What do Bernhard Willhelm and Alexander McQueen have in common? Except for being contemporary fashion houses, they’re both renowned for creating boundary-breaking designs. Their unusual take on the industry expresses itself through subversion of the normative fashion codes: their shows turn the catwalk into a platform for art performances, while the garments themselves are more likely to suggest dreamy creations, rather than utilitarian wear. Such an avant-garde take on fashion and art deserves an exhibition on its own.
Angelos Tsourapas and Vassilis Zidianakis, Greek curators and founding members of the visual art collective Atopos, stood up to the task when they gathered the most eccentric and grotesque silhouettes of contemporary fashion design at la Gaîté Lyrique in Paris, for “Arrrgh Monsters in Fashion”, an exhibition held at the Parisian contemporary art venue until April 7.
Besides eccentricity, what were the criteria for choosing participating designers? “Our main idea behind the exhibition was linking fashion with character design”, explained Angelos who, together with his colleague Vassilis published the book “Not A Toy”, in collaboration with the Pictoplasma festival for character design. “Most of the designers didn’t even think about this resemblance at the first place, but they agreed with the concept.”
Among the 58 exhibited designers well worth watching, one could spot Charlie Le Mindu’s “Haute Coiffure”-silhouettes, Bernhard Willhelm’s ghost installation that once embellished Antwerp’s Fashion Museum MoMu, the hybrid creatures of the designer-duo On Aura Tout Vu, Walter Van Beirendonck’s walking cloud sculptures in collaboration with Erwin Wurm and Issey Miyake’s and Dai Fujiwara’s A-POC project. These are presented next to student works, such as Manon Kündig’s “Bowerbird” MA collection at Antwerp’s Fashion department, which played with a heavy layering of eye-popping prints.
Besides the renowned conceptual Antwerp school, London’s Central Saint Martins fashion department was also represented by promising newcomers, such as Toma Stenko, who showcased as piece of this BA-collection, “Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors” collection. Then, a room entirely set up with video screens showcased a ghoulish short movie by Dutch artist Bart Hess, while the floor is covered with the graffiti-like drawings of Greek artist George Tourlas and London-based fashion designer Craig Green provided the style and character design sculptures for the exhibition.
“It was our conscious decision to mix established designers with young ones, sometimes even fashion students”, continued Angelos. “The fashion and the art world are more likely to follow a certain type of hierarchy. We wanted to break with this attitude. There is no archetype beauty neither – the exhibition rather questions this identification and meaning of beauty in fashion. Art is art, that’s all”.
Art is art indeed, but it also seemed to be a form of entertainment for the younger ones: “We’ve had a positive feedback at the opening, but the best thing was the kids who where mesmerized by the exhibited fashion silhouettes. They went crazy!” smiled Angelos when asked about his first experience with the Parisian audience. “It’s of course due to the unusual, toy-like look of these fashion creations, but I think it is also due to the proximity”, added the curator. “The outfits aren’t exposed in a septic way, behind display glass for example, like they usually are in museums. You can actually stand close to them; you can mingle with the monsters. This makes the whole exhibition experience much more lively and authentic”, added the curator.
Finally, one cannot ignore the meaning of Greek art initiatives at the moment: “Atopos is based in Athens, but we have a lot of problems working there or finding cultural support at the moment. Not only because of the critical financial situation, but people just deal with other, existential problems on a daily basis. It is hard to focus on art or even spend your money on it, when you barely know how to feed your kids or maintain your business.” Aren’t the monsters in fashion a great form of escapism?
