Popular culture phenomenon kitsch and effects on textille and fashion design students

With the effect of mass production resulted from the Industrial Revolution, the idea of slow production and uniqueness in art gradually lost its power and the commoditization of the popular began to take place. The emergence of the kitsch object parallels this commoditization process. It has been observed that the concept of 'kitsch', which had its origin in German, was used for the first time in an artistic context to describe the orders of some painters and art dealers in Munich in the 1870s. Kitsch, one of the art phenomena of popular culture, can be said to have a hybrid design concept; it is often very colorful and ornate; in some cases it feels sloppy and randomly produced, but attracts attention at first glance; it includes religious symbols mostly in a humorous or lighthearted style; it arouses interest and curiosity even if it is criticized from an aesthetic point of view; it is not accepted as an art form by everyone although it is definetely fed by art. It is possible to encounter kitsch in almost all branches of art, in short, in plastic arts, sculpture, ceramics, painting, graphic design, photography, architecture, decoration and fashion design. This phenomenon has reflections in today's fashion understanding and even in the haute couture designs of leading luxury fashion brands. This study tries to reveal whether there is an awareness of kitsch influences among textile and fashion design students, whose artistic and stylistic awareness is thought to be above average, especially in the field of fashion design, but also in other branches of art in general. It is thought that this kind of factual awareness will help relevant individuals to identify trends and their effects better, and thus incorporate these into their analysis and production more consciously and in a better controlled way. In addition, in the research, it is planned to create Turkish resources for design education programs and students of Fine Arts Faculties, especially for textile and fashion design departments. In the study, in the light of the information and analyzes obtained through the literature review, an online questionnaire, which is a descriptive scanning technique, was applied to the students studying in the Textile and Fashion Design Department of the Faculty of Fine Arts. Based on the survey data, the existence and extent of awareness about the effects of the kitsch phenomenon on today's art and fashion design has been analyzed in general. While the definition of kitsch gains new meanings with the ever-changing aesthetic understanding, it is thought that this study on the awareness of the concept of kitsch, which is considered as an artistic expression in our research, can also contribute to recognise such values more accurately with the help of its findings and its method used in the study. Keywords: Art, Kitsch, Fashion Design, Pop Art