Student  work  including  media  viewable  here:    http://newnarrativesinfashion.blogspot.com/  

Kathryn  Simon:  papers  viewable  here:  https://vermillionmediany.academia.edu/KathrynSimon  

KathrynSimon: Linkedinhttp://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=6128031&authType=name&authToken =ATBS&locale=en_US&pvs=pp&trk=ppro_viewmore  

Student  Final  Collaborations:  http://newnarrativesinfashion.blogspot.com/  Scroll  to:    Trend  Forecasting:  Genderful  Fashion  in  Exhibition:  Radicals  in  Fashion,  Villains  in  Vogue  Original  Collections:  Wuji,  Sons  and  Daughters  

Kathryn  Simon  

This  is  an  edited  version  of  a  spoken  text  presented  at  the  panel,  SKIN:  a  confluence  of  art,  culture  and  fashion,  that  I  chaired  for  the  College  Art  Association  Feb  2011  with  an  invited  and  curated  panel  of  discussants.    

Welcome  to  our  session  SKIN:  The  confluence  of  art,  culture  and  fashion.  It  is  a  pleasure  to  

present  this  session  at  the  CAA.    

Through  an  examination  of  new  movements  in  contemporary  fashion  this  panel  is  an  

invitation  to  rethink  fashion  and  its  relationship  to  art  within  a  twenty first  century  context.

We'll focus on movements within fashion as an industry, and separately as a medium of

expression through  the  lens  of  contemporary  culture, and  current movements in art.

The  following  visual  is  passage  into  some  of  the  emerging  fashion  narratives  that  have  

shaped  this  present  moment.    (a  visual  presentation  https://vimeo.com/124713957)  

Since  the  1990’s  fashion  has  been  affected  by  a  continuing  wave  of  increasingly  performance  

based  work  that  often  falls  outside  traditional  industry  constraints.  This  panel  will  focus  on  some  

of  these  new  positions  and  creative  endeavors  with  presentations  that  discuss  this  evolving  

visual  language  where  nomadic  flows  are  often  expressed  best  through  the  medium  of  fashion.    

The  speakers  will  be  presenting  their  views  into  facets  of  this  newly  emerging,  multidisciplinary  

discourse  arising  out  of  a  field  whose  major  concern  until  the  1990’s  was  the  ‘industry’  -­‐-­‐the  

manufacture,  and  production  of  clothing—and  its  consumption.    

On  the  streets  of  New  York  or  the  deserts  of  Tehran  -­‐  there  is  a  visual  read  informed  by  the  

impacts  of  daily  living,  nurtured  by  a  society  in  process,  with  rapid  shifts  in  all  respects.  The  

proliferation  of  ideas–quickened  by  social  networks,  the  interplay  between  virtual,  mediated,  

and  physical  worlds  and  intense  mobility  has  helped  create  a  long  tail  of  small  niche  markets  

multiplying  at  a  dazzling  rate  -­‐-­‐  By  the  late  1990‘s  it  was  clear  that  a  deterritorialization  of  

fashion  was  on  it’s  way  nurtured  by  Punk,  ‘grunge’  aesthetics  and  the  postmodern  moment.  

Today  fashion  is  inclining  strongly  towards  a  cross-­‐pollinated  and  ever  more  expansive  textured  

ground,  where  art  and  fashion  cross  and  re-­‐cross  boundaries  and  concerns.  In  this  turn,  

concerns  and  issues  that  have  traditionally  been  sanctioned  to  the  arts  are  finding  a  ready  

language  here.        

 

Since  fashion  is  a  finely  tuned  language  of  embodiment  translating  cultural  turns  into  forms,  and  

clothing,  in  some  sense  is  always  haunted  by  the  suggestion  or  reality  of  a  human  life,  identity  or  

presence,  it  becomes  a  ‘ready  at  hand’  medium  for  art  at  a  time  when  contemporary  art  prizes  

the  performative,  and  the  lived  moment.  This  bleed-­‐through  between  fashion  and  art—

evidenced  in  artists  freely  experimenting  with  clothing  as  a  medium  for  expression  and  

designers  reaching  beyond  an  value  exchange  to  articulate  conceptual  ideas  in  the  medium  of  

clothing,  which  they  know  intimately-­‐Both  suggest  something  beyond  the  market  value  they  are  

assigned  to.    

