Collecting Fashion

Valierie Steele and Antonio Marras

We are pleased to announce a new regular contributor to Fashion Projects: Marco Pecori, a PhD Candidate at the Centre for Fashion Studies at Stockholm University, who has written extensively for a range of publications in Italy and abroad. Marco will contribute a series of round table discussions that bring together academics, designers and curators in order to ignite a conversation between theory and practice and to explore issues salient to contemporary fashion. The first one, on the topic of fashion museums, was originally published in Italian in Wit Magazine.

Collecting Fashion By Marco Pecorari

Fashion as ephemeral artwork is daily narrated in temporary exhibitions. As hosting institutions, museums have started questioning the way they react to this new dimension within the museum. Collecting dress is already a duty of ethnographic and decorative arts museums. But at the same time, these institutions are conceiving dress as social testimony, or serial object. In these museological contexts, the dress is hardly ever contextualized in its visual process of creation that coincides with a representation of contemporary fashion. In order to explore this topic more in depth, we talked to the curator Amy de la Haye, the Director of the Museum at FIT Valerie Steele, the director of the Galleria del Costume, Caterina Chiarelli and with fashion designers, Agatha Ruiz de la Prada and Antonio Marras.

Marco Pecorari: First of all, thanks for participating. Let’s start with an ‘easy’ issue: what’s the difference between fashion and costume? fashion museum and costume museum?

Agatha Ruiz de la Prada: We had to face this issue with Madrid’s costume museum when we propose to call it ‘Costume Museum’ but I guess, a fashion museum should cover more than mechanics and elements of fashion, such as representing fashion’s relation to society. Antonio Marras: In my opinion, the gap is huge. Costume is identified as obsolete, retro and not contemporary. Fashion is escaping from this. Wrongly. Personally I love visiting costume museums. Caterina Chiarelli: I love costume museums, too. But I think we should delimit costume museum to an ethnographic field, based more on the study of dress as a tradition than on its changing nature. Amy de la Haye: Traditionally collections of dress and fashion were generically described as ‘costume’, a term that could embrace different kind of dress. It was inclusive. Fashion and the museum were not paired explicitly until the early 1970s when the V&A (London) and the Costume Institute at the Met (New York) started to actively embrace contemporary fashion. However, the terminology of museum collections and institutions has only started to change very recently to more accurately reflect the type of garments housed/exhibited and, where appropriate, to reflect growing interests in fashion and attract wider audiences.

Agatha Ruiz de la Prada and Amy de la Hay

MP: so that’s also a commercial side… Valerie Steele: Yes. But I use the word “fashion” rather than “costume” because I want to emphasize that even in the past, people wore fashion – not fancy-dress costumes. The word “costume” should be restricted to theatrical/film costume or folk costume. The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) is a fashion museum – meaning that we look at fashion, not as “art” (like in an art museum, where they tend to focus just on haute couture) or “history” (like a history museum, where clothing is used to document or illustrate other aspects of the past) but as a legitimate type of design that has both artistic and historical elements – and that has its own history. CC: Very true. In my opinion, a fashion museum should exhibit the changing of this type of design, with more freedom.

MP: What kind of restrictions could a fashion museum have? VS: There are restrictions on conservation and exposition of dress, and also from fashion designers and the fashion system in general….

MP: What kind of links should we have between fashion museums and the fashion system? ARP: A museum is a place for exhibiting art, creativity, whereas the fashion commercial machine has to deal with money and productions… VS: I don’t agree… I think that a fashion museum is a part of the fashion system. Fashion designers know that the museum is a medium (like runway, the fashion magazine and the department store) that presents fashion to the public. Therefore, designers seek to control exhibitions of their work: here’s one restriction which doesn’t have to be accepted by curators.

MP: An example is the one with Lagerfeld and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in which case Lagerfeld’s interference caused the exhibition to be cancelled

AM: I’m a fashion designer and I would never dare to interfere in the interpretation of my work. I would put my self in the curator’s hands. I would consider it an honour. dlH: It’s understandable. Designers in turn recognize that having their work represented in a museum collection provides cultural cachet today and will ensure their place in history in the future. But it’s not only that. Sometimes there are amazing connections made. When he had just launched his own label in London, John Galliano studied an 18th century man’s coat in the collection and presented his interpretation to the Collection as a gift. When fashion looks to history, the Museum can become especially relevant. AM: Definitely. “fashion people” have very little memory and they don’t look at the past as much as they should, and museums could help close this gap, if they could provide an easy access…

MP: Many museums are starting to catalogue on line their collections, which would make for a lot easier access and would also be helpful in terms of conservation. AM: Great. I think it would also be important to create a close relation between fashion designers factories and museums, in order to catalogue the most significant clothes, which are being produced. Just think about what we could have done in Italy: from Albino or Capucci to the first Max Mara and Romeo Gigli… CC: Sure, we should promote this collaboration but we need also to be careful to not get too involved. The museum could end up becoming a company’s archive.

