← Essays · 29 essays
Fashion as Design.
Of all forms of design, clothing sits closest to the body. Here trends, seasons and runways are set aside. What remains are the questions of a maker: what is this made of, who made it, what does it solve for the body.
A trench coat. A jumpsuit. An exhibition crossing three centuries. Clothes and perfume both rest very close to the skin.
Start with: Fashion as Design.
Burberry. The Burberry Trench: Crafting an Icon.
A coat born to stand rain and mud. A century later it sits in a V&A case, still with its turned collar and belt.
Fashion: the 18th century, a fantasized legacy.
Marie Antoinette's corset, postwar couture, a 2021 drag image. A century worn again and again.
Paul Poiret: Fashion is a Feast.
A dress without a corset, a perfume house, a school, three barges on the Seine. At MAD Paris, Poiret appears as a man who built a whole world.
Rick Owens, Temple of Love.
Military bags, army blankets, washed leather. At the Palais Galliera, Rick Owens built a temple of black, dust and objects with a former life.
Stephen Jones. Chapeaux d'artiste.
More than 170 hats, 40 looks, four decades of work with Paris houses. A small object placed where the body is most visible.
Gabrielle Chanel. Fashion Manifesto.
A silk sailor blouse, a tweed suit, a perfume named with a number. At the V&A, Chanel's manifesto was written in objects.
Iris van Herpen. Sculpting the Senses.
3D printing, laser cutting, glass blowing, electromagnetic weaving. Iris van Herpen makes dresses that borrow the shapes of water, bone and growing systems.
Africa Fashion.
Indigo dyed adire, studio portraits from Cameroon, a trench covered in handprints. Africa Fashion showed a continent dressing in many voices.
Fashioning Masculinities: The Art of Menswear.
About 100 looks and 100 artworks at the V&A in 2022, in three rooms: undressed, overdressed, redressed. Masculinity turns out to be tailored.
Shocking! Les mondes surréalistes d'Elsa Schiaparelli.
The 2022 Elsa Schiaparelli retrospective at MAD Paris set her clothes beside Dalí, Cocteau, Man Ray. Fashion and Surrealism share one question: where is this object?
Thierry Mugler, Couturissime.
Armour, insect wings, a metal robot. At MAD Paris, the Thierry Mugler exhibition unfolded in acts, like an opera.
Kimono: Kyoto to Catwalk.
From a nineteenth century Kyoto outer kimono to Obi-Wan Kenobi's robe. One straight garment, across three centuries and several continents.
Mary Quant.
The V&A's Mary Quant exhibition, 2019 to 2020, looks back at the designer who brought young, affordable fashion onto London streets. Many dresses still show raised hems.
Virgil Abloh. "Figures of Speech".
A tilted gas station sign, shelves of sneakers, a bag chained to a plinth. At MCA Chicago, Virgil Abloh brought street objects into the gallery.
Fashioned from Nature.
Beetle wings on a muslin dress, pheasant feathers on a hat, cellophane made into a coat. Every garment begins somewhere outside the workroom.
Frida Kahlo. Making Her Self Up.
Frida Kahlo's personal belongings were locked away for fifty years after her death. At the V&A in 2018 they left Mexico for the first time.
Margiela, les années Hermès.
Six years, twelve collections, two houses. At MAD Paris, Hermès orange and Margiela white share one route.
Balenciaga: Shaping Fashion.
Over a hundred garments and hats, X-ray images, patterns rebuilt. The V&A did not just show dresses. It opened them to see what holds them up.
Christian Dior, couturier du rêve.
The Paris exhibition for Dior's seventieth year moves from the gallery Dior once ran, through the atelier, to six successors. One name, read again and again.
Fashion Forward, 3 siècles de mode.
Three hundred garments, three centuries, a choreographer shaping the stance of each era. Stored clothes waiting for a body to speak again.
MIYAKE ISSEY EXHIBITION: The Work of Miyake Issey.
Forty five years of Issey Miyake's clothes in three rooms in Tokyo. A flat piece of cloth, a pleat, a body stepping in.
Tenue correcte exigée, quand le vêtement fait scandale.
Women's trousers, the miniskirt, a Mao collar suit in the French parliament. Each scandal exposes a rule.
Undressed: A Brief History of Underwear.
A cotton and whalebone corset, a goose down petticoat, a trompe l'oeil corset dress. The layer few people see decides the shape of everything outside.
Future Beauty: 30 Years of Japanese Fashion.
Issey Miyake, Rei Kawakubo, Yohji Yamamoto and those who followed. At the Barbican, thirty years of Japanese fashion read as a conversation across generations.
Guy Baldwin. On Leather Pants.
A pair of tight black leather pants. For Guy Baldwin, they are more than clothing. They are a language, an armour, a sign of belonging.
Christian Dior. Bar Suit.
A tussore silk jacket fitted to the waist, a pleated wool skirt over a stiffened petticoat. The figure is sewn into the suit before anyone wears it.
The Jumpsuit.
One piece of cloth from neck to ankle. The jumpsuit passed through workshops, wars and revolutions to the dance floor, and meant something different each time.
Fashion as Design.
Everyone wears something. Fashion as Design asks how the things we wear are made, and what they say about the people who wear them.
The Sports Jersey.
A shirt with a number and a team name. Once a uniform, now a way of saying who you are. How the jersey travelled from the field to the street.