 

Quoting  Nicholas  Bourriaud,  art  critic,  curator,  former  co-­‐director  of  the  Palais  de  Tokyo,  Paris,  

and  curator  of  contemporary  art  at  Tate  Modern  and  the  fourth  Tate  Triennial  Altermodern-­‐  

states  in  his  book  The  Radicant:  

 

 “And  yet  the  immigrant,  the  exile,  the  tourist  and  the  urban  wanderer  are  the  dominant  figures  

of  contemporary  culture,  To  remain  within  this  vocabulary  of  the  vegetable  realm,  one  might  

say  that  the  individual  of  these  early  years  of  the  21st  c  resembles  those  plants  that  do  not  

depend  on  a  single  root  for  their  growth  but  advance  in  all  directions  on  whatever  surfaces  

present  themselves  by  attaching  multiple  hooks  to  them,  as  ivy  does.  Ivy  belongs  to  the  

botanical  family  of  the  radicants,  which  develop  their  roots  as  they  advance,  unlike  the  radicals  

whose  development  is  determined  by  their  being  anchored  in  a  particular  soil.    

 

And  further…  

 

Contemporary  art  provides  new  models  for  this  individual  who  is  constantly  putting  down  new  

roots,  for  it  constitutes  a  laboratory  of  identities.  Thus  today’s  artists  do  not  so  much  as  express  

the  tradition  from  which  they  come  as  the  path  they  take  between  that  tradition  and  the  

various  contexts  they  traverse,  and  they  do  this  by  performing  acts  of  translation.”  

 

—in  this  regard  it  is  not  the  elevation  of  the  craftsmanship  that  is  esteemed  and  valued  but  the  

conceptual  intention  that  becomes  the  qualifier.  Some  of  these  artists  and  designers  crossing  

over  into  this  “third”  are:    

Visual Presentation link: http://vimeo.com/35431563

Andrea  Zittel,  with  her  project  Smock  Shop,    

Zittel  enlisted  underemployed  artists  to  create  smocks  using  a  basic  instruction  allowing  each  

the  freedom  to  create  variations  of  their  own,  in  direct  contradiction  to  the  usual  production  

line  demand  (and  reward  system)  for  sameness.      

Judi  Wertheim,  the  Argentine  performance  artist  who  designed  a  cross  trainer  for  the  biennial  

‘Insight  05’.  Her  project  and  shoe  are  both  named  “Brinco”  after  the  slang  expression  for  

‘jumping’  the  border  between  Tijuana  and  the  US.  This  is  a  dangerous  act  often  ending  in  death  

for  the  jumpers.  The  cross  trainer  is  outfitted  with  inner  soles  that  show  the  two  best  routes  for  

getting  across  the  desert,  are  supplied  with  painkillers,  a  flashlight  and  the  phone  number  of  a  

‘safe’  house  once  across.  (which  no  one  has  used)  

Christian  Boltanski’s  piece  installed  in  the  cavernous  New  York  Armory,  titled  No  Man’s  Land,  an  

almost  inconceivably  massive  heap  of  clothing  that’s  hard  to  view  without  the  immediate  recall  

of  death  camps  and  the  Holocaust.    The  artist  references  Dante’s  inferno,  a  haunting  allegory  to  

the  shed  skins,  and  the  aura  they  collectively  produce.    

And  then  there  are  fashion  designers  who  have  freely  experimented  with  clothing  in  a  

conceptual  realm  like  Hussain  Chaylan,  the  Cypriot  designer  whose  collection  Living  Room  for  his  

Spring  2001  collection,  could  be  worn  as  items  of  clothing,  but  at  a  moment’s  notice  transform  

into  suitcases  for  a  speedy  exodus  -­‐  chilling  as  the  memory  and  grief  from  recent  diasporas  and  

genocides  in  Sarajevo,  Armenia,  Tibet,  among  many  war  torn  areas  remain  ever  present.  

 In  1997,  fashion  designer  Martin  Margiela  in  collaboration  with  a  micro  biologist  dipped  18  

outfits  in  different  mold,  bacteria,  and  yeast  cultures;  for  the  installation  Exposing  Meaning  in  

Fashion  Through  Presentation.  The  clothing  on  the  mannequins  rotting  away-­‐as  the  days  worn  

on  the  moulds  and  bacteria’s  were  literally  decomposing  the  clothing  thus  mixing  up  the  

signified-­‐-­‐the  fabric  was  alive  and  the  mannequin  usually  the  ‘stand  in’  for  the  wearer,  is  and  

only  could  be  quite  inanimate  or  dead.      

 

Another  iteration  in  fashion  is  the  immersive  experience  in  the  form  of  the  proliferation  of  

media,  the  fashion  film,  and  streaming  media  from  the  catwalk-­‐-­‐  which  has  become  an  event  in  

itself,  more  often  then  not  what  is  featured  on  the  runway,  is  rarely  the  collection  that  is  

available  in  the  showrooms.  Instead  the  runway  is  high  spectacle  where  performance  is  prized  –  

designers  Viktor  and  Rolf  excelled  by  first  launching  themselves  by  on  to  the  fashion  stage  by  

presenting  work  that  could  never  be  worn,  either  because  the  materials  were  too  fragile,  (the  

porcelain  top  hat  that  is  smashed  at  the  end  of  the  show)  or  unseemly—the  babushka  who  is  

literally  wearing  the  entire  collection  on  one  model-­‐-­‐5,  6,  7  layers  of  clothing.    

