Curator and writer
Quarantaine Vestimentaire (‘sartorial quarantine’), day 18/40, ‘Lingua del fuoco’, a collaboration between Jeanne Vicerial and Leslie Moquin. Original idea: Jeanne Vicerial. Photo: Leslie Moquin. Sartorial creation: Jeanne Vicerial, resident at Villa Medici: The French Academy in Rome (2019–2020). © Clinique Vestimentaire.
The Labour of 'Ready-to-Measure': An Interview with Jeanne Vicerial
A key issue Jeanne Vicerial addresses in her work is how to reconcile two modes of creation and production, made-to-measure and ready-to-wear. In the former, the garment is adapted to the individual’s body, while in the latter, the individual’s body must adapt to standardized norms. To this end, in 2014, she established the project ‘Clinique Vestimentaire’ (‘Sartorial clinic’), combining theory and practice. The clinic formed the basis of Vicerial’s doctoral research (2019), which conflates made-to-measure and ready-to-wear into prêt-à-mesure (‘ready-to-measure’), a new paradigm that reintroduces individual bodies into the production chain at a semi-industrial scale.
Because ready-to-measure breaks with the conventional organization of labour in fashion – either the result of handmade cutting, sewing and assembling garments parts or that of a manufacturing line – it requires a different set of skills, tools and workers. But what are the specific labour implications of ready-to-measure?
Interview with Jeanne Vicerial by Johanna Zanon for the Open Section of the special issue on 'Fashion Labour,' edited by Zanon in International Journal of Fashion Studies (8:2), 2021, pp. 319-326.
Download the interview on Academia.
See also the editorial of the special issue.
See also the article '"No, YOU Make It!": Outsourcing Production to Fashion Consumers to Mediate Fashion Labour,' in the same issue.