blog.mode and meta-blogging at the Met

Junya Watanabe, AW2000-2001

blog.mode: addressing fashion is opening at the Metropolitan Museum’s Costume Institute December 18. “Designed to promote critical and creative dialogues about fashion,” the exhibition presents the Costume Institute’s recent acquisitions, which range from a Miguel Adrover 2000 ensemble made from Quentin Crisp’s discarded mattress to a 1730’s English suit.

The exhibit is meant to foster a discussion with museum visitors, as it invites the visitors to share their reactions via a blog, which is accessible both in the exhibition space and via the Met’s site. Comments from the blog together with the curators’ commentaries will be included in a book to be published after the exhibition closes. Meanwhile, in a classic instance of meta blogging, you can follow the curators—Harold Koda and Andrew Bolton—blog about blogs.mode on T magazine’s recently launched blog.

We were struck by Andew Bolton’s description of the blog as a way for the viewer to add to the strata of meaning and the history of the garments. Talking with W magazine, he mentioned how “Every object in the museum has a particular life history, and we hope the comments will contribute to the life history of [the clothes].”

It is a rather lyrical way to conceptualize a blog, especially the ability to contribute to these garments’ history and to some extent modify it. It seems to suggest a virtual way of adding traces and stains onto the clothes.

Francesca

La Superette 2007

Erica Weiner, Vertebrae Necklace (Bone)

La Superette—the annual holiday art sale is being held this year at Chashama's Times Square location. Conceived as a temporary store where artists sell functional art in multiples at affordable prices, it features a great number of wearable pieces like Erica Weiner's jewelery above. This year, to celebrate their 10th Anniversary, La Superette is expanding the event into a festival taking place from December 13th to the 16th. For more information, you can visit their site.

Ann-Sofie Back Interview

Ann-Sofie Back, Fall/Winter 2004. Tweed fold hat, and “sad shirt in spandex.”

Fashion Theory just published an interview I conducted with the designer Ann-Sofie Back in its December issue (Volume 11, issue 4). The interview came out of Fashion Projects’ long-standing interest in the designer’s work, which started with Patty Chang’s interview with Back in our first issue.

For those who are not already familiar, Fashion Theory is an academic journal on fashion as an interdisciplinary area of studies. It’s published quarterly by Berg and was started in 1997 by Valerie Steele, who is currently the director and chief curator of the Museum at FIT. The only journal of its kind, it is an indispensable resource for fashion scholars and students. It is generally available in academic libraries and/or via Ingenta and other online academic indexes (which are accessible free of charge through subscribing libraries). Individual subscriptions are also available through the Berg website. There is currently a promotional sale going on and it might be a good time to subscribe if you are interested in fashion curation, as there are two special issues coming up on the topic—one edited by Valerie Steele and the other by Alistair O’Neil, who is a freelance curator, author and head of the BA in fashion history and theory at Saint Martins.

Francesca

Another Side of Fashion Lecture Series

Suzanne Lee, Fashioning the Future

The Centre for Fashion, the Body and Material Culture at the London College of Fashion is hosting the first of a series of lectures meant to explore “the different perspectives that design can bring to innovation and collaborative problem solving.” These lectures set out to cover the breadth of fashion and include “speakers covering the cultures, materials, design and technologies which intersect the development of fashion.”This particular event seems to verge on the topic of textiles, fashion and technology and features a range of speakers from the designer and writer Suzanne Lee, whose talk is titled “The Convergence of Collaboration for Future Textiles and Fashion,” to the researcher Lesley Gavin, who will speak on “Technology and Virtual Futures.”The event is talking place on December 12 at the London College of Fashion from 5:30 to 9:00. For more information, youcan visit their site (RSVP is required.)

Pinar Yolacan at Rivington Arms

Pinar Yolacan, Untitled, 2007

The second solo show of Pinar Yolacan is opening Thursday November 19th at Rivington Arms. Titled "Maria," it consists of a series of photographs of Afro-Brazilian women from the island of Ithaparica in Bahia off the northeastern coast of Brazil. The women are photographed wearing garments made by the artist from cloth bought in local fabric stores, as well as placenta and other animal parts. Their cut and color is inspired by the Baroque era and Portuguese colonial style architecture prevalent in the nearby city of Salvador.

Francesca