 

And  then  there  is  the  practice,  which  some  designers  would  agree  places  cutting  or  

patternmaking  as  the  very  embodiment  of  philosophy  itself.  Not  a  mere  superficial  line  but  

rather  a  precise  and  deep  cut  defining  thought  as  effectively  as  text.    

 

Fashion  is  the  physical  evidence  of  the  way  we  live  in  the  present  now.  It  has  until  recently  been  

mute,  unmoving,  captured  in  frozen  gestures,  and  under  house  arrest  in  the  archives  of  

museums,  except  for  a  seasonal  performance  on  the  catwalk.  Historically  it’s  been  governed  by  

a  strict  hierarchy  of  signs  with  their  precise  index,  the  symbols  that  stand  in  for  wealth  (or  lack  

of  it)  and  capital  in  all  forms,    

 

This  is  an  exciting  time  when  novel  ways  of  telling  are  being  called  for.  In  contemporary  fashion,  

formalist  views  of  chronological  and  singular  narratives  are  being  outpaced  by  the  entry  of  a  

plethora  of  new  values,  and  an  intensely  diverse  complexity  of  cultural  understandings.  The  

position  that  fashion  occupies  in  visual  culture  is  a  positive  factor  in  implementing  this  shift  from  

representing  a  foretold  history  to  presenting  new  open  narratives.    

 

Is  it  just  coincidence  that  these  new  happenings  in  the  fashion  discourse  occur  at  the  same  time  

as  contemporary  art  has  turned  towards  performance  art  and  the  prizing  of  the  lived  moment?  

 

The  issue  we  hope  to  unpack  is  how  these  turns  in  and  with  fashion  and  art  are  happening  

pervasively  with  the  kind  of  diversity  that  suggests  something  important  is  at  work.  It  is  our  

intention  that  you  will  think  along  with  us  and  consider  the  ideas  being  presented  without  

holding  too  tightly  to  already  closed  meanings  but  will  instead  take  a  what/if  or  curious  listen.    

Welcome.    

 

The  format  for  today’s  session  is  thus:    

Presentations  by  each  speaker  followed  by  a  panel  discussion  and  Q  &A  

 

A  brief  introduction  to  the  panelists:  

Valerie  Steele,  The  director  and  chief  curator  of  the  Museum  at  FIT,  founding  editor  of  Fashion  

Theory,  her  exhibitions  and  publications  are  numerous  and  include  Gothic,  Dark  Glamour,  Japan  

Now.  Ms.  Steele  will  present  first  followed  by  

 

Vicki  Karaminas,  Associate  Professor  of  Fashion  Studies,  Associate  Head  of  the  School  of  Design,  

at  UTS,  Sydney,  and  author  of  the  Menswear  Reader,  and  Co-­‐editor  and  author  of  the  

forthcoming  publication,  Fashion  &  Art  with  Valerie  Steele.    

 

Nathalie  Khan,  Lecturer  at  Central  St.  Martins  in  London  and  contributing  writer  to  many  

publications  including  Pamela  Church  Gibson,  Fashion  Cultures.      

 

J  Morgan  Puett,  Co  director  of  Mildred’s  Lane  a  radical  rethinking  of  how  fashion  happens  and  a  

bold  initiative  in  education,  she  is  adjunct  faculty  at  Parsons,  the  New  School  for  Design,  and  

runs  workshops  at  Mildred’s  Lane,  her  collaborative  work  is  in  the  collection  of  the  Tate  

Modern.  

 

And  to  introduce  myself-­‐  Kathryn  Simon  as  a  designer,  with  a  collection  under  my  name,  and  

work  from  a  prior  collection  of  leather  corsets  in  the  Costume  Institute,  at  The  Metropolitan  

Museum.  I  am  faculty  at  Parson’s  The  New  School  for  Design.    

 

I . -_u_-. ' ,

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i Special Programs-L

Thankyoufor coming to thepanel discussion 'Implicationsof Design. I

When Sondra invited me to do a panel at the Vera List Center I took theidea of the center as an ideal place to hold a discussion about design asthe crossroads where art and politics meet. This is an inquiry into several

facets of design. It is an examination of what design is today, how design isaffected by new media, and given shape by its tools. If designers carry a

sense of social responsibility, design can be an agent for social changeespecially given new thoughts about sustainable models. We will belooking at the education of a designer from the field and address theradical shifts occurring within the professions and current crosspollination between the professions. Stephanie, Dakota, and Chee are allintensely committed designers. Pleasejoin in the discussion when we .

arrive at the Q&A period. And by all means instigate and be controversial.

