Pia, can you introduce yourself for people who might not know you and your work? Yes. Hi. My name is Dr. Pia Interlandi and I'm a fashion designer and academic in Melbourne, Australia. I have a design practice that is basically using fashion as a tool to design for people who are dying, and then I actually create a garment for them to wear for their funeral, and therefore, eternity essentially, and then I dress them with their families after they've died. So, fashion designer death practitioner is kind of where I've settled as a title, if you will. Great. And so, fashion designer death practitioner is sort of a niche title, it's definitely an unusual one. How did you start doing it? How did you get into that area? When I started a fashion design degree, I didn't anticipate doing what I do now. That's certainly not the career path that I thought that I would be taking. But I was always interested in designing for ephemerality or transience, and I used a lot of different weird fabrications, things that dissolved in washer. I used to heat up a lot of polyester to make it look like it was deteriorating, though it was quite strong. And yeah, my practice was very much about transformation. And I started a PhD primarily looking at garment fragments, and the notion of haunting that, "Is there a body within a garment even if it's not being worn?" And well, then death actually happened and my grandfather died. And the reality of his body, and of dressing him, and the profoundness of doing something like that, and thinking, "Why aren't more people dressing their dead?" It was amazing in terms of the transformation in his body, but also in myself as well, in accepting his death. And so, there was one, the amazement of that situation. Two, the fact that the fashion designer in me really started questioning, "Hold on a second, like we're putting him in his suit, it's his Sunday best." But things didn't fit the same. They were very difficult to put on to him. You've got to turn a jacket over, and you're putting socks on, and so there was this part of me that went, "This is emotionally really quite heavy, but in a situation, the garments need to be easier." So it needs to be gentle dressing in a heavy situation. And then thirdly, I was thinking very much about the textile components, and the biodegradability of the material and thinking, there was a pivotal moment and that was when I was putting his shoes on and doing up the laces, and they were leather shoes, and they still had quite a lot of a sole on them left, and thinking, "He's not going to be walking anywhere and why are we dressing him in a garment that is designed so much to be lived in?" And I really started responding literally to the reality of that situation rather than metaphorically which is what I've been doing up until that point. So tell me a little bit more about the materials that you use, because you're right, it is strange when we dress our dead, and we often don't do it. It's totally outsourced most of the time. But when you started thinking very much about your connection to this person's body, this person that you had a huge and profound relationship with, one of the things you started thinking about was the materials that would encase their body, for a little bit longer, for a lot longer, for forever. So tell me a bit more about the material part, because that's part of the thing you experiment with a lot too, right? Yes. So I actually teach now, as our material studies coordinator, I teach textiles to fashion designers essentially. And- RMIT. I'm at RMIT University in Melbourne. And that's Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, so just in case anybody Yes. Great, perfect. And part of that is looking at why we use particular fibers, and what their properties are and we relate that back to molecular or morphological level, and I've got students coming in saying, "I wanted to make frocks, not do science." But it's integral to what fashion is. How does fiber feel against the body, and what does it do in relationship to a human being? And I extended that beyond thinking. Well, okay, so a human body is made of protein. You've got wool and silk which are also protein-based fibers, then you've got plant-based fibers, so you've got your cottons and your linens and your hemps. And then you've got your synthetics, and we don't really know how long synthetics last for. They've really only been around for about 100 years. So the statistics about polyester is sort of a thousand to ten thousand years before it will decompose. So, if the protein fibers, the wool and silk will last as long as his body and the plant-based fibers will decompose earlier, and then the synthetic is going to be there forever and ever and ever and ever essentially. But it became an unpacking of not just garments shape, but materiality, and that's an incredibly important part of my practice. When I have clients, often we will go fabric shopping, because how it feels against your skin, the thermal retention. It's quite strange because this person obviously isn't going to be sensing the garment by the time they're wearing, given that they are no longer sensing because they have died. But that notion of wanting to feel covered and have something nice against the skin, and the color, and the print, and all those sorts of things become really important, because we do have a relationship with our