MP: Could fashion museums represent the new step in museology or influence it? A new form of museum? dlH: We have to say two things about this. First, as we have trends in fashion there are also trends in fashion curation and in curation in general. Fashion curation has to be analyzed because it can be seen as an important step for the role of curators in museum. Second, we have to underline that fashion is one of the most immediately accessible of all museum collections. When I worked at the V&A I used to say that you could find your way to the Dress Gallery (which at the time showed a chronology of western fashion) blindfolded as it was the noisiest – everyone, all ages and both genders, had something to say and felt confident to express an opinion. Clothing of all types is inextricably entwined with our biographies and we leave imprints on the clothes we wear. VS: It’s true, but I also think that it’s too soon to know what fashion museums will ultimately contribute to museology as a whole. But we must strive to move beyond designer hagiography and crowd-pleasing displays of “pretty” dresses worn by celebrities. CC: I do believe that a fashion museum is inherently different and has great potentials for the future of museums. It is a dynamic museum.

Amy de la Haye is reader in Fashion Curation and Material Culture London College of Fashion.Joint Course Director (with Judith Clark) M.A. Fashion Curation, London College of Fashion. Formerly Curator of 20th Century Dress at the Victoria & Albert Museum (1991-1999). She will publish a book (co-curated with Judith Clark) on Curating Fashion for Yale University Press.

Valerie Steele Ph.D., (Yale University) is Director and Chief Curator of The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT)

Caterina Chiarelli is Director of the Galleria del Costume – Palazzo Pitti di Firenze.

Antonio Marras is the designer of his own brand Antonio Marras and Artistic Director of Maison Kenzo

Agatha Ruiz de la Prada is a Madrid-base fashion designer

Marco Pecorari is completing his Phd in Contemporary Fashion Theory at the Centre for Fashion Studies - Stockholm University - with a thesis entitled "The Show is not Enough: new trajectories for reading contemporary fashion". He writes for several fashion, arts and cultural independent magazines.

Ethics + Aesthetics = Sustainable Fashion

Zoë Sheehan Saldaña, Jordache Sheer Camp Shirt (Lucky Lime)

Opening this Friday November 20th at the Pratt Institute Manhattan Gallery is an exhibition I co-curated with Sarah Scaturro on the topic of sustainability and fashion. Titled "Ethics + Aesthetics," the exhibition had a rather long gestation, as Sarah and I began to discuss working on such a project together in 2005. Initially thinking of it as part of Fashion Projects, we eventually decided to develop the idea as a separate project. It was important to us to highlight American and in particular New York–based designers, as we both felt that US-based designers are often short-changed by simplistic understandings of what constitutes American fashion, which is often equated with commercial mass-market fashion. We also wanted to underline the importance of the local to discussions of sustainability.

Equally important to the project was to higlight new ways of conceptualizing fashion and its consumption and production models. The last section of the exhibition seeks to directly question the fashion cycle and its dependence on fast and constant change by suggesting a paradigm shift in how we think about fashion. Among the practioners included in this section are artists such as Andrea Zittel and Tiprin Follett of the smockshop, Kelly Cobb and Zoë Sheehan Saldaña, as well as the design company Slow and Steady Wins the Race, who promote a slower fashion tempo by suggesting novel ways to produce and consume fashion. Their practices foster the creation of meaningful networks and relations through clothing as well as challenging the seasonality of the fashion trade.

The smockshop offers a unique model for a clothing workshop that encourages the adaptation of a basic “uniform” to be worn for long stretches of time, while Slow and Steady Wins the Race makes non-seasonal quality designs that are available year-round. Kelly Cobb’s collaborative project underscores the labor-intensive nature of clothes-making by producing a suit with material and craftspeople located within 100 miles of her home. Zoë Sheehan Saldaña also emphasizes the labor involved in producing a garment by recreating Wal-Mart garments by hand. She later returns her handmade version to the store for resale in lieu of the ones she originally purchased.

