Click Chic: The Fine Art of Fashion Photography

Photograph by Roderick Angle Don't miss out on the new exhibition which opened last week at the Museum of the School of Visual Arts! While many fashion scholars realize that fashion photography is another forum for artistic expression, curator Dan Halm states, "because they’re originally conceived and created to appear in magazines and advertisements, fashion photographs are often considered disposable.” Highlighting work from six SVA alumni, Click Chic aims to recognize fashion photography as an art form. Artists include Roderick Angle, Guy Aroch, Maki Kawakita and Ryan Michael Kelly. The opening reception will be held tonight, from 6-8 pm.

Visual Arts Museum
209 East 23 Street
New York, NY 10010
212.592.2145

On view from September 6 - October 6, 2007

Social Fabrics: Call for Participation

Proposals are invited for an event-style exhibition of wearable technology art, to be held at the College Art Association 2008 Annual Meeting in Dallas, Texas, sponsored by the Leonardo Education Forum.Social Fabrics will explore artists' creative deployments of mobile, socially interconnective media as wearable attire or personal accoutrements. This event-style exhibition, curated by Patrick Lichty and Susan Ryan, will demonstrate convergences between fashion as expression/statement, and the phenomenology of "network culture." Works presented will include technological attire and accessories, as well as works that engage the implications of our contemporary media and fashion driven lifestyles.For more information, visit http://www.socialfabrics.org

"Luxury" Exhibit at the Museum at FIT

Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel, 1925. Photo Irving Solero

The other day, I visited the “Luxury” exhibit, part of the rotating permanent collection at the Museum at FIT. I was given a tour from Tamsen Schwartzman, a research curator who organized the exhibit together with Valerie Steele and Fred Dennis. The exhibit, which opened in May and will remain on view until November 10th, made some very interesting points on the relation between luxury (as a widespread concept and eventually industry) and the rise of the bourgeoisie. Thus, the show started in the 18th century and continued up to the present day. The garments and accessories in the exhibit, which were for the most part arranged chronologically, made a very convincing argument for how luxury is ultimately a constructed cultural category which is constantly shifting and, thus, always historically and geographically specific. The exhibit went from an18th century heavily embroidered men coat (which exemplified the decorative character of menswear at the time) to a late 19th century extremely embellished ball gown which stands as evidence of “the feminization of luxury,” and of Veblen’s theory of “conspicuous consumption.” This move took place as menswear became pared down and opulence and wealth became displaced and displayed onto women.

In the early part of the exhibit covering the early 20th century, it’s quite interesting to compare a Chanel’s dress in its effortless look to a heavily decorated early 20th century Worth gown, and to a more theatrical Poiret dress. As the 20th century progresses, the ’80s stand out as the epitome of ostentatious luxury followed by the ’90s, with its more understated look and the concept of stealth luxury. The exhibit ends with suggestions of what constitutes luxury today:

It often has to do with the personal, the experiences which are often translated into the uniqueness of a piece, and the story associated with the brand or sometimes the individual garment. This made me think of an article on glamour by Elizabeth Wilson which I recently read in Fashion Theory, and which discussed glamour (perhaps counter intuitively) in relation to the dandy, with its aesthetic of restraint, and of refusal. “Glamour,” writes Wilson, is “elitists” and it “depends on what is withheld, on secrecy, hints , and the hidden.” Thus, one is left to wonder whether luxury in contemporary time, where the concept has become ubiquitous, is ultimately to be found in some form of refusal…

Francesca

New York Fashion Now

Tess Giberson, Fall/Winter 2003-04

I have been meaning to write about the exhibit New York Fashion Now, which is currently up at the V&A in London. Curated by Sonnet Stanfill, who originally hailed from this side of the Atlantic, the exhibit gave an interesting and thorough account of recent developments in New York Fashion in the context of drastic changes in the city’s economic and cultural landscape following September 11.

Rather refreshingly, the show focused largely on new and often emerging designers, giving its due to US designers—who can be underrated within the US borders, where Europe is generally equated with better fashion and good design. Personally, I find this association rather puzzling, having grown up in Italy and seen a fair share of bad European design ranging the gamut from hideous post-war architecture to perennially tight pants coupled with the most conservative of attires. Thus, the exhibit was a much-needed argument for the validity of New York–based fashion designers, one made all the more effective as it was staged outside of the city confines, and within what is probably Europe’s preeminent museum of decorative arts.

The exhibit was arranged in four separate sections:

Sportswear chic, Atelier, Avant-Garde, Menswear and Celebrity, and included twenty designers whose company varied significantly in size. Among the designers were Zac Posen, Mary Ping and Behnaz Sarafpour (in the Sportswear section) Maggie Norris and Jean Yu (in the Atelier section), Duckie Brown and Christian Joy (in the menswear and celebrity section, respectively). The Avant-Garde section (which interested me most) included As Four, Tess Giberson, Slow and Steady Wins the Race and Miguel Adrover. In addition to garments and accessories, two of the four designers were represented by fashion shows. On view was As Four Puppencouture Show from 2000, and Tess Giberson Fall/Winter 2003-04 collection, featuring a shelter-like structure made partially of the clothes later worn by the models. The fashion shows were a nice addition to the otherwise static display and left me wishing that more moving images were included in the exhibit.

What was perhaps most interesting about the avant-garde section of the exhibit is the fact that two of the designers (Tess Giberson and Adrover) were no longer in business by the time the exhibit was installed. (Stanfill had started planning the exhibit three years prior.) Upon being asked as to whether she saw an inherent incongruity between the notion of New York design and the avant-garde , the curator mentioned that one of the hindrances to an understanding of New York as an avant-garde fashion city is the preeminence of New York fashion image as one of sportswear and of American fashion design as inherently commercial. This point is, of course, compounded by the fact that a number of designers in this section come from abroad. Ultimately, one wonders whether there is something more deeply ingrained in the American resistance to thinking of fashion as a meaningful cultural and artistic product. Perhaps this resistance is somewhat indebted to a once popular Greenbergian understanding of art, and in particular American art, as a “pure” and ultimately masculine sphere or perhaps it simply has to do with the alleged American pragmatism, which ascribes to clothes a primarily utilitarian function.

If you end up missing the actual exhibit (which is up until September), the well-designed and comprehensive catalogue written by Stanfill (and distributed in the US by Abrams) makes for a great substitute!

Francesca