sewers and designers. Most of them have already learned the most important skills in sewing. To participate in this project let them improve their skills and give them a chance to earn money. Some of them are single mothers and a certain job is very important for their families.

The project also backs up sustainability, because all used materials are either second hand clothes or sponsored fabrics, which are going to be new designed.

If this project will be successful, there is a chance to develop the project to a business   company.

In Vienna there is a similar possibility for migrant women to work with fashion.

The fashion label “Made IN – Made By” has chosen female immigrants as their target group to employ them and protect them from poverty. In 2010 the label won the Austrian Social Impact Award.

The label was founded by four young women, some of them also with a migration background.

The multicultural background of the whole team is shown in the clothes’ design and the diversity of the team members is seen as enrichment for creativity.

The label focuses on economically and ecologically sustainability as well. There is a strong preference for local resources and a local production of the clothes.  

The picture on the right shows the shop of one of the founders of the label, where the clothes of “made IN – made BY” are sold.

You can find this shop in Vienna in Neubaugasse 4, near Mariahilfer Straße.

(Saskia Schmidt)

Sources:

Beicht, Ursula /  Granato, Mona: Übergänge in eine berufliche Ausbildung - Geringere Chancen für junge Menschen mit Migrationshintergrund.

http://www.bibb.de/de/52287.htm  (12.04.2012)

Dahinden, Eveline / Appel, Ariane: Kleider als Statussymbol bei Jugendlichen mit Migrationshintergrund.

http://www.martinapeitz.ch/pdf/Forschungsdesign/Forschungsdesign_Gruppe_16_Ariane_Appel,_Eveline_Dahinden.pdf  (12.04.2012)

Homepage ebenBerg: http://ebenberg.at/ (12.04.2012)

Homepage „Made IN – Made BY“ http://mimb.at/about-us/principles/ (11.04.2012)

Mack, Cornelia: KanakCultures- Kultur und Kreativität junger Migrantinnen. (Zusammenfassung)

http://idw-online.de/pages/de/news350248  (12.04.2012)

Mayer, Petra: Mode macht Mut.

http://www.infranken.de/nachrichten/lokales/bamberg/design-Bamberg-Migration-Arbeit-Spass-Mode-macht-Mut;art212,77118  (11.04.2012)

Nordbruch, Götz: Jugendkultur, Islam und Demokratie. Islamische Mode in Deutschland.

http://www.bpb.de/gesellschaft/migration/jugendkultur-islam-und-demokratie/65182/islamische-mode (11.04.2012)

Taxacher, Gregor: Mode-Puppen als Ethno-Stars: Multikulti im Schaufenster.

http://www1.wdr.de/themen/archiv/sp_integration/integration232.html (11.04.2012)

Pictures: Saskia Schmidt

Fashion in running events

The day before the last project meeting in Vienna the biggest running event of Austria happend: the Vienna City Marathon.
During the meeting we spoke about fancy clothes of runners and I achieved to get some pictures - not from Vienna but from Berlin Marathon 2011. (in Vienna the weather was rather cold and nearly rainy).
Some may call it crazyness, others call it fashion, probably all will find it funny!

Young adults with migration background and fashion

Fashion Talk made an interview on fashion with Bülent (Turkish background), Rocco (from Slovenia) und Sergej (German-Russian background) on their experiences with fashion in Vienna/Austria. The three young adults (all 18 years old) were asked to identify the differences between fashion items in their personal surrounding in Germany and those in Vienna/Austria. Fashion Talk partner Karin Drda-Kühn (KDK) from Association Culture and Work did the interview - and was surprised what the young men found out:

KDK: Was there anything different or special in fashion in Vienna? Did you see different or the same clothes as in Germany?

Bülent: Pretty the same, there were not many differences. It is the same as in Germany, you can clearly see at the clothes what the people are, as in Germany.

KDK: May be the differences are not in the clothes but with fashionable things like shoes, jewellery, scarves, hats?

Sergej: No, not really, all stuff which we know from Germany. May be some of the shops have other names but the stuff is the same. Especially from chains. We were at some chains and it is really the same which is somehow strange because this is another country.

KDK: So there was absolutely nothing new for you in fashion items?

Rocco: I could not see differences in the clothes, but there was this shop with the iPhone cases, this was really different, a shop full of cases in all colours and many different patterns, we made a picture from the shop window:

Sergej: I wonder what they are good for because they make the iPhone bigger in the pocket, but there were so many young people in the shop so we went in to have a closer look. Yes, they look good, Bülent bought one.

Bülent: Yes, I bought one, not so expensive, it makes the iPhone in a way special, I like it.

KDK: Was anything else exiting for you which had to do with fashion or fashion items?

Rocco: There was this advertisement at the metro station, which was really funny when I found out, first I did not understand it. It looked like Superman in cinema, but it meant something else…

Sergej: It has something to do with cleaning the roads, it is written that those who broom the streets are heros, this is how some guys explained it to us. It was so funny because first I thought this is an advertisement of a special group of people and that they can be identified by orange T-Shirts under their clothes.

Bülent: It’s really funny, a kind of garbage fashion, but you have to understand it.

Rocco: There was something else which we did not understand, this was this street lamp with a knitted wrapping:

Sergej: It was at a staircase to Mariahilferstraße. May be this is also a fashion item, but not for people but for street lamps. Who knows, at least a lot of people were watching it.

KDK: So in the end you found some examples of fashion which are different to what you know?

Bülent: Yes, in a way, but there was another thing, there were street musicians, not my style of music, but their outfit was cool, they wore blue boiler suits and helmets, very strange for musicians.

Sergej: This was cool, we wondered what it was good for and some guys who were listening said it’s just for getting visible and extraordinary. Good way to rise attraction, no doubt.

KDK: But getting better visible is something which has a lot to do with fashion, don’t you think so?

Rocco: Yes, of course, but may be not with boiler suits and helmets, but the guys were really cool with the music and the costumes, really.

(The interview was done and translated into English by Karin Drda-Kühn)