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Short shift: Fashion week research on how the ’60s and ’70s rocked Australia’s clothing industry

The unravelling of Australia’s rag trade in the postwar era

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It was the dress that shocked a nation and signalled an industrial revolution.

When sixties model Jean Shrimpton attended the 1965 Melbourne Cup dressed in a simple white shift hemmed well above the knee – with no gloves or stockings – the outfit immediately sparked scandal.

The moment encapsulates a series of cultural, social, economic and technological shifts underway in Australia which led to the unravelling of the local clothing manufacturing industry.

It was this iconic photo, depicting nonchalant Shrimpton on the lawns of Flemington Racecourse, which inspired Pauline Hastings PhD research at Monash University into the history of Australia’s textiles and clothing industry from the 1960s on.

Hastings is presenting her research as part of Melbourne Fashion Week.

A lesser-known detail about ‘that dress’: Shrimpton was sponsored to attend Derby Day by industrial chemical and fossil fuel company Du Pont, to promote the company’s new synthetic fabric, Orlon. 

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Orlon advertisement / Credit: Flickr user Peter Kelaher

Cheap, mostly imported synthetic fabrics (made from fossil fuels) were one of several factors contributing to a major shift in Australian clothing manufacturing and consumption, Hastings says.

Hastings says, there is a clear thread linking the rise of synthetic fabrics like Orlon, Dacron, Rayon (… anything ending with an ‘on’), which had a throwaway quality to them, and today’s fast fashion addiction. Australia is the second largest consumer of textiles globally, buying on average 56 new items of clothing per person, per year.


Post war immigration and the rise of the ‘baby boomers’ led to a greater emphasis on youth culture and individualism. 

This, together with the rise of advertising and mass marketing helped drive a cultural shift away from the ‘make do and mend’ era where fabrics and clothing were often unpicked and re-sewn into new garments. 

Hastings says the removal and reduction of tariff protections was another contributing factor to the demise of local manufacturing.

Before the post-war era, “everyday clothes weren’t imported. They were manufactured here … made for local consumption,” she says.

“Imports on mass were kept out by tariff protection. So, very high tariffs on anything important [which] meant that if they did come in, imports were sort of priced considerably higher in the marketplace than our local product. And our local product was not overly cheap from what I can gather, because it was pretty,  labor intensive and Australian wages at the time were quite high.”

Interwoven, these different factors – the commodification of youth culture, the reduction in tariff protections by the Whitlam government, and the rise of new synthetic fabrics – all contributed to the demise of Australia’s local clothing manufacturing industry.

Today, 97% of Australia’s clothing is imported.

By sharing her research, Hastings says, she hopes we can learn from history.

“It’s how culturally we can shift. Because, we did a major shift from the post war era of what I call ‘thrift and making do.’ We did a major shift then to a sort of a ‘purchase everything we can possibly see throwaway society’ when it comes to fashion, in a couple of decades.” 

She says, history shows, if we really wanted to, we could learn again, to value things, recycle, upcycle and cultivate a culture of sustainability.

 

 

 

Edited by CaaC (John)
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Do you remember this cartoon? @Devil-Dick Willie Seriously thought I imagined it for years, I could never find it. Google results of ‘evil apple guy wearing a suit’ weren’t working till I threw ‘Australian’ on the end. Apparently it was super successful in Europe but the studio went under when The Magic Pudding flopped, I am pretty sure I used to borrow that movie from the library. . 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9urc-wCg24

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1 hour ago, Spike said:

Do you remember this cartoon? @Devil-Dick Willie Seriously thought I imagined it for years, I could never find it. Google results of ‘evil apple guy wearing a suit’ weren’t working till I threw ‘Australian’ on the end. Apparently it was super successful in Europe but the studio went under when The Magic Pudding flopped, I am pretty sure I used to borrow that movie from the library. . 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9urc-wCg24

I never saw that one

There's a cartoon I remember about a convict who escapes a prison and joins a pirate crew, I think the cartoon was australian or dubbed by aussies. Main character was blonde, he may have had a bird. 

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1 hour ago, Devil-Dick Willie said:

I recall him escaping prison, the magpie, being on a ship, the redhead, and an episode where he nearly gets eaten by sharks. 

I’m just gonna assume it was part funded by a Chinese production company, like that Magic Dragon puppet show, that was like a psychedelic fever dream because it was all about Chinese mythology. Magic Mountain?

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Gravitational waves on the podium: first Australian to win the Blaise Pascal Medal

We chat to physicist – and medal recipient – Distinguished Professor Susan Scott.

