Set in a mise-en-scène full of dramatic flair by architect Kim Ackert, this exhibition opens with an enthralling display of ballet costumes and similarly dance-related fashion pieces from the 1830's to modern times.
Designers such as Stella McCartney, Yves Saint Laurent, Cristobal Balenciaga Rick Owens, Iris Van Herpen and Oscar de la Renta were amongst those featured here and it was terribly exciting to see their masterpieces live.
The exhibition aims to explore the relation between dance and fashion and their influence as art forms on one another. It primarily features designs created for the New York City ballet, but also includes modern dance costumes worn by famed dancers.
Ballet dress by Iris Van Herpen - she is part of a new wave of upcoming designers, and has been hailed as the next Alexander Mcqueen due to her innovative use of 3D structures and futuristic, surrealistic textures.
This piece stood out to be because it had been part of an event that drew tantamount attention from the public.
Rick Owens, an American fashion designer hailing from California had created his Spring/Summer 2014 collection and drawn inspiration from "stepping", a form of dance that evolved in African-American colleges. It is effectively a fusion of step dancing and cheerleading with military precision. For the runway showcase, Owens chose to debut his Summer/Spring 2014 collection with the dancers from four different sorority hip-hop groups to perform a bombastic, provocative and vicious dance during the introduction.
This radical move came amidst a period of great social-political unrest in the Fashion industry –as we are normally accustomed to 6-foot-tall, lithe Caucasian models. Naomi Campbell was also struck by this sentiment, as she had just written to the British Fashion Council to lament about the great lack of black models on British runways. In addition to that, Kanye West had just debated the limited futures that black people had in the fashion industry. As a result Owens' vicious model-army and their full-throttle performance swept their audience and the rest of the fashion world away, making a massive statement about the cutthroat, discriminative and overly-commercialized nature of fashion week.
It was amazing to be able to see up close and personal - a piece that had played such an vital part in changing fashion history.
No comments:
Post a Comment