clothing, whether we acknowledge our relationship with fashion, because fashion and clothing are quite different things. But this is our second skin. This is the skin with which we present ourselves to the world. So even though a lot of people will actually say, "Well, can't I just be buried naked?" That might be something you want, but if your family are involved, and for the person who is dressing you, that's not your family they sort of- even in death there are some expectations about how you are presented. It's quite- our relationship, our cultural and social relationship with death is very, very obscure. There are some very strange things that happen. But in coming back to the materiality, I do try to mimic the chemical components of the body in the material. So for the most part, I do use a lot of wool, and I do use a lot of silk. But then I also have people who are more attracted to plant-based natural fibers. So your cottons and your linens and your hemps. So then, your students are not necessarily all designing with death in mind as well. No. So there's a super broad applicability because you're giving them tools that then help them make decisions as designers in so many different contexts. Can you talk a little bit about some of the applications of what you're teaching in a broader sense in fashion. So a lot of the students are coming in wanting to make a significant contribution to the world around them. And when we look at what's happening globally, a lot of that has to do with sustainability and ethics. And not just sustainability in terms of "I'm going to recycle this garment." But where is the fiber grown? Who is spinning it? Who is weaving it? Who is dying it? And then, who am I buying the fabric from as the raw material to start my fashion design collection? And that's usually where some people will stop. What we're really encouraging our students to do when a lot of them want to, is think beyond themselves as the designer, think to the consumer and think of the life cycle of that garment. So, we're really encouraging students to be thinking about okay your care label. You wash it, you store it. But then how do you dispose of it? Are there instructions that you can give to your consumer, that will help them continue the philosophy that you designed the garment with, which might be something like composting, might be something like upcycling, might be something like, "Please ensure that you repair this yourself and don't worry." There are a lot of different expectations we have of our fashion designers now, that aren't very much revolve around these notions of sustainability and recycling in its truest and purest form. So essentially, I teach them what fibers can be composted, what fibers can be melted down, re-extruded, and therefore recycled. Cotton and polyester mixed, who's going to be the person who solves that particular conundrum, because you can't compost cotton and you can't recycle polyester if they've blended together. So who's unspinning those yarns. So it does go- no, my students aren't designing for death. For the most part, they're designing for the living but with a strong ethics, underpinning or an ethical underpinning as designers, you turn something in here into something here. And you have created a life for your garment who lives with. So you're responsible in part for how it dies. So that actually- responsibility and ethics leads to my next question. So, materials is one thing, but how does this become a conversation with people and not just materials? So the conclusion of my PhD really was that, there is a power in fashion, and a power in our clothing that is unspoken. And so to say to someone, "You're going to die one day, what do you want?". That's not particularly a useful tool to engage in that conversation, but when it is through, what's your favorite garment? What do you like about it? What do you value about it? What is it about the colors and the textures? Is this something that you would want to wear when you die? That's a far more useful tool to engage in a conversation that culturally, yes, our secular Western society doesn't engage with. So, with my clients, the conversations tend to become far more about life than they ever do about death. But I've had incredible responses in terms of people willing to share. You on average are going to be involved with 2.5 funerals, in arranging 2.5 funerals. And this is statistically in terms of your parents and a partner. Well the expectation is that, "No, you should never have to think about a child" which some people unfortunately do. But you're going to be involved with a few of these in your lifetime. And part of that will always be, "Do you have something you want to put them in? " And that's what been left at the moment. But now we're starting to see far more people involved in, "Would you like to dress them?". We all have a garment that we will wear when the time comes. And we'll literally and metaphorically and poetically merge with our body, whether it's through cremation, the garment is still going to be part of the ashes or whether it's through burial. And it's a tool. It's a tool to talk about what you value and what you value in death, but mostly what you value in life. Thank you so very much for taking time to speak with us. That was perfect. Pleasure. We're looking forward to having it on display at MoMa. It's going to be so great.
