黑料正能量

Fashion Cultures and Histories 鈥� Research Seminar Series, (IHTP-CNRS/黑料正能量) |聽S茅minaire de recherche - Cultures et Histoires de Mode (IHTP-CNRS/黑料正能量)

Fashion & Migration/s: Fashion and textiles in refugee camps | Mode & Migration/s: Mode et textiles dans les camps de r茅fugi茅s.


Speakers |聽Intervenants

Helen Storey: 鈥淶aatari Refugee Camp - crafting life鈥�

"It was a particular dress that took Helen Storey to the gates of Zaatari Refugee camp, in Jordan in 2016.
It was a moment that changed her career and life for good .
Helen shares the journey of making, learning, friendships, and love that followed over the subsequent 8 years.
In 2019, she was made the first UNHCR 鈥楧esigner in Residence鈥� a way of collaborating that has since spread to her work in refugee camps in Africa."

Magali An Berthon, 鈥楾he Cambodian refugee crisis (1970-80s): Weaving, purchasing and wearing textiles in forced displacement鈥�

Until the civil war broke out in Cambodia in the early 1970s, weaving silk and cotton was mainly practiced by women and families in rural areas on the side of farming and destined for domestic consumption. From 1975 to 1979, the Khmer Rouge established a dictatorship that claimed at least 1.5 million from forced work, purges and combat, and famine. Textile production was hampered by the forced migration of populations, including weavers and farmers, and, in the case of silk, the active destruction of mulberry tree fields, whose leaves could feed native bombyx mori silkworms. The war also resulted in a massive refugee crisis until the late 1980s. In separate waves, about 350,000 Cambodians fled to reach neighboring countries of Thailand and Vietnam. Hundreds of thousands were retained in long-term settlements at the Thai border. In these large refugee camps, religious, artistic, and craft practices resumed under challenging dynamics. On-site, silk textiles and other rare products became commodities. Weavers mostly had access to synthetic and cotton fibers to produce krama scarves and sampot hip wraps, which they kept for personal use, bartered with other refugees, and sold to foreign camp visitors. Relying on scarce archival, visual, and material sources, this paper examines the local economy of weaving in the liminal space of the refugee camps, in which Cambodian populations stayed for uncertain yet extended periods.