1. Student
work
including
media
viewable
here:
http://newnarrativesinfashion.blogspot.com/
Kathryn
Simon:
papers
viewable
here:
https://vermillionmediany.academia.edu/KathrynSimon
KathrynSimon: Linkedin
http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=6128031&authType=name&authToken
=ATBS&locale=en_US&pvs=pp&trk=ppro_viewmore
Student
Final
Collaborations:
http://newnarrativesinfashion.blogspot.com/
Scroll
to:
Trend
Forecasting:
Genderful
Fashion
in
Exhibition:
Radicals
in
Fashion,
Villains
in
Vogue
Original
Collections:
Wuji,
Sons
and
Daughters

2. Kathryn
Simon
This
is
an
edited
version
of
a
spoken
text
presented
at
the
panel,
SKIN:
a
confluence
of
art,
culture
and
fashion,
that
I
chaired
for
the
College
Art
Association
Feb
2011
with
an
invited
and
curated
panel
of
discussants.
Welcome
to
our
session
SKIN:
The
confluence
of
art,
culture
and
fashion.
It
is
a
pleasure
to
present
this
session
at
the
CAA.
Through
an
examination
of
new
movements
in
contemporary
fashion
this
panel
is
an
invitation
to
rethink
fashion
and
its
relationship
to
art
within
a
twenty first
century
context.
We'll focus on movements within fashion as an industry, and separately as a medium of
expression through
the
lens
of
contemporary
culture, and
current movements in art.
The
following
visual
is
passage
into
some
of
the
emerging
fashion
narratives
that
have
shaped
this
present
moment.
(a
visual
presentation
https://vimeo.com/124713957)
Since
the
1990’s
fashion
has
been
affected
by
a
continuing
wave
of
increasingly
performance
based
work
that
often
falls
outside
traditional
industry
constraints.
This
panel
will
focus
on
some
of
these
new
positions
and
creative
endeavors
with
presentations
that
discuss
this
evolving
visual
language
where
nomadic
flows
are
often
expressed
best
through
the
medium
of
fashion.
The
speakers
will
be
presenting
their
views
into
facets
of
this
newly
emerging,
multidisciplinary
discourse
arising
out
of
a
field
whose
major
concern
until
the
1990’s
was
the
‘industry’
-­‐-­‐the
manufacture,
and
production
of
clothing—and
its
consumption.
On
the
streets
of
New
York
or
the
deserts
of
Tehran
-­‐
there
is
a
visual
read
informed
by
the
impacts
of
daily
living,
nurtured
by
a
society
in
process,
with
rapid
shifts
in
all
respects.
The
proliferation
of
ideas–quickened
by
social
networks,
the
interplay
between
virtual,
mediated,
and
physical
worlds
and
intense
mobility
has
helped
create
a
long
tail
of
small
niche
markets
multiplying
at
a
dazzling
rate
-­‐-­‐
By
the
late
1990‘s
it
was
clear
that
a
deterritorialization
of
fashion
was
on
it’s
way
nurtured
by
Punk,
‘grunge’
aesthetics
and
the
postmodern
moment.
Today
fashion
is
inclining
strongly
towards
a
cross-­‐pollinated
and
ever
more
expansive
textured

3. ground,
where
art
and
fashion
cross
and
re-­‐cross
boundaries
and
concerns.
In
this
turn,
concerns
and
issues
that
have
traditionally
been
sanctioned
to
the
arts
are
finding
a
ready
language
here.
Since
fashion
is
a
finely
tuned
language
of
embodiment
translating
cultural
turns
into
forms,
and
clothing,
in
some
sense
is
always
haunted
by
the
suggestion
or
reality
of
a
human
life,
identity
or
presence,
it
becomes
a
‘ready
at
hand’
medium
for
art
at
a
time
when
contemporary
art
prizes
the
performative,
and
the
lived
moment.
This
bleed-­‐through
between
fashion
and
art—
evidenced
in
artists
freely
experimenting
with
clothing
as
a
medium
for
expression
and
designers
reaching
beyond
an
value
exchange
to
articulate
conceptual
ideas
in
the
medium
of
clothing,
which
they
know
intimately-­‐Both
suggest
something
beyond
the
market
value
they
are
assigned
to.
Quoting
Nicholas
Bourriaud,
art
critic,
curator,
former
co-­‐director
of
the
Palais
de
Tokyo,
Paris,
and
curator
of
contemporary
art
at
Tate
Modern
and
the
fourth
Tate
Triennial
Altermodern-­‐
states
in
his
book
The
Radicant:
“And
yet
the
immigrant,
the
exile,
the
tourist
and
the
urban
wanderer
are
the
dominant
figures
of
contemporary
culture,
To
remain
within
this
vocabulary
of
the
vegetable
realm,
one
might
say
that
the
individual
of
these
early
years
of
the
21st
c
resembles
those
plants
that
do
not
depend
on
a
single
root
for
their
growth
but
advance
in
all
directions
on
whatever
surfaces
present
themselves
by
attaching
multiple
hooks
to
them,
as
ivy
does.
Ivy
belongs
to
the
botanical
family
of
the
radicants,
which
develop
their
roots
as
they
advance,
unlike
the
radicals
whose
development
is
determined
by
their
being
anchored
in
a
particular
soil.
And
further…
Contemporary
art
provides
new
models
for
this
individual
who
is
constantly
putting
down
new
roots,
for
it
constitutes
a
laboratory
of
identities.
Thus
today’s
artists
do
not
so
much
as
express
the
tradition
from
which
they
come
as
the
path
they
take
between
that
tradition
and
the
various
contexts
they
traverse,
and
they
do
this
by
performing
acts
of
translation.”

