**DESCRIPTION**
This is a short story that exemplifies how a shirt and a pair of trousers can become the main characters in story that connect people to each other from a seemingly random situation.
**KEYWORDS**
Every day as performance and educational possibility, connecting, Use, re-use, take part, send on.
**LEARNING OUTCOMES:**
The workshop creates an important understanding of how every day can be lived and understood as an educational performance. The example shows how to handle situations that at first appear random and coincidental. This is a way of perceiving the world as a multi layered meaningful and communicative place.
**EXAMPLE:**
###Shirt and Trousers
April 17th, Friday.
Today I have been working at the fashion school. After work, and on my way to the central station I stopped by a fashion store. There I found a shirt and a pair of trousers. It was a classic white and blue plaid shirt, but this one was double, like two shirts on top of each other. The trousers were designed like a pair of jeans but made from wool instead of denim. The inside pockets were made from the same fabric as the shirt. It was a complete outfit. I tried them on and was transformed into... any guy. The outfit worked as a camouflage of normality, a dress to go unnoticed in. Then it struck me, I had seen this outfit before. It was the uniform of C.G, my math and physics teacher from high school. I realized that the outfit was a performance piece. An ongoing and living art piece created by different coincidences. My part, of this ongoing performance, was to add the story of me and my teacher, and me as a teacher.
The strange thing was that the designer behind the shirt and trousers was the same designer that was to hold an open lecture the upcoming Sunday. The outfit had decided that it wanted to re-connect to its designer Siv Støldal. On her homepage you can read:
"Clothes discovered within the wardrobes of three disparate Norwegian men - a pensioner, a professional diver and an engineer - have provided the inspiration for much of this collection."
I had to buy the outfit!
The next Sunday I went to the lecture dressed in my new performance _Shirt and Trousers; the C.G Uniform_, or Three Wardrobes as Stoldal calls it. She noticed the outfit and complimented me on my good taste. After the lecture I decided that this was to much of a coincident not to continue.
April 27th Monday, I put on the shirt and the trousers and went to the fashion school. At the beginning of class I asked the students to write down what I was wearing, and what they wore. All student looked carefully, asked questions and wrote down there thoughts. We talked about storytelling, myth making and the importance of understanding context when working with conceptual design, art and education. After they were done writing, I introduced them to the story of the outfit. Now it was time for us to develop this educational and fashion performance. We took photos of different ways to use the shirt. At the end of the day, we sent the best pictures to Siv Støldal.
Images from a workshop at Art College Folkuniveristetet, Goteborg. Thank you all students, for taking part in the workshop, and thank you Siv Støldal for great fashion..