)'\

Several people have been instrumental in making this program possible. Iwant to thank Dr. Sondra Farganis, Director of the Vera List Center,formentoring me and inviting me to do a program here. I would also like tothank Pam Klein, Chair AAS, Nisi Berryman, and Robin Poppelsdorfffortheir support and encouragement. Finally, thank you to our event sponsorsBalducci's and Bacflrdi.

II

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- - _.0

THE IMPLICATIONSOF DESIGN

November 11, 20026 p.m.

Tishman Auditorium66 West 12th Street

The New School

Presented by the Vera List Center forArt and Politics

Sponsored by Bacardi and Balducci's

Webcast and online discussion will be availableatwww.dialnsa.edu.

THE IMPLICATIONS OF DESIGN carpet industry in Nepal being developed by Tibetan refugees,Stephanie formed her own company in New York to import herspecially produced carpets. Stephanie is a main spokesperson forRugmark an organization that sponsors literacy programs, createsschools, and protects children from being used as slave labor in thecarpet factories.

In the postmodernworld, design has become part of a globallanguage, a barometer of taste and social values that inextricablyconveys cultural and political messages. Where language andtradition can be cultural obstacles, design is often a bridge ofunderstanding. What is the role of design today? What are theimplications of design and the design process? What makes designgood? The increasing shift away from specialization to a.moremultidisciplinedapproach has designers from one industry oftenworking on projects from an entirely different field. How are thedesign professions changing? How does this affect the designworld? How do these ripples emanating from the designworld affectthe current universal culture? How can design be instrumental infostering sustainable cultures? Design can connect communitiesfrom diverse cultures, thus creating new partnerships and socially,economically, and ecologically sustainable future. On the otherhand, overproduction has also developed situations in which life andcommunity become secondary to production and profit. Presentedby the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School.

Chee PearlmanChee Pearlman is a design columnist for the New York Timesand adesign and editorial consultant to a number of institutions andcompanies. In addition to a design conference she is organizing forArt Center College of Design in Pasadena, she is co-chair of theChrysler Design Awards, a program she has chaired for thecompany for 10 years. She has recently been a guest editor fordesign issues of Wired magazine and Men's Journal, and served asprogram chair for several design and new media conferences,including "America: Cult.and Culture," a gathering of 3,000designers in LasVegas. From 1993 to 2000 Chee PearlmanwasEditor-in-Chief of 1.0. Magazine, which was honored with fiveNational Magazine Awards--the Oscars of the industry--under hertenure. '

Panelists: Kathryn SimonKathryn Simon, coordinator of this program, develops collectionswhere the intrinsic linkbetween marketing and design is stressed.Her client list includes Tahari, HollyHunt, Nicole Miller, Madonna,Barney's New York, Colette Dinnigan, DuPont. As a adjunct facultymember at Parson's School of Design\ Kathryn has taught bothgraduate and undergraduate courses in design and media. Shewrote and teaches the course "Culture & Couture," which looks atthe cross pollination between disciplines. Her work has been ,

featured in the New York Times, Woman's Wear Daily, Flaunt, andother international publications. She is currently developing aneducational program in response to the radical shifts in designmarketing and new media, which address the emerging demands inthe design professions.

Dakota JacksonIn a career spanning three decades Dakota Jackson has built anoteworthy collection, which is represented in leading designmuseums around the world. Gaining his reputation as a couturedesigner of customized pieces, Jackson now serves as Presidentand Creative Director of Dakota Jackson Industries, a design,manufacturing, distribution, and marketing company that producesover 100 high-end residential, contract, and institutionalcollections,which may be found, respectively, in the world's finest homes,corporations, hotels, and educational and public institutions.

Stephanie OdegardSince founding Odegard Inc. in 1987, Stephanie Odegard hasrevolutionized the contemporary carpet industry. A world-renownedleader in design, color, and texture, Odegard Inc. is known for itsunparalleled commitment to combining time-revered techniques withmodern aesthetics and the highest standards of quality. Prior tofounding Odegard Inc., Stephanie Odegard was a buyer at DaytonHudson Corporation. Before working in private industry she spent12 years abroad as a volunteer in The Peace Corps, working for theWorld Bank, the United Nations, and the governments of Nepal,Jamaica, and the South Pacific islands. In the mid-1980s,while onassignment for the World Bank as a consultant to the emerging

1

An intervention is a strategy used to put conventionally held values into a context that challenges their meaning and authority. They reveal, subvert, and arrest the progression of the belief system they rely upon.-5.2006

when fashion intervenes

Interventions

Issues of migration caused by war, totalitarian political regimes and natural

disasters are a hotly contested ground for debate as often less than transparent

political and economic issues forms a complex and mired foundation for

discussion. While questions and issues on both sides loom, the number of

people facing grueling and risky journeys to freedom increases. In Tijuana the

penalty is death and the chances of surviving the journey across the dessert to

the border to San Diego are not good. The cost is enormous. Relocating from

ones country and migration are fraught with many issues from a myriad of

perspectives. However until the situation touches one personally it is hard to

imagine the intense fear, hope and issues one must face. While it may seem

obvious there are degrees of subtleties and informal yet ‘official’ dictates

controlling this situation which formal policies will impact. Many of them already

deeply rooted in complicit and deeply corrupted agreements on both sides.