4. —in
this
regard
it
is
not
the
elevation
of
the
craftsmanship
that
is
esteemed
and
valued
but
the
conceptual
intention
that
becomes
the
qualifier.
Some
of
these
artists
and
designers
crossing
over
into
this
“third”
are:
Visual Presentation link: http://vimeo.com/35431563
Andrea
Zittel,
with
her
project
Smock
Shop,
Zittel
enlisted
underemployed
artists
to
create
smocks
using
a
basic
instruction
allowing
each
the
freedom
to
create
variations
of
their
own,
in
direct
contradiction
to
the
usual
production
line
demand
(and
reward
system)
for
sameness.
Judi
Wertheim,
the
Argentine
performance
artist
who
designed
a
cross
trainer
for
the
biennial
‘Insight
05’.
Her
project
and
shoe
are
both
named
“Brinco”
after
the
slang
expression
for
‘jumping’
the
border
between
Tijuana
and
the
US.
This
is
a
dangerous
act
often
ending
in
death
for
the
jumpers.
The
cross
trainer
is
outfitted
with
inner
soles
that
show
the
two
best
routes
for
getting
across
the
desert,
are
supplied
with
painkillers,
a
flashlight
and
the
phone
number
of
a
‘safe’
house
once
across.
(which
no
one
has
used)
Christian
Boltanski’s
piece
installed
in
the
cavernous
New
York
Armory,
titled
No
Man’s
Land,
an
almost
inconceivably
massive
heap
of
clothing
that’s
hard
to
view
without
the
immediate
recall
of
death
camps
and
the
Holocaust.
The
artist
references
Dante’s
inferno,
a
haunting
allegory
to
the
shed
skins,
and
the
aura
they
collectively
produce.
And
then
there
are
fashion
designers
who
have
freely
experimented
with
clothing
in
a
conceptual
realm
like
Hussain
Chaylan,
the
Cypriot
designer
whose
collection
Living
Room
for
his
Spring
2001
collection,
could
be
worn
as
items
of
clothing,
but
at
a
moment’s
notice
transform
into
suitcases
for
a
speedy
exodus
-­‐
chilling
as
the
memory
and
grief
from
recent
diasporas
and
genocides
in
Sarajevo,
Armenia,
Tibet,
among
many
war
torn
areas
remain
ever
present.
In
1997,
fashion
designer
Martin
Margiela
in
collaboration
with
a
micro
biologist
dipped
18
outfits
in
different
mold,
bacteria,
and
yeast
cultures;
for
the
installation
Exposing
Meaning
in
Fashion
Through
Presentation.
The
clothing
on
the
mannequins
rotting
away-­‐as
the
days
worn

