Bill Cunningham on Deconstructivist Fashion
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BILL CUNNINGHAM, PHOTOGRAPHS oF MARTIN MARGIELA, SPRINg/SUMMER 1990, "The COLLECTIONS" DETAILS, MARCH 1990
In remembrance of the great fashion photographer and critic Bill Cunningham, we are showing some of his lesser-known work, which he did for Details magazine in the 1980s and 1990s. During those years, Details was strikingly different from its later Condé Nast incarnation as a men’s style magazine. The magazine centered on fashion and featured extensive coverage of the Paris shows, often exceeding 30 pages—both written and photographed by Cunningham.
It is in these pages that Cunningham coined the term “deconstructivist” fashion to refer to the work of Martin Margiela. Against commonly held beliefs that tie the term to Japanese designs from the early 1980s, it was first used in the English language by Cunningham to refer to fashion, in an article he published in Details of September 1989 to describe Martin Margiela’s autumn/winter 1989/90 collection, which was shown in Paris in March 1989. Only retrospectively was the word used to refer to Japanese designers of the 1980s. (Francesca Granata, "Deconstruction Fashion" The Journal of Design History, vol. 26, 2)
BIll CunninghAM, PhOTOGRAPHS Of MArTIN MArgiela SPRING/SuMMER 1990, "The Collections" Details March 1990
Cunningham used the term in its literal sense of undoing, taking apart a garment and accompanied his written articles with beautiful images from the collections:
Martin Margiela, formerly a Gaultier assistant, in this, his second collection on his own, provided quite a different vision of fashion for the 1990s: a beatnik, Existentialist revival … The construction of the clothes suggests a deconstructivist movement, where the structure of the design appears under attack, displacing seams, tormenting the surface with incisions. All suggest a fashion of elegant decay.
Bill Cunningham, ‘The Collections’, Details, September 1989, 246.
BILL CUNNINGHAM, IMAGES AND TEXT ON MARTIN MARGIELA, AUTUMN/WINTER 1989, DETAILS, SEPTEMBER 1989
BILL CUNNINGHAM, IMAGES AND TEXT On MARTIN MARGIELA, SPRINg/SUMMER 1990, DETails, MARCH 1990
Fashion Projects #5 is devoted to fashion curation, examining the meteoritic rise in relevance of fashion exhibitions.
It features interviews with an eclectic assortment of leading practitioners from different corners of the world. The issue includes long Q&As with Harold Koda, the longtime, recently retired curator of the Met’s Costume Institute, as well as the Museum at FIT’s veteran leader Valerie Steele. It also features interviews with curators in Antwerp (the ModeMuseum’s Kaat Debo), Toronto (Royal Ontario Museum’s Alexandra Palmer) and Venice (Maria Luisa Frisa); academics studying the field (Hazel Clark, Annamari Vänskä, and Alistair O’Neill); and, giving an on-the-ground perspective, the Met’s head conservator, Sarah Scaturro. The issue’s cover stars Greer Lankton’s sculptural representation of legendary Vogue editor and Costume Institute doyenne Diana Vreeland, who continues to loom over the field years after her death.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Showmanship and History: An Interview with Harold Koda by Francesca Granata
Woman of Steele: An Interview with Valerie Steele by Lisa Santandrea
Exploring Fashion’s Openness: An Interview with Kaat Debo by Alex Esculapio
London, After a Fashion Curator: An Interview with Alistair O’Neill by Alexis Romano
Curation and Conservation: An Interview with Sarah Scaturro by Mae Colburn
Reflections on Fashion Curating
An Interview with Hazel Clark and Annamari Vänskä
Fashion in the Vast Museum: An Interview with Alexandra Palmer by Ingrid Mida
Restless Curating: An Interview with Maria Luisa Frisa by Marco Pecorari