Fashion Projects #3

Cover Image: Shelley Fox, "Foundation," Study and Telephone Room, Belsay Hall: Northumbria, 2004. Photo: Keith Paisley.

Fashion Projects 3 is out and will be available in newstands and bookstores in North America, as well as on our website! The issue focuses on the topic of fashion and memory and was inspired by a moving essay on the topic by Peter Stallybrass. It features interviews with fashion curator Judith Clark, fashion designer Shelley Fox, photographer Tanya Marcuse and much more—and was beautifully designed by Shannon Curren.

We hope you'll enjoy our new issue, as we much as we enjoyed making it!

Fashion Projects #3: Experiments in Fashion Curation—An Interview with Judith Clark

by Sarah Scaturro

Ruben Toledo Drawing for the Simonetta Exhibition at Palazzo Pitti.

I first encountered Judith Clark’s work through a 2004/5 exhibition at the ModeMuseum in Antwerp called “Malign Muses: When Fashion Turns Back” (later titled “Spectres: When Fashion Turns Back,” when it traveled to the Victoria &Albert Museum). The exhibition was essentially a series of probing conversations about the relationship of fashion with history that took place between Clark and fashion theorist Caroline Evans. Clark has been experimenting with curating and displaying costume since she opened the Judith Clark Costume Gallery in 1997. She is now a joint London College of Fashion/Victoria and Albert Research Fellow.

Fashion Projects : One particularly powerful vignette in the “Malign Muses” exhibition was titled “Locking In and Out,” which manifested in horizontally rotating cogs on which the dressed mannequins were secured. As the cogs literally locked in and out of each other echoing the cyclical nature of fashion, the garments were forced in and out of proximity with others – a fleeting closeness that automatically imposed new relationships between the clothing. Were you surprised at some of the relationships and insights that were realized through this seemingly randommechanism?

Judith Clark: There is of course always a difference between the design and the effect when it is built in the exhibition space. There are also, importantly, the references and associations that the visitor brings to any installation and as you suggest cogs have many powerful connotations. I felt that in a way the “Locking In and Out” section could lend itself to many interpretations– cogs in a fashion machine, or the powerful association between objects through simple proximity, the alienation when this is ‘unlocked’, the endlessness of the fashion cycle, and the odd number three. There could have been any number of cogs and indeed a fanciful first design draft had hundreds of cogs intersecting, which would have further illustrated that all dresses are in some way related to all other dresses, but happen to come into contact only if a trend manipulates the relationship.

Spectres: When Fashion Turns Back. Installation Shot, Victoria and Albert Museum.

FP: In an essay for the book MoMu Backstage, you write, “Historical reference in dress has never been about evolution, continuity. There are other ways of plotting this. In dress, surfaces float free of their histories.” This statement seems to dispute the chronological display methodology that is often apparent in museum exhibitions. Do you think the most effective interpretations of dress dispense with chronology and literalism? What should we be looking for when seeking patterns and relationships in fashion?

JC: I’m not sure that I would dispense with chronological display as it does represent one important story and it does represent evolution from a designer’s point of view. I think the problem with it is that it presents inspiration as linear. What interest me are the other patterns at play. This is why I was so fascinated by Caroline Evans’s book Fashion at the Edge. It was because she was describing inspiration and historical reference in different spatial terms: labyrinthine, as leaps into the past (“tigersprung”) etc. I thought these might be clues to curating a different kind of story. I now get my students to read a piece of theory in three-dimensions, which means reading fashion theory looking out for spatial metaphors, and sketch what shapes come into their heads— these are rarely straight lines.

FP: Exhibitions inherently rely on effective collaborations like the one between you and Caroline Evans. Is it the essentially collaborative nature of the exhibition process that draws you? Who would you most want to collaborate with, and why?

JC: I have had wonderful experiences collaborating on exhibitions and continue to repeat collaborations and conversations with the same people. Some of those conversations date back to the opening of the gallery ten years ago. Usually I am the one who “picks up the phone,” so to speak, and invites people to work on projects, once I have an idea of how the material might be themed, and what the scope is. I have been lucky that I have worked on projects with some research funding attached—so, for example, I could afford to invite the architect Yuri Avvakumov from Moscow to come to London and discuss “Malign Muses” with me. That is a rare luxury.

Anna Piaggi, "Fashion-ology" Exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Installation Shot.