5. on
the
moulds
and
bacteria’s
were
literally
decomposing
the
clothing
thus
mixing
up
the
signified-­‐-­‐the
fabric
was
alive
and
the
mannequin
usually
the
‘stand
in’
for
the
wearer,
is
and
only
could
be
quite
inanimate
or
dead.
Another
iteration
in
fashion
is
the
immersive
experience
in
the
form
of
the
proliferation
of
media,
the
fashion
film,
and
streaming
media
from
the
catwalk-­‐-­‐
which
has
become
an
event
in
itself,
more
often
then
not
what
is
featured
on
the
runway,
is
rarely
the
collection
that
is
available
in
the
showrooms.
Instead
the
runway
is
high
spectacle
where
performance
is
prized
–
designers
Viktor
and
Rolf
excelled
by
first
launching
themselves
by
on
to
the
fashion
stage
by
presenting
work
that
could
never
be
worn,
either
because
the
materials
were
too
fragile,
(the
porcelain
top
hat
that
is
smashed
at
the
end
of
the
show)
or
unseemly—the
babushka
who
is
literally
wearing
the
entire
collection
on
one
model-­‐-­‐5,
6,
7
layers
of
clothing.
And
then
there
is
the
practice,
which
some
designers
would
agree
places
cutting
or
patternmaking
as
the
very
embodiment
of
philosophy
itself.
Not
a
mere
superficial
line
but
rather
a
precise
and
deep
cut
defining
thought
as
effectively
as
text.
Fashion
is
the
physical
evidence
of
the
way
we
live
in
the
present
now.
It
has
until
recently
been
mute,
unmoving,
captured
in
frozen
gestures,
and
under
house
arrest
in
the
archives
of
museums,
except
for
a
seasonal
performance
on
the
catwalk.
Historically
it’s
been
governed
by
a
strict
hierarchy
of
signs
with
their
precise
index,
the
symbols
that
stand
in
for
wealth
(or
lack
of
it)
and
capital
in
all
forms,
This
is
an
exciting
time
when
novel
ways
of
telling
are
being
called
for.
In
contemporary
fashion,
formalist
views
of
chronological
and
singular
narratives
are
being
outpaced
by
the
entry
of
a
plethora
of
new
values,
and
an
intensely
diverse
complexity
of
cultural
understandings.
The
position
that
fashion
occupies
in
visual
culture
is
a
positive
factor
in
implementing
this
shift
from
representing
a
foretold
history
to
presenting
new
open
narratives.
Is
it
just
coincidence
that
these
new
happenings
in
the
fashion
discourse
occur
at
the
same
time
as
contemporary
art
has
turned
towards
performance
art
and
the
prizing
of
the
lived
moment?

6. The
issue
we
hope
to
unpack
is
how
these
turns
in
and
with
fashion
and
art
are
happening
pervasively
with
the
kind
of
diversity
that
suggests
something
important
is
at
work.
It
is
our
intention
that
you
will
think
along
with
us
and
consider
the
ideas
being
presented
without
holding
too
tightly
to
already
closed
meanings
but
will
instead
take
a
what/if
or
curious
listen.
Welcome.
The
format
for
today’s
session
is
thus:
Presentations
by
each
speaker
followed
by
a
panel
discussion
and
Q
&A
A
brief
introduction
to
the
panelists:
Valerie
Steele,
The
director
and
chief
curator
of
the
Museum
at
FIT,
founding
editor
of
Fashion
Theory,
her
exhibitions
and
publications
are
numerous
and
include
Gothic,
Dark
Glamour,
Japan
Now.
Ms.
Steele
will
present
first
followed
by
Vicki
Karaminas,
Associate
Professor
of
Fashion
Studies,
Associate
Head
of
the
School
of
Design,
at
UTS,
Sydney,
and
author
of
the
Menswear
Reader,
and
Co-­‐editor
and
author
of
the
forthcoming
publication,
Fashion
&
Art
with
Valerie
Steele.
Nathalie
Khan,
Lecturer
at
Central
St.
Martins
in
London
and
contributing
writer
to
many
publications
including
Pamela
Church
Gibson,
Fashion
Cultures.
J
Morgan
Puett,
Co
director
of
Mildred’s
Lane
a
radical
rethinking
of
how
fashion
happens
and
a
bold
initiative
in
education,
she
is
adjunct
faculty
at
Parsons,
the
New
School
for
Design,
and
runs
workshops
at
Mildred’s
Lane,
her
collaborative
work
is
in
the
collection
of
the
Tate
Modern.
And
to
introduce
myself-­‐
Kathryn
Simon
as
a
designer,
with
a
collection
under
my
name,
and
work
from
a
prior
collection
of
leather
corsets
in
the
Costume
Institute,
at
The
Metropolitan
Museum.
I
am
faculty
at
Parson’s
The
New
School
for
Design.

16. I . -_u_-. ' ,
i'9' ~~~s~~~t~~~??IYOrkNY 10011
~_L~ -- --- -- -_..----
i Special Programs-L
Thankyoufor coming to thepanel discussion 'Implicationsof Design.I
When Sondra invited me to do a panel at the Vera List Center I took the
idea of the center as an ideal place to hold a discussion about design as
the crossroads where art and politics meet. This is an inquiry into several
facets of design. It is an examination of what design is today, how design is
affected by new media, and given shape by its tools. If designers carry a
sense of social responsibility, design can be an agent for social change
especially given new thoughts about sustainable models. We will be
looking at the education of a designer from the field and address the
radical shifts occurring within the professions and current cross
pollination between the professions. Stephanie, Dakota, and Chee are all
intensely committed designers.Pleasejoin in the discussion when we .
arrive at the Q&A period. And by all means instigate and be controversial.
)'
Several people have been instrumental in making this program possible. I
want to thank Dr. Sondra Farganis, Director of the Vera List Center,for
mentoring me and inviting me to do a program here. I would also like to
thank Pam Klein, Chair AAS, Nisi Berryman, and Robin Poppelsdorfffor
their support and encouragement. Finally, thank you to our event sponsors
Balducci's and Bacflrdi.
II
'
1../
"','
'1/
I
!
EST 1916
- - _.0
THE IMPLICATIONS
OF DESIGN
November 11, 2002
6 p.m.
Tishman Auditorium
66 West 12th Street
The New School
Presented by the Vera List Center for
Art and Politics
Sponsored by Bacardi and Balducci's
Webcast and online discussion will be availableat
www.dialnsa.edu.