We are obviously not in a position to review the exhibition, but below is a brief summery of the main concepts behind it. If you can visit the gallery, which is located on West 14th Street between 6th and 7th Avenue, we would love to hear your feedback, so please do leave us your comments.

Suno's Workshop near Nairobi

"Ethics + Aesthetics is the first American exhibition to investigate the work of artists and designers exploring practical and symbolic solutions to the question of integrating sustainable practices into the fashion system. Focusing primarily on New York-based practioners, the exhibition highlights the way designers address the interactions between the local and the global within an inherently interdependent system.

The exhibition deepens our understanding of what constitutes sustainability within the fashion system by building on the already established practices of using recycled, renewable and organic fibers and the employment of fair labor. Organized around three main themes, “Reduce, Revalue and Rethink,” it expands on the traditional ecological mantra «Reduce, Reuse, Recycle» by acknowledging the importance of aesthetics within fashion design.

Reduce focuses on minimalist clothing design, as well as innovative materials and pattern-making that promote versatility and longevity. This section includes work by Bodkin, Loomstate, SANS and Uluru. Revalue underlines the importance of creating an emotional engagement with the wearer by focusing on the materiality of clothes and their ability to retain memory and history. Included in this section are pieces by Susan Cianciolo, Alabama Chanin and Suno. Rethink advocates a paradigm shift in the way we think about fashion by directly questioning the fashion cycle’s dependence on fast and constant change. It features work by Kelly Cobb, Zoë Sheehan Saldaña, Andrea Zittel and Tiprin Follett and Slow and Steady Wins the Race.

Rather than one single solution to the issue of sustainability in fashion, the designers and artists included in the exhibition provide a variety of approaches to the paradox of aligning fashion—a discipline based on constant change—with the precepts of sustainability. In line with “slow fashion”—a concept modeled after the Slow Food Movement—they advocate for a slower fashion tempo, which fosters richer interaction through design."

A Catalogue of the exhibition is forthcoming--thanks to a generous grant from the Coby Foundation.

Francesca Granata

Cold Water at Performa 09

Justin Bond in Rodarte. Photo by Hilton Als

Among what seems to be innumerable events occurring in conjunction with Performa 09—the third edition of the performance Biennial started by RoseLee Goldberg—one that caught my eye is the gallery show curated by the singer and performance artist Justin Bond (best know as Kiki of Kiki and Herb) and the New Yorker theater critic Hilton Als. Titled Cold Water, it is described as “an exhibition of works by artists who are also performers rooted in the East Village, downtown, CBGB’s, La MaMa scene.” Featuring an impressive line-up of performers including Tilda Swinton and Rufus Wainwright, it is advertised with an intriguing photo by Hilton Als of Bond wearing a blood-red Rodarte dress and Kabuki-inspired make-up.

Charles LeDray "Mens Suits"

Charles LeDray, Mens Suits. Commissioned by Artangel, 2009 Photo: Julian Abrams

I had meant to write a proper review of the exhibition of Charles LeDray, which is closing tomorrow at the Fire Station on Chiltern Street in London, but, unfortunately, have been unable to visit it in person. Organized by Artangel and titled "Mens Suits", it exhibited new work by the artist made specifically for the show. Known for the painstaking re-creation of scaled-down objects and particularly garments, Le Dray’s work brings to mind the uncanny quality of the miniature alongside the equally uncanny feeling caused by empty garments in an exhibition space, which inevitably point to the absent body.

Many of LeDray’s works also contain signs of wear, as he tatters the fabric of his miniature suits. This interest in the decaying and “deconstructed” garments is reminiscent of Margiela’s work, who also played with scale in his 1990s collections for which he enlarged Barbie dolls clothes.

In a lyrical essay James Lingwood wrote about the exhibition, he describes LeDray’s work:

“All the clothing, as well as their shabby settings, suggests other, unknown lives. The clothes feel like they have been worn, then discarded for some reason or other—disinterest, rejection or death. They have had a life, dressing some body. Everything is mixed up and sorted in a different way, ordinary clothes brought together by a common fate. Handed over or retrieved, they are prepared for somebody else, waiting for another life. They are between states, between places, between bodies.”