FP: Your 2006 exhibition on Anna Piaggi at the V&A titled “Fashion-ology” celebrated the process of fashion more so than the actual realization of clothing. On a parallel line, do you find the process of developing exhibitions or the final outcome to be more inspirational? When you conceptualize an exhibition, are you first intrigued by certain objects, or with a specific question and theme?

JC: I am definitely more interested in process, though I care about the final outcome a lot. It is the bit most people like reading about which is why I am keen to document process in the accompanying exhibition catalogues.

In terms of how I work, I think all of the things you mention appear more or less simultaneously: objects, theme and narrative questions. Then you start testing the different assumptions: questions such as, How many objects exist to illustrate a theme, or is it just the one piece you fell in love with? And then there is the important issue of the enfolding space. I have recently both curated and designed exhibitions so the installation evolves as the objects appear. I do a lot of sketching. I am more of an exhibition designer than a dress historian.

FP: I love your statement, “Anthropomorphic imagination makes clothes magical.” What is it about clothing that can make us instinctually feel an imagined closeness, or parallel existence, as if we somehow understand its previous life?

JC: We dream and imagine stories that are inhabited by clothed people. The stories are powerful because of their associations, not factual accuracy. I think one of the most compelling things for me about Anna Piaggi is her firm belief in this, a fact that has underwritten her collages. She is insistently not a historian, even though her familiarity with the history of dress is vast, but she knows clothes according to her dream-work, her tales. That is why she wears precious vintage dresses. She appropriates the spirit of their previous owners.

FP: It seems that many museums will not show, or even collect, garments that are stained, damaged or heavily distressed (at least not without much restoration). Do you think the effects of age can be a desirable or value-added quality within an exhibition setting? Have you ever experimented in ways to reveal a garment’s personal history?

JC: Not really, but I think it is a very interesting issue. Amy de la Haye is the person who, I think, speaks most interestingly about this subject. In curating the Street Style exhibition at the V&A, she brought these issues into the museum, as in what to do with biker boots? There are clearly many issues where curatorial interest and conservation integrity are and will be at odds.

FP: As the human form has changed over fashion history, it can be a challenge to find the right kind of mannequin (i.e. body type) in order to accurately display a garment. With this in mind, in past exhibitions you have developed specific mannequins in order to realize your vision. Have you ever been tempted to dispense with the human body entirely? Is it even possible to divorce clothing from the body?

JC: I love the fact that the garment is linked so inescapably to the body. I think when the mannequin is invisible, it is the most noteworthy thing about the exhibition—everyone is looking for the body. The clothes will always represent its essential scale and proportions, if they are wearable, which is what I work with mostly. I am also interested in working with conservation constraints and so I have been working with archive mannequins and superimposed ‘prosthetics’ onto these that in some way represent or extend the theme of whatever is being exhibited. I have commissioned the avant-garde jeweler Naomi Filmer to work on these.

A recent example was to punctuate the exhibition dedicated to the designer Simonetta with particular poses and gestures. It seemed essential to have her in the exhibition and she had a particular pose—raised chin, cigarette. It starts at the research phase—I am looking at all these photocopies of Simonetta, thinking, There is her pose again, and then think, How does this get to be in the exhibition?

Simonetta Exhibition at Palazzo Pitti.

FP: I work towards the ethical preservation of textiles and costume in an exhibition setting – a role that inherently leads to limitations and compromises on visual display methods. As a curator working within a museum setting, how do you circumvent such limitations? Do you think that preventive conservation requirements negatively affect the dynamic potential of displays? Did you concern yourself with conservation techniques when you had your gallery? Do you think that exhibition display could be an acceptable occurrence in the “life” of the garment? (Therefore, whatever happens is somehow excusable?)

JC: No, I don’t think anything is excusable for dynamic display. I think part of the interest in this subject for me are precisely the limitations as I said about the mannequins. The clothes are often valuable objects, and certainly fragile and I hope that I manage to work around the brief. The cogs in Malign Muses were set at a conservation-appropriate speed. The mannequin prosthetics didn’t touch the garments. I think people perhaps underestimate my concern about the objects.

FP: Focusing on experimental exhibition techniques, the Judith Clark Costume Gallery succeeded in pushing the field of fashion curation forward through, as you have said, “creating a new grammar, new patterns of time and reference.” Now that the gallery no longer exists, are there any other museums or galleries adopting experimental or innovative approaches to the exhibition of dress? Where do you see the field of fashion curation heading within the next 10 to 20 years?