In the last 30 years and continuing today, we have been witness to mass

genocides, famines, and wars, in Kosovo, Cambodia, Haiti, Somalia, Rwanda

and Darfur and Cuba. This list can only be partial, since “all the news that is fit to

print”, the tag line from the New York Times, will not report on what is going on

2

under the radar until a famine or genocide reaches a certain number, usually way

beyond easy remedy.

Judy Werthein was one of the artists invited to participate in InSite’05. Insite is a

non profit organization that coordinates profit and nonprofit organizations to

sponsor interventions at the border between San Diego and Tijuana. Judy did a

project called “Brinco” which is slang for jumping the border between Mexico and

California. For this project Judy created a cross trainer particularly for crossing

the border and the hardships facing the migrants walking through the desserts

and the mountains. The shoes were emblazed with an eagle at the toe and the

heel to symbolize the life the migrants aspired to in the United States, the insole

is printed with a map of the two most popular routes for getting across. The shoe

included practical items including painkillers, a flashlight and a compass. The

label inside the shoe has a contact telephone number where the journeyers can

sell the shoes back to the foundation-though it is never used. Judy handed out

the trainers for free to migrants waiting to jump at the border. Across the border,

a few miles away the shoes were being sold in a store that specializes in limited

editions of shoes primarily for collectors. The sales given to Judy, go directly to

the two hostels in Tijuana where women and children live while waiting to jump.

inSite ’05 (website)

Interventions

To create experiences of public domain implies envisioning collective situations

that generate new meanings for the social contract. It implies the production of

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circumstantial identities, movable contexts, and continuously negotiated space. It

is to create – in an artistic sense – more “effective” ways in which to turn the

social friction/interplay between models, and the circumstantial negotiation of the

uses of space and the zones of instability, into a process that reveals “the vision

of structure in its totality as a network.”-1

Hussein Chalayan, a well known fashion designer, living in London. He has been

involved with interventions that use fashion as a means to express what is

uniquely human. His “Living Room” collection in 2001 leads one into a narrative

that reveals the extreme fear, immediacy, and unknown involved in fleeing ones

country at short notice under impending threat. His show that season was an

intervention. His designs were created in response to his concern.

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“Living Room collection, London Spring 2000. The stage was set with a

range of tables and chairs that transformed into clothing (armchair covers

became dresses; a round table became a skirt). The models picked up the

furniture, put them on and walked off.”

"The project had nothing to do with furniture," he says. "It was all about the

moment of trying to leave your home at a time of war. The living room was

supposed to be like somebody's wardrobe. How you could hide your

possessions and carry them with you? Partly it's from my background - I'm

from Cyprus, which is a divided place - and partly because of Kosovo." –

Hussein Chalayan, Icon Magazine Dec. 2000

A capsule of the “Living Room” collection was exhibited on its own and as part of

a group show “Skin Tight”. The work was exhibited in the United States and

Internationally at Contemporary Art Museums and spaces. “Skin Tight” was an

unusual show that presented a number of designers who see themselves outside

of the usual fashion consciousness and as part of a larger field that has found

fertile ground for extending fashion into political, artistic and social areas usually

5

reserved for art. All of them show and participate in the fashion industry. “Skin

Tight” was presented at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Naples Art

Museum, Naples, Florida, Stephen Weiss and Donna Karan Foundation, New

York, among other locations in Europe and Asia. In addition to this project,

Chayalan has created other shows that interrogate political and social concerns.

Currently on view at Museum of Modern Art, New York, 17 Ways of Seeing,

Beyond Boundaries includes his work of at women living in/wearing Burka’s. He

is investigating the role of the burka and the women who wear them as

disembodied beings. Chayalan’s involvement in this work is frequently in concert

with his seasonal fashion collections.

(From Hussein Chalayan's fall 1998 ready-to-wear collection.)2

The question of whether these interventions are fashion or art is secondary. Each

intervention reaches audiences where they are effective and both use clothing as

the medium to create an entrance into an emotionally charged situation. In this

context their work makes room for an unanticipated response and an intimacy

with issues that traditional media has lost its power to accomplish.

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A few examples of work from other artists in fashion, interior design, and

contemporary art are included at the end of the presentation. They have been

added to give you a sense that interventions are not limited to a few unique

individuals. This new activity is not new, however what is new is the prevalence

of these statements in contemporary art and the way they straddle fashion,

design and art for this purpose. Chayalan and Werhein have created work that

cause one to pause and consider the reality of conventionally accepted beliefs by

reframing them in contexts were are less unfamiliar with.3

Fashion and art are joined in several often overlooked ways. Historically patrons

of the arts have supported couture, and visa versa. Yet at the same time the

relationship between the disciplines is often a contentious one. Fashion is a

language of the present, the currency of the now. It is slippery, ambivalent, and

ambiguous and subject to whims and fast change. Its relationship to the market

is explicit, money, value and exchange are all transparent. An integral aspect of

fashion is conspicuous consumption4 (see Veblen’s theory of the Leisure Class).

