Fashion Drive: Extreme Clothes in the Visual Arts
Since the blockbuster Alexander McQueen retrospective stunned audiences at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2011, the significance of fashion exhibitions has risen exponentially. Simply taking a local example, London’s Victoria and Albert Museum is currently showing two fashion centred exhibitions including “Fashioned by Nature” which focuses on materials and sources of fashion as well as “Frida Khalo: Making Herself Up” showcasing a selection of Khalo’s most intimate personal belongings. Although the age old debate continues of is fashion art - this discourse needs to be put to rest. While both are cut from the same influential cloth communicating visual culture, I tend to agree with the words of Roland Mouret who expressed at a previous Frieze Academy talk that fashion, differentiates from art because it is something we actually use. Fashion provides a surface level service - No less valuable but indeed different.Having recently visited Zurich, a cultural city in its own right being the birthplace of the Dada movement as well as the current headquarter of Vetements, it was essential to stop by the Kunsthaus, currently undergoing a full renovation, led by David Chipperfield. Among a range ofenticing exhibitions, I chose“Fashion Drive: Extreme Clothes in the Visual Arts” - SHOCK. Carefully curated by Cathérine Hug and Christoph Becker Fashion Drive captures multi-media art from the Renaissance to the present escorting the audience throughout history and its most extreme looks. Over two hundred pieces including paintings, sculptures, installations, prints and watercolours, photographs, films, costumes and armour by some sixty artists were on display generously covering a surface area of 1000 square meters. Fashion Drive is a sincere attempt in showcasing how artists have viewed, commented on and shaped the world of fashion throughout the centuries.It was an immense pleasure to appreciate this often under-appreciated journey of fashion from a context of “high art” and to visually make sense of sartorial progressions. In order to go creatively forwards one must go back into the archive with an understanding of how we got here… and why.
Key Impressions:
A portrait of Louis XIV proudly gazing down at his audience (us), seemingly aware of his own immense contribution to fashion industry. His role as a leader was instrumental in shaping the esprit and dominance of France as the epicentre of fashion. Together with his then finance minister, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, the Sun King initiated the clothing and textile industry in France through practices such as outlawing foreign textile imports and applying a strict dress code for visiting nobles to appear only in the latest fashions. Before Louis XIV it was Spain which held the crown for its renowned fashions and set the aesthetic pace to be mostly black and of austere colours. However, Louis XIV understood that images have the power to shape ideas and so hechanged the trend narrative by boasting opulence, vibrancy, and raising the bar of theatrics and maximal frills commissioned in portraits such as this. He even changed the meaning of the colour red, redefining its connotation to one of wealth and excess.This portrait stems from the Zurich area in the 1700s, featuring the wife of the president of the carpentry union- a woman firmly placed in the middle class. While she is dressed in the latest fashions, her smile is tense, her eyes reveal a sense of embarrassment and unease. She looks slightly uncomfortable, like she doesn’t quite belong. Her clothes are wearing her due to a lack of confidence. Why? Well technically she is breaking the strict Sumptuary Laws by wearing luxury textiles, textiles reserved strictly for the upper classes. She is breaking the tight morality laws set in place to distinguish the social classes and therefore risks being given a fine or even jailed. She committed a crime of fashion - a crime in the best of ways, a desire to indulge and enjoy the taste of luxury.This portrait of Marie Antoinette by Elisabeth Louise Vigée-Lebrun is one of the last and most significant images almost foreshadowing the epochal changes triggered by the French Revolution. The painting was considered scandalous 1) because it was painted and presented at the Salon by a woman - GASP!- and 2) the French Queen bulldozed over standard courtly etiquette, choosing instead to be portrayed beneath her ranks as a shepherd’swife- wearing a delicate, dangerously transparent cotton dress.I was taken by this moment of a thoughtful onlooker appreciating this portrait of Pauline Bonaparte, sister of Napoleon. At the time, she was considered one of the most beautiful women in the world. This particular image matters in the context of fashion history as it is the first image to appreciate a woman’s individual self and her own beauty. In contrast of fashions and depictions before, the subject could be defined by the textile she wore and be held together by corsets. Here in contrast, Pauline wears a natural transparent blouse, nothing to hide behind or rely on to look beautiful. The case was made that beauty can come from one’s own discipline - the discipline to take care of oneself and one's body. A revolutionary and even empowering idea giving responsibility to the subject. What does this say about today with the rise of corsets - are we potentially losing some of our own control?