17. THE IMPLICATIONS OF DESIGN carpet industry in Nepal being developed by Tibetan refugees,
Stephanie formed her own company in New York to import her
specially produced carpets. Stephanie is a main spokesperson for
Rugmark an organization that sponsors literacy programs, creates
schools, and protects children from being used as slave labor in the
carpet factories.
In the postmodernworld, design has become part of a global
language, a barometer of taste and social values that inextricably
conveys cultural and political messages. Where language and
tradition can be cultural obstacles, design is often a bridge of
understanding. What is the role of design today? What are the
implications of design and the design process? What makes design
good? The increasingshift away from specializationto a.more
multidisciplinedapproach has designers from one industryoften
working on projectsfrom an entirely different field. How are the
design professions changing? How does this affect the design
world? How do these ripples emanating from the designworld affect
the current universal culture? How can design be instrumental in
fostering sustainable cultures? Design can connect communities
from diverse cultures, thus creating new partnerships and socially,
economically, and ecologically sustainable future. On the other
hand, overproduction has also developed situations in which life and
community become secondary to production and profit. Presented
by the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School.
Chee Pearlman
Chee Pearlman is a design columnist for the New York Timesand a
design and editorial consultant to a number of institutions and
companies. In addition to a design conference she is organizingfor
Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, she is co-chair of the
Chrysler Design Awards, a program she has chaired for the
company for 10 years. She has recently been a guest editorfor
design issues of Wired magazine and Men's Journal, and served as
program chair for several design and new media conferences,
including "America: Cult.and Culture," a gathering of 3,000
designers in LasVegas. From 1993 to 2000 Chee Pearlmanwas
Editor-in-Chief of 1.0. Magazine, which was honored with five
National Magazine Awards--the Oscars of the industry--underher
tenure. '
Panelists: Kathryn Simon
Kathryn Simon, coordinator of this program, develops collections
where the intrinsic linkbetween marketing and design is stressed.
Her client list includes Tahari, HollyHunt, Nicole Miller, Madonna,
Barney's New York, Colette Dinnigan, DuPont. As a adjunct faculty
member at Parson's School of Design Kathryn has taught both
graduate and undergraduate courses in design and media. She
wrote and teaches the course "Culture & Couture," which looks at
the cross pollination between disciplines. Her work has been ,
featured in the New York Times, Woman's Wear Daily, Flaunt, and
other international publications. She is currently developing an
educational program in response to the radical shifts in design
marketing and new media, which address the emerging demands in
the design professions.
Dakota Jackson
In a career spanning three decades Dakota Jackson has built a
noteworthy collection, which is represented in leading design
museums around the world. Gaining his reputation as a couture
designer of customized pieces, Jackson now serves as President
and Creative Director of Dakota Jackson Industries, a design,
manufacturing, distribution, and marketing company that produces
over 100 high-end residential, contract, and institutionalcollections,
which may be found, respectively, in the world's finest homes,
corporations, hotels, and educational and public institutions.
Stephanie Odegard
Since founding Odegard Inc. in 1987, Stephanie Odegard has
revolutionized the contemporary carpet industry. A world-renowned
leader in design, color, and texture, Odegard Inc. is known for its
unparalleled commitment to combining time-reveredtechniques with
modern aesthetics and the highest standards of quality. Prior to
founding Odegard Inc., Stephanie Odegard was a buyer at Dayton
Hudson Corporation. Before working in private industryshe spent
12 years abroad as a volunteer in The Peace Corps, working for the
World Bank, the United Nations, and the governments of Nepal,
Jamaica, and the South Pacific islands. In the mid-1980s,while on
assignmentfor the World Bank as a consultant to the emerging

18. 1
An intervention is a strategy used to put conventionally
held values into a context that challenges their meaning
and authority. They reveal, subvert, and arrest the
progression of the belief system they rely upon.-5.2006
when fashion intervenes
Interventions
Issues of migration caused by war, totalitarian political regimes and natural
disasters are a hotly contested ground for debate as often less than transparent
political and economic issues forms a complex and mired foundation for
discussion. While questions and issues on both sides loom, the number of
people facing grueling and risky journeys to freedom increases. In Tijuana the
penalty is death and the chances of surviving the journey across the dessert to
the border to San Diego are not good. The cost is enormous. Relocating from
ones country and migration are fraught with many issues from a myriad of
perspectives. However until the situation touches one personally it is hard to
imagine the intense fear, hope and issues one must face. While it may seem
obvious there are degrees of subtleties and informal yet ‘official’ dictates
controlling this situation which formal policies will impact. Many of them already
deeply rooted in complicit and deeply corrupted agreements on both sides.
In the last 30 years and continuing today, we have been witness to mass
genocides, famines, and wars, in Kosovo, Cambodia, Haiti, Somalia, Rwanda
and Darfur and Cuba. This list can only be partial, since “all the news that is fit to
print”, the tag line from the New York Times, will not report on what is going on

