SHOWstudio’s Ross Philips arrives in Luxembourg with eleven black-and-white films underarm, a list that includes “PVC Trousers with Side Zips by Richard Nicoll” and “Jacquard skirt with Metallic Thread by Miu Miu”. He’ll not watch them back before he’s set up the interactive at the Capital of Culture, he knows the content well: a series of shorts devoted to exploring 'The Sound of Clothes', with model Zora Star wearing the clothes described in the titles, a cock feathered jacket by Undercover perhaps, or a waxed taffeta print dress with stretch tulle drape lining by Christian Dior, accompanied by a soundtrack of over-exaggerated jingling and jangling, meant to replicate the zip on a sleeve, the sequined cuff of a dress. When Philips sets up the films and checks them over in Paris, they will be interactive, set up on a touchscreen to allow people to simply draw with their fingers on the screen. The films will also all come with headphones to allow a more personal experience of the sound for the Parisian audience. He has those too.
“Beyond overlaying imagery with non-specific sound - such as favourite songs or ambient music - the aim of The Sound of Clothes series is to explore a range of audio possibilities, such as discovering the actual sound a garment makes,” describes Philips’ co-worker and the director of the artistic collective SHOWstudio, Nick Knight, who, as we’re sure you already know, is among the world's most influential photographers. He contributes to the most prestigious specialist fashion magazines and has won numerous awards for his editorial work. Besides advertising projects for such important clients as Alexander McQueen, Calvin Klein, Christian Dior, Levi Strauss, Yohji Yamamoto and Yves Saint Laurent, Knight has also collaborated on the creation of album covers for Björk, David Bowie, Massive Attack, and, ahem, Cheryl Cole. But now, at Dysfashional, under the SHOWstudio banner, he embraces the avant-garde side of his work with a live recording session soundtrack [conducted in 2006 in a specialist recording studio] detailing the precise sound of fashion materials such as feathers, sequins, glass crystals, beads, nylon, taffeta, leather, velvet, jacquard, zips and metallic chains. “Continuing our commitment to re-thinking mainstream fashion editorial, we believe fashion audio to be a genuinely new frontier,” Knight concludes. And then: “And Dysfashionl, the perfect place to explore it.”
The Sound of Clothes was the highlight of the first instalment of Dysfashional. The media darling of the event, it heralded an unprecedented championing from the mass media and attending public alike. It was indicative of everything Dysfashional was trying to do: take the notion of fashion and turn it on its head. Make it sensory. Make it unique.
With the newest incarnation of Dysfashional arriving upon us at the Passage du Désir, a similar gathering together of some of the biggest names in the fashion world – Hussein Chalayan, Raf Simons, Bless, Maison Martin Margiela, Gaspard Yurkievich, Antonio Marras, Bernhard Willhelm, Pierre Hardy, Kostas Murkudis, Mathieu Mercier – have turned to silent films, projections, installations and artworks to explain their views on fashion. Once again, the exhibition was an invite to present, not sartorial collections, but installations expressing their own world, their imagination. Rather than exhibiting clothes, Dysfashional asked these doyens of the cloth to explore the broad range of materials and mechanisms that turn fashion into a way of representing personal identity and experience. A dramatic journey into the creative process. Which is why the contributions this year include the following:
Courtesy of Antonio Marras, the artistic director of Kenzo, the aforementioned fabric cone field has been celebrated as ‘an enigmatic landscape’. Practically the shapes evoke the idea of skirts – if we’re to technically draw the subject to fashion – but, as has been noted by the costumier himself, the light the cones diffuse makes them appear more as inhabited tents.
This installation bedfellows Hussein Chalayan’s Airmail Dresses, a more literal concept containing paper dresses, one in particular folding back on itself to take the shape of an envelope ready to be sent. “The sender can therefore impregnate this immaculate dress with both pen and body,” the provided information for the artwork informs…
Fashion/Art anarchist, Item Idem, continued to push boundaries with his tounge-in-cheek, witty take on modern culture. His 'Mt Blushmore' LED homage to the good, the bad, and erm, the ugly powerhouses of fashion (Lagerfeld, Versace, Wintour and Galliano respectively) was an instant crowd-pleaser, once again confirming the artists' rightful reputation as 'one to watch'. An avid fan of consumer culture, Idem credits Mt Blushmore to his love of kitsch. “Pop culture and tourist gimmickry are two of my personal obsessions and have pushed me to explore new mediums like laser crystal engraving,” he says. “’Mt. Blushmore’ is conceived as a three-dimensional postcard, a souvenir blown up to monumental size.”
Intellectual designer Maison Martin Margiela, ever the discreet, minimalist and nonconformist, presents one of the prettier and less figurative presentations; panels of wood covered with life-size photographs of interiors, creating a trompe-l’oeil effect, tentatively titled Création Original; the installation is directly inspired by Margeila’s retail sales spaces, rejecting the very concept of decoration.
And then there’s Neerpelt-national and famed individualist Raf Simons, whose silent installation, Repeat, displays over several dozen monitors, 23 to be exact, sequences of young, fragile-looking men awash of dim lighting, filmed by Peter De Potter. It is said to reveal the complex personality of the designer and the magnetic vision he has relentlessly put forward: that of transition – adolescence to adulthood, a paradoxical wandering between rage and distraction, black and white, darkness and light.
All-in-all it is a sumptuous exploration into the fashion world, a side of the fashion process we are not usually privy to: what is going on in the minds of these designers. French artist Cyril Duval, who graced the opening reception of Dysfashional as his alter ego Item Idem with a performance piece entitled 'Is This It?' (co-directed by I Could Never Be A Dancer) put it best when he blogged, “DYSFASHIONAL considers fashion in the widest sense. Rather than exhibiting clothes and styles, DYSFASHIONAL explores the broad range of materials that turn fashion into a mode of experience. DYSFASHIONAL tackles the seemingly frivolous yet vital realm of fashion by examining the approach of designers and artists from various backgrounds and invites us on striking journey, bringing us closer to a world in which the protagonists are not the objects but the creative process itself.”
PARIS, PASSAGE DU DESIR
29th October - 29th November 2009
85-87 rue du Faubourg Saint-Martin 75010
BERLIN, HAUS DER KULTUREN DER WELT
9th June - 21st July 2010
John-Foster-Dulles-Allee 10 D-10557 Berlin