Every year, the European Academy of Science awards the Blaise Pascal medal to outstanding scientists. This year, Distinguished Professor Susan Scott has become the first Australian to receive the medal, “in recognition for her contributions to the advances of physics”.

According to the Academy, “Distinguished Professor Susan Scott is an internationally recognised mathematical physicist who has made ground-breaking discoveries in general relativity, cosmology and gravitational wave science spanning more than three decades.

“She played a leading role in Australia’s participation in the first detection of gravitational waves in 2015, and the development of the field of gravitational wave science in Australia following on from that discovery.”

So, what exactly does that work entail? Cosmos sat down with Susan to find out.

More with Susan Scott: Gravitational waves from black holes swallowing neutron stars

https://cosmosmagazine.com/science/physics/blaise-pascal-medal-susan-scott/

 

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All systems go for launch of Australian space rocket

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South Australia is closer to its return to the rocket business, for the first time in half a century, with the firms behind the event confirming they expect to launch within weeks.

Four SA companies are putting the final touches on the VS03 mission that is hoped will launch a rocket and small payload into space from Whalers Way.

NASA successfully launched a rocket from the Northern Territory at the end of June – the first commercial space launch in Australia’s history – and also launched from Australia in 1995, when its rockets lifted off from the Woomera rocket Range.

ATSpace ‘Kestrel I’ rocket to be launched from the Southern Launch Whalers Way Complex is weather dependent.

The ‘Kestrel I’ launch vehicle is a 10 metre, two stage, sub-orbital rocket. The rocket will reach an altitude of more than 200 kilometres above Earth. The trajectory of the launch will be over the Southern Ocean with the total time of flight approximately 10 minutes.

ATSpace is a sister company to Taiwanese rocket developer TiSPACE, which in November opened a facility at Wingfield, Adelaide, with support from the Global Australia program of the Australian Trade and Investment Commission.

In September, an earlier launch attempt by TiSPACE failed to lift off at Whalers Way.

The Southern Launch payload will use existing satellite phone technology to track the rocket as it travels through space removing the need for traditional ground-based infrastructure.

Next for the Australian space program

The Chief Executive Officer of ATSpace, Dr Yen-Sen Chen, is based in Adelaide. He says the launch is expected to demonstrate the technical performance of the Kestrel I system. 

‘This suborbital launch will provide us with valuable data to validate our future Kestrel V orbital design. Launching to space is a challenging task and well-planned test launches help us achieve technical maturity.’

The space enthusiasts journal The Room reports that Woomera was busy in the 1960-s and early 1970’s.

From 1964 – 1970, ELDO, the European Launcher Development Organisation (a precursor of the European Space Agency) conducted its Europa launch vehicle programme, the largest space project undertaken at Woomera.

Although ELDO never managed to launch a satellite during this programme, Australia’s first satellite WRESAT was launched from Woomera in 1967, and the last launch of Britain’s Black Arrow programme, active 1969 – 1971, lofted Prospero, the second satellite to achieve orbit from Woomera.

 

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26 minutes ago, Beelzebub said:

White House has always had a you are either with us or against us policy, but right now because of competition with Russia China they are even more hawkish/paranoid. 

We’ve been their closest bloody ally for 80 years. It’s ridiculous how they treat us. We get the ‘honour’ of a CIA deposal not murdering the head of government. Thanks you fucking traitors.

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Rapid rain bursts in Sydney intensified by 40% over last two decades

Australian researchers have pioneered a new technique using weather radar data to identify rapid rain bursts. Also referred to as “sub-hourly heavy rainfall”, these destructive short bursts of rain overwhelm roads, gutters, and drainage systems in as little as 10 minutes.

During a rapid rain burst huge amounts of water falls over a small region, increasing the likelihood and severity of flash flooding.

Using data from Sydney, and overlapping radars over Newcastle, Terrey Hills and Wollongong, the researchers at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes (CLEx) identified a 40% increase in the intensity of rapid rain bursts in Sydney over 20 years.

“Previously, it was not possible to get this kind of data about rapid rain bursts,” says first author Dr Hooman Ayat from the University of Melbourne.

“Previously, rain gauges, climate models and satellites have struggled to accurately identify rain bursts on such small time scales. However, our new data analysis technique was able to take historical weather radar data to get a much stronger picture of these rapid rain bursts.”

https://cosmosmagazine.com/space/cone-nebula-rapid-rain-burst/

 

Edited by CaaC (John)
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