19. 2
under the radar until a famine or genocide reaches a certain number, usually way
beyond easy remedy.
Judy Werthein was one of the artists invited to participate in InSite’05. Insite is a
non profit organization that coordinates profit and nonprofit organizations to
sponsor interventions at the border between San Diego and Tijuana. Judy did a
project called “Brinco” which is slang for jumping the border between Mexico and
California. For this project Judy created a cross trainer particularly for crossing
the border and the hardships facing the migrants walking through the desserts
and the mountains. The shoes were emblazed with an eagle at the toe and the
heel to symbolize the life the migrants aspired to in the United States, the insole
is printed with a map of the two most popular routes for getting across. The shoe
included practical items including painkillers, a flashlight and a compass. The
label inside the shoe has a contact telephone number where the journeyers can
sell the shoes back to the foundation-though it is never used. Judy handed out
the trainers for free to migrants waiting to jump at the border. Across the border,
a few miles away the shoes were being sold in a store that specializes in limited
editions of shoes primarily for collectors. The sales given to Judy, go directly to
the two hostels in Tijuana where women and children live while waiting to jump.
inSite ’05 (website)
Interventions
To create experiences of public domain implies envisioning collective situations
that generate new meanings for the social contract. It implies the production of

20. 3
circumstantial identities, movable contexts, and continuously negotiated space. It
is to create – in an artistic sense – more “effective” ways in which to turn the
social friction/interplay between models, and the circumstantial negotiation of the
uses of space and the zones of instability, into a process that reveals “the vision
of structure in its totality as a network.”-1
Hussein Chalayan, a well known fashion designer, living in London. He has been
involved with interventions that use fashion as a means to express what is
uniquely human. His “Living Room” collection in 2001 leads one into a narrative
that reveals the extreme fear, immediacy, and unknown involved in fleeing ones
country at short notice under impending threat. His show that season was an
intervention. His designs were created in response to his concern.

21. 4
“Living Room collection, London Spring 2000. The stage was set with a
range of tables and chairs that transformed into clothing (armchair covers
became dresses; a round table became a skirt). The models picked up the
furniture, put them on and walked off.”
"The project had nothing to do with furniture," he says. "It was all about the
moment of trying to leave your home at a time of war. The living room was
supposed to be like somebody's wardrobe. How you could hide your
possessions and carry them with you? Partly it's from my background - I'm
from Cyprus, which is a divided place - and partly because of Kosovo." –
Hussein Chalayan, Icon Magazine Dec. 2000
A capsule of the “Living Room” collection was exhibited on its own and as part of
a group show “Skin Tight”. The work was exhibited in the United States and
Internationally at Contemporary Art Museums and spaces. “Skin Tight” was an
unusual show that presented a number of designers who see themselves outside
of the usual fashion consciousness and as part of a larger field that has found
fertile ground for extending fashion into political, artistic and social areas usually

22. 5
reserved for art. All of them show and participate in the fashion industry. “Skin
Tight” was presented at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Naples Art
Museum, Naples, Florida, Stephen Weiss and Donna Karan Foundation, New
York, among other locations in Europe and Asia. In addition to this project,
Chayalan has created other shows that interrogate political and social concerns.
Currently on view at Museum of Modern Art, New York, 17 Ways of Seeing,
Beyond Boundaries includes his work of at women living in/wearing Burka’s. He
is investigating the role of the burka and the women who wear them as
disembodied beings. Chayalan’s involvement in this work is frequently in concert
with his seasonal fashion collections.
(From Hussein Chalayan's fall 1998 ready-to-wear collection.)2
The question of whether these interventions are fashion or art is secondary. Each
intervention reaches audiences where they are effective and both use clothing as
the medium to create an entrance into an emotionally charged situation. In this
context their work makes room for an unanticipated response and an intimacy
with issues that traditional media has lost its power to accomplish.