It always has been. Louie XIV5 was adept at using the balls and extravagant

royal activities at Versailles to gain advantage while the aristocracy and ruling

classes were too busy dressing and decorating themselves to intervene with his

political plans. It was brilliant. Fashion and the history of cities have an intrinsic

relationship. They are good bedfellows with an embrace that is historical. Astute

use of fashion (with ample finances) can allow one to construct a succinct

personal identity. As the growth of urban centers progressed this became

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increasingly important in business and society. Art on the other hand reminds us

of what is timeless, it reinforces our shared history and in doing so, of who we

are as a people and our role in the bigger picture as a part of culture and society.

Collectively we’ve assigned art the responsibility to lift us from the prosaic, the

quotidian and lead us into a process that opens to the possibility of epiphany and

transcendence.

These issues form the basis of this paper. There are characteristics in art and

fashion, that as a result of recent turns in contemporary art and fashion reveal

and open questions worthy of new consideration.

A short overview of fashion and art:

During the late 1980’s6 as critical theory and postmodern thinking became visible

fashion designers took on various issues of identity, gender, ethnic and cultural

diversity. With tools of deconstruction (Derrida), Frank Gehry’s architecture, and

Situationist strategies, the Punk aesthetic bloomed. A new breed of designers

emerged; among them were Jean Paul Gaultier, Vivienne Westwood and

Comme Des Garcons, Rei Kawakubo. Their style and spirit was deeply

connected to breaking meta narratives that had dominated fashion; the

silhouette, proportion, idealized ideas of women’s body. In place of historic

standards and continuing rhetoric there was a proliferation of fashion that directly

intervened with formerly ‘timeless’ standards. Traditional concepts and their

associations shifted and so did accepted norms. As a direct result of these larger

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cultural changes, former concepts are challenged by alterations and demands of

contemporary lifestyles8. Fashion, a direct reflection of culture finally began to

break apart in order to make room for cultural issues that are greatly extending

the fashion vocabulary.

In many cases these new narratives became interventions as they criticized the

very foundations that fashion languages are built upon (confer meaning). Set

meanings for a collar or length of a skirt were unglued from their historic context

and associations as they re-combined with fragments borrowed from a diversity

of often non western cultures, classes and a mixture of time periods. Increasingly

clothing became transformed into a maze like or labyrinthine story. Shapes taken

from a mix of historical periods found resonances often within one garment to

articulate yet other meanings. These interpretations were open, often layered,

hitting against, and in conflict with one another. At the same time clothing that

had been used for special groups or activities were also considered fair game.

This intensified with the prevalence of clothing associated with the sex trade or

religious groups and activities. Jean Paul Gaultier’s 1993 Hasidic inspired

collection and Comme Des Garcons, Sleep are examples of collections that

touched nerves and produced a deluge of criticism reserved for art or any area

outside of market consumption. They were met with outrage. Previously veiled or

secretive clothing came out of the closet and was absorbed into an expanding

fashion vocabulary.

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In 1978, Jean Paul Gaultier presented one of his first shows. He sent short girls

wearing boa skirts bouncing down the runway, skipping and laughing, eliciting

the impression of pre pubescent high school girls who haven’t yet lost their baby

fat, contra to the ultra thin aesthetic that has dominated the western fashion

ideal, tall, slim, and ethereal, sending a ripple down fashion’s spine. Vivienne

Westwood and Malcolm McLaren opened their store in London in the early ‘70’s

on the dying Kings Road, christened with several births, Sex, Too Fast To Live

Too Young Too Die, Seditionaries, with clothing more in common with the sex

trade than street wear. The Sex Pistols, a rock band that marked the antics of an

era, became McLarens brainchild. They started off in life as a band that couldn’t

sing or play and ended up marking this period indefinitely. It wasn’t until 1978

that things began to wake up.

At Comme des Garcon, Rei Kawakubo, was creating designs that reflected

homelessness and despair. A certain surety leftover from the 1960’s had

changed, the system had failed; only the pain and unresolved problems

remained. Arrogance was replaced by rage. Former ways of thinking were

quickly outpaced by a multiplicity of approaches in design as it was in every other

area. The impact of new technology making communications faster, closer and

accessible across formerly sealed borders, global outsourcing, the breakdown of

political systems, migrations and the appearance of a diversity of cultures that

were not Eurocentric, contributed to a rapid reshaping and shifting of

perspectives.