JC: I’m not sure. I think that the conversations are much more fluid about this subject. We are debating it now. I am working freelance a lot and so importing my attitude to fashion curation to a number of places. I worked at Palazzo Pitti last year and this year I am doing a project for the Boijmans van Beuningen museum. My gallery has downsized to a workshop (to build miniature exhibitions) and hopefully a website for hypothetical exhibitions. I have two small children and so what I think I am doing tomorrow quickly becomes next month.

I think the ”where is it going” question is interesting in relation to what you asked earlier about conservation. These restrictions will not alter and I think it a case of carefully going back to basics and thinking: What can we do with a dress, a plinth, a mannequin and a spot light? Small changes are interesting in my opinion. I think there is also a “virtual” exhibition debate, which appears a lot in our students’work and a restlessness about exhibitions that don’t move. There isn’t enough drama it would seem. I think if it is virtual then it can be wholeheartedly so – i.e. the installation may as well be “hypothetically” on Mars.

FP: Drawing from your statement “Fashion and academia have been uneasy bedfellows,” do you think fashion exhibitions must be grounded in scholarly research in order to be effective? Is there any value in exhibitions that emphasize an entertainment factor?

JC: I think as long as curators don’t lose their nerve about their original idea for an exhibition it is usually OK. The problem is when the sponsor takes over the power. That is revolting. But to make an exhibition popular—why not? I think exhibitions that are based on scholarly research often are just more coherent – the curator has more material to fall back on.

Clark's Sketches and Notes for the Simonetta Exhibition

FP: You state in Backstage that you are interested in “the relationship between curating and digression, in the connections made by the visitors who stray.” Pursuing a similar question, curators Harold Koda and Andrew Bolton of the Costume Institute introduced their exhibition “blog.mode: addressing fashion” by writing that in “opening a dialogue with visitors to the exhibition and to the blog, the curators hope to expand their own views and further the practice of fashion interpretation and connoisseurship.” The main premise of their exhibition seeks to garner feedback from their public through the vehicle of blog commenting. Do you think this is an effective platform to study this idea of digression? Are there any other ways that you can think of?

JC: I think it is an interesting approach – I had an exhibition at the gallery called “Captions” where I exhibited one dress and nailed captions to the wall and printed a sheet where visitors could come and write their alternative captions. Some were great, some were really dreadful and pointless. My favorite was written by Caroline Evans’s daughter Caitlin. She wrote a story about the princess who wore the gown and I often think about it. I think the same has happened with the Met blog—it is very hit and miss. It is a fabulous project to do at the Met given their position, because they have a chance to have responses on such a huge scale. I think people are not very articulate about their experiences of exhibitions and so it is difficult to get the account that we might like back from the visitors.

I think it would be interesting to have an exhibition where the curator could totally digress—literally one story become another during the exhibition. But it would be considered so indulgent, I don’t have the courage to do it.

Judith Clark can be found at http://www.judithclarkcostume.com.

Bernhard Willhelm and Jutta Kraus at the Groninger Museum

Bernhard Willhelm and Jutta Kraus, Autumn/Winter 2009/2010, (Perhaps a witty comment on the housing crisis?), Photo: Shoji Fuji

A retrospective of Bernhard Willhelm and his business and creative partner Jutta Kraus just opened at the Groninger Museum. Curated by Sue-an van der Zijpp and Mark Wilson, known for having curated the first retrospective of Hussein Chalayan, the exhibition is an exhausting chronicle of the idiosyncratic fashion that Willhelm and Kraus produced over the last 10 years. The exhibition design, which Willhelm and Kraus developed in collaboration with the Groninger Museum, started with the use of mannequins based on classical statuary—an interesting choice for the decidedly non-classical silhouette embodied in their designs.

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue, published by NAi Publishers. It is abundantly illustrated with photos of every collections that Willhelm and Kraus have thus far produced. The catalogue also includes an essay by the German-based journalist Ingeborg Harms on their backgrounds, an interview with the designers by Sue-an Van der Zijpp, as well as an essay I wrote on their work’s relation to the grotesque and carnival themes.

The book is available through NAi Publishers, while the exhibition remains open through April 11, 2010.

Francesca Granata

Click below for installation shots of the exhibition Bernhard Willhelm & Jutta Kraus Womens Collection 2007/2008 Photo: Marten de Leeuw

Bernhard Willhelm & Jutta Kraus Mens Fall/Winter 2008/2009 Photo: Marten de Leeuw

Bernhard Willhelm & Jutta Kraus Womens Spring/Summer 2008 Photo: Marten de Leeuw

All Photos Courtesy of the Groninger Museum

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.

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