23. 6
A few examples of work from other artists in fashion, interior design, and
contemporary art are included at the end of the presentation. They have been
added to give you a sense that interventions are not limited to a few unique
individuals. This new activity is not new, however what is new is the prevalence
of these statements in contemporary art and the way they straddle fashion,
design and art for this purpose. Chayalan and Werhein have created work that
cause one to pause and consider the reality of conventionally accepted beliefs by
reframing them in contexts were are less unfamiliar with.3
Fashion and art are joined in several often overlooked ways. Historically patrons
of the arts have supported couture, and visa versa. Yet at the same time the
relationship between the disciplines is often a contentious one. Fashion is a
language of the present, the currency of the now. It is slippery, ambivalent, and
ambiguous and subject to whims and fast change. Its relationship to the market
is explicit, money, value and exchange are all transparent. An integral aspect of
fashion is conspicuous consumption4
(see Veblen’s theory of the Leisure Class).
It always has been. Louie XIV5
was adept at using the balls and extravagant
royal activities at Versailles to gain advantage while the aristocracy and ruling
classes were too busy dressing and decorating themselves to intervene with his
political plans. It was brilliant. Fashion and the history of cities have an intrinsic
relationship. They are good bedfellows with an embrace that is historical. Astute
use of fashion (with ample finances) can allow one to construct a succinct
personal identity. As the growth of urban centers progressed this became

24. 7
increasingly important in business and society. Art on the other hand reminds us
of what is timeless, it reinforces our shared history and in doing so, of who we
are as a people and our role in the bigger picture as a part of culture and society.
Collectively we’ve assigned art the responsibility to lift us from the prosaic, the
quotidian and lead us into a process that opens to the possibility of epiphany and
transcendence.
These issues form the basis of this paper. There are characteristics in art and
fashion, that as a result of recent turns in contemporary art and fashion reveal
and open questions worthy of new consideration.
A short overview of fashion and art:
During the late 1980’s6
as critical theory and postmodern thinking became visible
fashion designers took on various issues of identity, gender, ethnic and cultural
diversity. With tools of deconstruction (Derrida), Frank Gehry’s architecture, and
Situationist strategies, the Punk aesthetic bloomed. A new breed of designers
emerged; among them were Jean Paul Gaultier, Vivienne Westwood and
Comme Des Garcons, Rei Kawakubo. Their style and spirit was deeply
connected to breaking meta narratives that had dominated fashion; the
silhouette, proportion, idealized ideas of women’s body. In place of historic
standards and continuing rhetoric there was a proliferation of fashion that directly
intervened with formerly ‘timeless’ standards. Traditional concepts and their
associations shifted and so did accepted norms. As a direct result of these larger

25. 8
cultural changes, former concepts are challenged by alterations and demands of
contemporary lifestyles8. Fashion, a direct reflection of culture finally began to
break apart in order to make room for cultural issues that are greatly extending
the fashion vocabulary.
In many cases these new narratives became interventions as they criticized the
very foundations that fashion languages are built upon (confer meaning). Set
meanings for a collar or length of a skirt were unglued from their historic context
and associations as they re-combined with fragments borrowed from a diversity
of often non western cultures, classes and a mixture of time periods. Increasingly
clothing became transformed into a maze like or labyrinthine story. Shapes taken
from a mix of historical periods found resonances often within one garment to
articulate yet other meanings. These interpretations were open, often layered,
hitting against, and in conflict with one another. At the same time clothing that
had been used for special groups or activities were also considered fair game.
This intensified with the prevalence of clothing associated with the sex trade or
religious groups and activities. Jean Paul Gaultier’s 1993 Hasidic inspired
collection and Comme Des Garcons, Sleep are examples of collections that
touched nerves and produced a deluge of criticism reserved for art or any area
outside of market consumption. They were met with outrage. Previously veiled or
secretive clothing came out of the closet and was absorbed into an expanding
fashion vocabulary.

26. 9
In 1978, Jean Paul Gaultier presented one of his first shows. He sent short girls
wearing boa skirts bouncing down the runway, skipping and laughing, eliciting
the impression of pre pubescent high school girls who haven’t yet lost their baby
fat, contra to the ultra thin aesthetic that has dominated the western fashion
ideal, tall, slim, and ethereal, sending a ripple down fashion’s spine. Vivienne
Westwood and Malcolm McLaren opened their store in London in the early ‘70’s
on the dying Kings Road, christened with several births, Sex, Too Fast To Live
Too Young Too Die, Seditionaries, with clothing more in common with the sex
trade than street wear. The Sex Pistols, a rock band that marked the antics of an
era, became McLarens brainchild. They started off in life as a band that couldn’t
sing or play and ended up marking this period indefinitely. It wasn’t until 1978
that things began to wake up.
At Comme des Garcon, Rei Kawakubo, was creating designs that reflected
homelessness and despair. A certain surety leftover from the 1960’s had
changed, the system had failed; only the pain and unresolved problems
remained. Arrogance was replaced by rage. Former ways of thinking were
quickly outpaced by a multiplicity of approaches in design as it was in every other
area. The impact of new technology making communications faster, closer and
accessible across formerly sealed borders, global outsourcing, the breakdown of
political systems, migrations and the appearance of a diversity of cultures that
were not Eurocentric, contributed to a rapid reshaping and shifting of
perspectives.