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Derivatives of ‘new‘ fashion manufactured on Seventh Avenue or outside of the

original studios they were created in were disasters. They attempted to emulate a

style without penetrating the underlying issues. The original designs were

created outside of garment centers, in basements, warehouse spaces or holes in

the wall, to be shown in art galleries or clubs. Major design houses adept at

‘knocking off’ original work turned out clothing that looked out of synch. Frankly

the asymmetry found in the best of downtown designers was missed by the trade

it appeared clumsy and ugly in their hands, reflecting a lack understanding for the

hybrid of influences alive in the designs.

Pop Art and Street Fashion

One can see some of these traces in the mid ‘60’s with the advent of Pop Art and

“Street Fashion”. There is a parallel between what is happening in art and

fashion today that mirrors a similar shift in the 1960’s when Pop Art entered the

scene. Pop artists like Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein used appropriated

objects and images from advertising and consumer goods. At the same time

trends in fashion changed direction and oriented towards what people were

wearing on the street which absorbed the political protests for peace in Viet Nam,

feminism and black consciousness. A wave of new art collectors who had made

their fortunes through manufacturing consumer goods entered the market. Pop

Art was understandable. Informed by Leo Castelli and Henry Geldzheler these

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new collectors assembled some of the most important collections of art from this

time. .

Fashion shifted from a “trickle down” theory (Verblens’ Theory of the Leisure

Class), where tastes from the aristocratic or wealthier classes trickled down in

order to create new fashion trends that emulate an association of breeding and

resources akin to the upper classes. In a sense we have never completely

abandoned either but in fact have in some ways created a third hybridization,

where both exist simultaneously, as on Canal Street and other commercial tourist

zones the world over.

Between Contemporary Art and fashion there are a number of shared attributes.

Both anticipate the performance quality of the work for one. Clothing is being

included in shows more often these days on its own as well as in museum shows

that transcend traditional “fashion” history, as well as being used by

contemporary artists as a ready medium.10 Perhaps the reason clothing has

become a medium for contemporary art, is because of its immediate suggestion

of human interaction. Clothing implies presence and of deeply human issues of

emotion, time and identity. The salient characteristic that they share other than

the medium of clothing is the participation of the viewer in completing the work,

through interaction and performability-clothing performs its identity by being

worn. While separate and distinct disciplines, sometimes it is hard to distinguish

which is art and which is fashion. I am not sure it really matters. A sobering

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reminder is the ever present relationship that both have to their market. Fashion

as a medium to explore issues beyond a fashion trend, for inquiry is relatively

new with few exceptions, while strategies and design approaches have been less

evident or clearly defined in art, Minimalist work did begin this trajectory.

The Market

Fashion and the market have always been intrinsically related. This is explicit

and transparent. However what is new is the divide that is forming augured by

emerging designers like the ‘Antwerp 6’, a design collective out of Belgium,

which has captured the eye and interest of the style makers in fashion who have

made this spit between the demands of a market and a new fashion direction

evident. Today designer clothing sells at almost unreachable prices and the

proliferation of cheaper and disposable clothing has become the ground for a

new market. There are customers for both. The buyers and collectors who will

prize the designs and wear them and then sell them and consumers who want

something to wear and anticipate its demise.

These perspectives are already forming and continue to broaden fashion from a

solely clothing oriented industry. New lifestyles and the recent shift of the past

have had an effect. Today, 30 years later, this change has reshaped the former

fashion market as it is continues to alter how we dress and the things we choose

to create our identity. The market has become increasingly competitive and open

with a number or new choices. MP3’s, laptops, shoes, eating out, buying

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clothing, travel all compete for the same dollar. In the advent of this turn products

offered as fashion include all the above, the qualifier is the identity they confer to

the wearer not its wearablity. Schools including The London Institute, Flanders

Fashion Academy, Fabrica and foundations including Prada Foundazione, Diesel

Gallery, Stephen Weiss and Donna Karan Foundation are invested in sponsoring

shows and artists that are extending the fashion vision and interests.

New Horizons and perspectives

This change of perspective is evident at the major couture houses JP Gaultier,

Hermes, McQueen, former head of Gucci, Tom Ford, John Galliano at Dior are

only a few of the new creative directors shaping the new horizon. Almost all are

graduates of the more progressive schools6. These schools are offering critical

theory, cultural studies and interdisciplinary electives as a foundation for studying

couture along with traditional courses. This new education will feature

patternmaking not from “French forms” but by learning historic couture

techniques from the study of garments from the couturiers that built this industry,

from Vionnette to Dior, draping now an almost disappeared art is returning at

these schools, on the other hand training for work within mass manufacturing

requires technical drawing and proficiency in a number of CAD programs.

Increasingly throughout the 80’s, 90’s and further intensified today, new

narratives in fashion are rapidly expanding the field, lifting it from an industry to a

discourse joining a multi disciplined, heavily cross pollinated field. Increasingly

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philosophical, political, social and psychoanalytic issues are the basis of the

collection. A resonance of ideas or ponderings has replaced the thematic.