You can also view Sam Blair’s film Like a Memory: Perspectives on Mens Suits commissioned by Artangel in conjunction with the exhibition to gain a remote yet comprehensive view of the show

Like a Memory: Perspectives on Mens Suits from Artangel on Vimeo.

Dress Codes at ICP

Miyako Ishiuchi, mother's #49, 2002, Gelatin Silver Print

Today I visited the Third ICP Triennial, "Dress Codes," which is dedicated to the interaction between fashion and art. Culminating the ICP's year of fashion, the outstanding exhibition opens tomorrow and will be on view through January 17.

Some of my favorite artists were included in the exhibition, including Tanya Marcuse and Miyako Ishiuchi, whose moving photographs of her deceased mother's clothes and accroutments were originally included in the Venice Biennale's Japanese pavilion in 2005. Also included is the work of the Brooklyn-based video artist Kalup Linzy (whose humorous work was first shown at Taxter and Spengemann), and the Turkish New York–based artist Pinar Yolacan, as well as a number of artists, whose work I was not familiar with, such as the German-based artist Thorsten Brinkmann, whose extravagant self-fashioning is reminiscent of Leigh Bowery's alterations of the body.

Fashion Projects' contributor Tamsen Schwartzman was also in attendance. She has a long-lasting interest in photography and its relation to fashion, and has written an extensive review for the Museum at FIT, which she has kindly agreed to let us republish:

"Dress Codes opens tomorrow.The third ICP triennial of photography and video and the last exhibition installment in their Year of Fashion explores fashion as a celebration of individuality, personal identity, and self-expression, and as cultural, religious, social, and political statements. Previous exhibitions, if you missed them, included Avedon Fashion 1944–2000, Edward Steichen: In High Fashion, The Condé Nast Years 1923–1937, and This Is Not a Fashion Photograph: Selections from the ICP Collection.

Most survey exhibitions of art or photography are a mixed bag. And Dress Codes is no different. However, there is enough really engaging, thoughtful work to make this a necessary visit for the fashion and photography enthusiast.

Jacqueline Hassink BMW Car Girls, 2004 © Jacqueline Hassink Courtesy Amador Gallery, New York

In my opinion, they put some of the strongest work on the top level. There you'll find Jacqueline Hassink's video "BMW Car Girls" which explores how beautiful models are used at car shows to add human seduction to the man's buying experience. The models, and the way they are dressed, function as a branding device and transfer glamour and sex to the car. The video shows how the men shift their attention back and forth from the cars to the girls and back. A fascinating and captivating video.

Mickalene Thomas Portrait of Qusuquzah, 2008 © Mickalene Thomas Courtesy the artist and Lehmann Maupin Gallery, New York

Right next to "BMW Car Girls" are three photographs by Brooklyn artist Mickalene Thomas. Her staged photographs celebrate and critique archetypes of black womanhood. Powerful, enticing, sexy, and confrontational, I thought it was some of the best work in the show. The photographs reference the pop aesthetic of Blaxploitation films, Seydou Keïta’s lushly patterned portraits, and Matisse's odalisques. I couldn't help but think of the recent Yinka Shonibare exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum when looking at "Le Leçon d'amour" 2008 and how they share the persistence of the colonial viewpoint. The photos also brought to mind an article I read this morning about the upcoming Tate Modern exhibition Pop Life: Art in a Material World that will include the controversial work of Rob Pruitt and Jack Early.

Another highlight of the exhibition is Tanya Marcuse’s exquisite platinum prints from her "Undergarments and Armour" series. These corsets, breastplates, and bustles from museum costume collections (including ours!) reflect Tanya's historical awareness of how the body has been sculpted and modified through fashion. They also expose dualities of masculine/feminine, hard/soft, hidden/revealed, aggression/vulnerability.

Stan Douglas Hastings Park, 16 July 1955, 2008 © Stan Douglas Courtesy the artist and David Zwirner Gallery, New York

Sartorial signs are addressed in the works of Alice O'Malley, Stan Douglas, and Cindy Sherman. Alice O’Malley's portraits of downtown New York performance artists and musicians serve to address how clothing and makeup are used to articulate outsider identity. Stan Douglas' "Hastings Park, 16 July 1955" is a large-scale photograph depicting the working class at leisure at a Vancouver horse track in 1955. He utilizes extraordinary detailed period dress that contains subtle indicators of working-class status.

Plase vist the Museum at FIT to read the rest of the review