27. 10
Derivatives of ‘new‘ fashion manufactured on Seventh Avenue or outside of the
original studios they were created in were disasters. They attempted to emulate a
style without penetrating the underlying issues. The original designs were
created outside of garment centers, in basements, warehouse spaces or holes in
the wall, to be shown in art galleries or clubs. Major design houses adept at
‘knocking off’ original work turned out clothing that looked out of synch. Frankly
the asymmetry found in the best of downtown designers was missed by the trade
it appeared clumsy and ugly in their hands, reflecting a lack understanding for the
hybrid of influences alive in the designs.
Pop Art and Street Fashion
One can see some of these traces in the mid ‘60’s with the advent of Pop Art and
“Street Fashion”. There is a parallel between what is happening in art and
fashion today that mirrors a similar shift in the 1960’s when Pop Art entered the
scene. Pop artists like Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein used appropriated
objects and images from advertising and consumer goods. At the same time
trends in fashion changed direction and oriented towards what people were
wearing on the street which absorbed the political protests for peace in Viet Nam,
feminism and black consciousness. A wave of new art collectors who had made
their fortunes through manufacturing consumer goods entered the market. Pop
Art was understandable. Informed by Leo Castelli and Henry Geldzheler these

28. 11
new collectors assembled some of the most important collections of art from this
time. .
Fashion shifted from a “trickle down” theory (Verblens’ Theory of the Leisure
Class), where tastes from the aristocratic or wealthier classes trickled down in
order to create new fashion trends that emulate an association of breeding and
resources akin to the upper classes. In a sense we have never completely
abandoned either but in fact have in some ways created a third hybridization,
where both exist simultaneously, as on Canal Street and other commercial tourist
zones the world over.
Between Contemporary Art and fashion there are a number of shared attributes.
Both anticipate the performance quality of the work for one. Clothing is being
included in shows more often these days on its own as well as in museum shows
that transcend traditional “fashion” history, as well as being used by
contemporary artists as a ready medium.10
Perhaps the reason clothing has
become a medium for contemporary art, is because of its immediate suggestion
of human interaction. Clothing implies presence and of deeply human issues of
emotion, time and identity. The salient characteristic that they share other than
the medium of clothing is the participation of the viewer in completing the work,
through interaction and performability-clothing performs its identity by being
worn. While separate and distinct disciplines, sometimes it is hard to distinguish
which is art and which is fashion. I am not sure it really matters. A sobering

29. 12
reminder is the ever present relationship that both have to their market. Fashion
as a medium to explore issues beyond a fashion trend, for inquiry is relatively
new with few exceptions, while strategies and design approaches have been less
evident or clearly defined in art, Minimalist work did begin this trajectory.
The Market
Fashion and the market have always been intrinsically related. This is explicit
and transparent. However what is new is the divide that is forming augured by
emerging designers like the ‘Antwerp 6’, a design collective out of Belgium,
which has captured the eye and interest of the style makers in fashion who have
made this spit between the demands of a market and a new fashion direction
evident. Today designer clothing sells at almost unreachable prices and the
proliferation of cheaper and disposable clothing has become the ground for a
new market. There are customers for both. The buyers and collectors who will
prize the designs and wear them and then sell them and consumers who want
something to wear and anticipate its demise.
These perspectives are already forming and continue to broaden fashion from a
solely clothing oriented industry. New lifestyles and the recent shift of the past
have had an effect. Today, 30 years later, this change has reshaped the former
fashion market as it is continues to alter how we dress and the things we choose
to create our identity. The market has become increasingly competitive and open
with a number or new choices. MP3’s, laptops, shoes, eating out, buying

30. 13
clothing, travel all compete for the same dollar. In the advent of this turn products
offered as fashion include all the above, the qualifier is the identity they confer to
the wearer not its wearablity. Schools including The London Institute, Flanders
Fashion Academy, Fabrica and foundations including Prada Foundazione, Diesel
Gallery, Stephen Weiss and Donna Karan Foundation are invested in sponsoring
shows and artists that are extending the fashion vision and interests.
New Horizons and perspectives
This change of perspective is evident at the major couture houses JP Gaultier,
Hermes, McQueen, former head of Gucci, Tom Ford, John Galliano at Dior are
only a few of the new creative directors shaping the new horizon. Almost all are
graduates of the more progressive schools6
. These schools are offering critical
theory, cultural studies and interdisciplinary electives as a foundation for studying
couture along with traditional courses. This new education will feature
patternmaking not from “French forms” but by learning historic couture
techniques from the study of garments from the couturiers that built this industry,
from Vionnette to Dior, draping now an almost disappeared art is returning at
these schools, on the other hand training for work within mass manufacturing
requires technical drawing and proficiency in a number of CAD programs.
Increasingly throughout the 80’s, 90’s and further intensified today, new
narratives in fashion are rapidly expanding the field, lifting it from an industry to a
discourse joining a multi disciplined, heavily cross pollinated field. Increasingly