Fashion has emerged from the historic to the narrative. Unlike what history

denotes, in new designer fashion today there is no ending, no set in stone meta

theory, rather there is an opening out to a continuing story constructed in

contemporary languages. It has always had a place in the cultural domain,

usually at the service of political and social issues. It is a discourse that

demands an expertise in design, technology of cut, couture history, and a fluency

in using fashion vocabularies to a precise location coupled with an intuitive and

instinctive ability to read as yet unformed shadows moving along a future

horizon.7

While the overlap between fashion and art is not new it has changed. For this

present moment anyway, the two disciplines have gotten closer in a family way.

Fashion is exploring itself, reinvesting, trading up in rank, unselfconsciously

fulfilling characteristics that mark it definitively as a discourse, incorporating the

design and industry practice and extending it well beyond.

Contemporary art in its present turn to regain human presence, reawaken the

senses and shift into discussions that engage political and economic dialectics is

finding fashion a ready medium. While I am not sure this signals a mesh,

presently they both can perform effective interventions. However, art aspires to a

realm that raises it above a market restriction (one hopes) and to be a kind of

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open portal oriented towards practice and at a remove from the consuming

desire of the market. Fashion, is a cataloguing of our history, and ways of feeling

into the present moment through the material, it straddles both the tactile and the

ephemeral worlds, unraveling stories, relentlessly shifting and changing to

accommodate the new.

Constructing Meaning and Performability

When Minimalist art began to gain visibility throughout the 70’s, much of the work

breached traditional boundaries and dominant parochial definitions of fine art,

thus challenging the very system that codified art, an action not dissimilar to

some recent shifts in fashion. A proliferation of works in materials and

applications that fell between formalist traditions of each of the arts8 (painting,

sculpture, etc) that challenged the foundation of the art history and art itself. New

media, subject/content, were removing some of the criteria that circumscribed

these boundaries. The elimination of the ‘brush stroke’, the artists studio as the

site of production was increasingly replaced by the factory and industrial

techniques, the work was often given as a set of instructions rather than through

roughs or material prototypes created by the artist as the singular original.

Additionally-the increasing participation of the viewer, often requiring the viewer

to take part in completing the work itself and the performative aspect of art were

pronounced. These traces are evident in much of contemporary art today. Often

the idea of the artists hand has completely disappeared by collective involvement

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in collaborations. In virtual media in a sense this aspect is now completely

removed or at least at a removal from its initial meaning.

The latest turn in contemporary art9 focuses instead on political and social

dialectics in the form of interventions. It is one of a number of movements that

span media and mediums with the focus on process while reminding us to

remember what touches us, makes us human, cultural diversity, and

connecting with political and social issues by art work that has traces of human

presence7. At this moment contemporary art more than ever in the recent past

aspires to reveal a ground where possible futures can be imagined, examined

and challenged. Under the rubric of Art it is possible to be in a kind of safe zone

to look (as in voyeur) to consider and possibly to broaden our awareness and

understanding.

Art historically has been in the hands of the wealthy, aristocratic, held at a

remove from the public in its own exclusive category, and protected by a

special language to decode. It’s relationship to the market has always been

somewhat obscured or held apart from the work, as if it presides in a domain

outside of the exchange value market, leaving a nasty smell of a dark collusion.

The truth, which is increasingly transparent, is that art has always had a market,

controlled and backed by patrons (the Medici’s, Carnegie’s, Christies, Rubels,

etc). As capital transformed the classes, art and fashion became increasingly

available and have historically been used to display wealth and refinement. As

this

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relationship reveals, the mercantile classes did much to support the arts

historically, and the patrons of Pop Art in the 1960’s did the same. However,

what is worth reconsidering is extending a too ready hand to art to enter the

market and to lock away the languages of strategy, design and creativity in a

medium that is a ready made for contemporary expression as second class or

not equal to. It is interesting to see that fashion companies that have

accumulated wealth are setting up schools and foundations that support the work

of artists in a seed like and emergent stage and are sponsoring or generating

shows that reveal some of the more progressive work in both areas.

What determines these disciplinary boundaries today?

Generally it would be fair to say that fashion and art have an uncomfortable

relationship. Design was removed from “art” as it became increasingly

industrialized. Until the early 1900’s the separation between the two was non

existent. Art is supposed to transcend the moment, be a threshold to a longer

look, a deeper gaze and somewhat removed from the consumers desire as first

instinct. Fashion is its natural protagonist because it is written in a language that

is of the now. That doesn’t mean that artists and designers haven’t taken turns at

the wheel working in each other’s domain. Interventions formally belonged to the

Avant-garde, in this present turn it becomes a part of performance, process

rather than a radicalized action.