31. 14
philosophical, political, social and psychoanalytic issues are the basis of the
collection. A resonance of ideas or ponderings has replaced the thematic.
Fashion has emerged from the historic to the narrative. Unlike what history
denotes, in new designer fashion today there is no ending, no set in stone meta
theory, rather there is an opening out to a continuing story constructed in
contemporary languages. It has always had a place in the cultural domain,
usually at the service of political and social issues. It is a discourse that
demands an expertise in design, technology of cut, couture history, and a fluency
in using fashion vocabularies to a precise location coupled with an intuitive and
instinctive ability to read as yet unformed shadows moving along a future
horizon.7
While the overlap between fashion and art is not new it has changed. For this
present moment anyway, the two disciplines have gotten closer in a family way.
Fashion is exploring itself, reinvesting, trading up in rank, unselfconsciously
fulfilling characteristics that mark it definitively as a discourse, incorporating the
design and industry practice and extending it well beyond.
Contemporary art in its present turn to regain human presence, reawaken the
senses and shift into discussions that engage political and economic dialectics is
finding fashion a ready medium. While I am not sure this signals a mesh,
presently they both can perform effective interventions. However, art aspires to a
realm that raises it above a market restriction (one hopes) and to be a kind of

32. 15
open portal oriented towards practice and at a remove from the consuming
desire of the market. Fashion, is a cataloguing of our history, and ways of feeling
into the present moment through the material, it straddles both the tactile and the
ephemeral worlds, unraveling stories, relentlessly shifting and changing to
accommodate the new.
Constructing Meaning and Performability
When Minimalist art began to gain visibility throughout the 70’s, much of the work
breached traditional boundaries and dominant parochial definitions of fine art,
thus challenging the very system that codified art, an action not dissimilar to
some recent shifts in fashion. A proliferation of works in materials and
applications that fell between formalist traditions of each of the arts8 (painting,
sculpture, etc) that challenged the foundation of the art history and art itself. New
media, subject/content, were removing some of the criteria that circumscribed
these boundaries. The elimination of the ‘brush stroke’, the artists studio as the
site of production was increasingly replaced by the factory and industrial
techniques, the work was often given as a set of instructions rather than through
roughs or material prototypes created by the artist as the singular original.
Additionally-the increasing participation of the viewer, often requiring the viewer
to take part in completing the work itself and the performative aspect of art were
pronounced. These traces are evident in much of contemporary art today. Often
the idea of the artists hand has completely disappeared by collective involvement

33. 16
in collaborations. In virtual media in a sense this aspect is now completely
removed or at least at a removal from its initial meaning.
The latest turn in contemporary art9
focuses instead on political and social
dialectics in the form of interventions. It is one of a number of movements that
span media and mediums with the focus on process while reminding us to
remember what touches us, makes us human, cultural diversity, and
connecting with political and social issues by art work that has traces of human
presence7. At this moment contemporary art more than ever in the recent past
aspires to reveal a ground where possible futures can be imagined, examined
and challenged. Under the rubric of Art it is possible to be in a kind of safe zone
to look (as in voyeur) to consider and possibly to broaden our awareness and
understanding.
Art historically has been in the hands of the wealthy, aristocratic, held at a
remove from the public in its own exclusive category, and protected by a
special language to decode. It’s relationship to the market has always been
somewhat obscured or held apart from the work, as if it presides in a domain
outside of the exchange value market, leaving a nasty smell of a dark collusion.
The truth, which is increasingly transparent, is that art has always had a market,
controlled and backed by patrons (the Medici’s, Carnegie’s, Christies, Rubels,
etc). As capital transformed the classes, art and fashion became increasingly
available and have historically been used to display wealth and refinement. As
this

34. 17
relationship reveals, the mercantile classes did much to support the arts
historically, and the patrons of Pop Art in the 1960’s did the same. However,
what is worth reconsidering is extending a too ready hand to art to enter the
market and to lock away the languages of strategy, design and creativity in a
medium that is a ready made for contemporary expression as second class or
not equal to. It is interesting to see that fashion companies that have
accumulated wealth are setting up schools and foundations that support the work
of artists in a seed like and emergent stage and are sponsoring or generating
shows that reveal some of the more progressive work in both areas.
What determines these disciplinary boundaries today?
Generally it would be fair to say that fashion and art have an uncomfortable
relationship. Design was removed from “art” as it became increasingly
industrialized. Until the early 1900’s the separation between the two was non
existent. Art is supposed to transcend the moment, be a threshold to a longer
look, a deeper gaze and somewhat removed from the consumers desire as first
instinct. Fashion is its natural protagonist because it is written in a language that
is of the now. That doesn’t mean that artists and designers haven’t taken turns at
the wheel working in each other’s domain. Interventions formally belonged to the
Avant-garde, in this present turn it becomes a part of performance, process
rather than a radicalized action.