De/constructing Fashion

Analysis of Sherman's Fashion Photographs and how they relate to her earlier works in terms of poststructuralist feminist theory

The human need for expression through images is present probably since the human need for dressing. Despite their conflicting roles, both art and fashion play important role in the society. When approaching the relationship between art and fashion many discrepancies between them arise, as well as many similarities, especially in contemporary times. While art is imbued with spiritual – the sublime – fashion is linked to physical – the frivolous. When acceding to the concept of fashion, it is important to emphasize distinction between fashion and clothing. Dress becomes fashion with inscription of symbolic value. Art transcends both space and time; fashion is spatially and temporally confined. From this confinement two crucial points of divergence ensue: a) the concept of fashion is related to the western culture, b) the time of fashion refers to modernity. The emergence of fashion in the Renaissance indicates a new era, with the rise of capitalism and the redefinition of social roles. Fashion is closely associated with capitalism which is problematic because this often puts the emphasis on its economic aspect, while neglecting its aesthetic aspect. It is often overlooked, but should also be noted that fashion has its place in art, especially in the field of applied arts. Therefore, two important moments where art and fashion interfere are: a) the invention of geometric perspective in the Renaissance: art becomes part of the system of representation; fashion becomes part of the system of communal living. b) the invention of photography in the 19th century: both art and fashion get emancipated from either representational codes or strict class divisions. We could say that the Renaissance marked the beginning of seduction by images with the illusion of three-dimensional space on a two-dimensional surface. With the industrial revolution and the invention of photography a major change began in the perception of the world, and art played an important role in these processes. Due to scientific and technological progress social changes found their particularly interesting reflexion in both art and fashion. In modern and contemporary times the artwork as material object is replaced by idea, concept and artistic event. On the other hand, fashion shifted its focus from functionality to images. Discussions on whether fashion is art began in the 80's with the entry of fashion into museums. In the 21st century, when fashion becomes part of creative industries, an important and troubling questions should be asked once again: can fashion be finally considered one of the of the artistic media or are we hopelessly regressing back to traditional categories which claimed their strict detachment?

2020

Argued by Jacques Derrida, Deconstruction is a critical practice of reading and rewriting meanings: it aims to the decomposition of linguistic systems, by unveiling the function of oppositional categories. Integrating the Judith Butler deconstructive approach to gender identity and its performativity, the essay explores the mechanisms of social determining processes over subjects, defining to which extent fashion participates in gender intelligibility and projection of Self within the society. Along the analysis of Zanaughtti and Knight’s fashion film Disrupt, Distort, Disguise, the paper inquires provocative queering practices that reject any fixed, essential way of being man or woman . According to Butler’s studies, it unfolds the very fallacy of ‘gender’ noun, its binarity and hierarchical order: gender is a continuous process of citation and alteration, and it is all about doing . As in the movie, such imitative structure is implicitly revealed by Cross-Dressing performances: a ...

Edith Wharton Review, 2015

From medieval-style robes gathered with tasseled belts to high-waisted Grecian gowns decorated with woodblock prints to kimono-inspired breakfast wrappers with capacious sleeves, "artistic dress" (later called Aesthetic dress) was a style-and a movement-that captivated the public imagination in the second half of the nineteenth century. Kimberly Wahl offers a thorough and fascinating study of this phenomenon, using fashion as a way to explore the complex and interwoven endeavors of artistry, activism, and commerce. Wahl's study devotes most of its attention to the end of the nineteenth century, but the issues that coalesced around the aesthetic movement begin in the 1850s and continue into the twentieth century. Depicted in paintings and advertised in catalogues and women's magazines, artistic dress was born of both practical and aesthetic concerns. The crinoline and corset-free fashions featured sleeves set high on the shoulder and loose, drapey fits, allowing for the freedom of movement necessary to a class of women who increasingly participated in craft work and outdoor activities. As wearers of artistic dress were depicted in plein air paintings by artists like Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Everett Millais, and Thomas Armstrong, Wahl argues that proponents-who often designed their own costumes-"occupy simultaneously a position as subject of Aesthetic sensibility and object of Aesthetic contemplation" (xxviii). The occasion of artistic dress also created spaces for the exchange of ideas that expanded from intimate settings to the public sphere: James McNeill Whistler's studio, the Grosvenor Gallery, and the burgeoning forum of women's print media. In the 1870s and 1880s, the pre-Raphaelite aesthetic of a return to "natural" forms unaltered by restrictive fashions met with the more politically motivated rational dress reform movement. Dress reformers like the novelist Margaret Oliphant argued that health ought to be the ultimate sig-nifier of beauty and condemned unhealthy styles that confined their wear-ers to unnatural shapes and positions. The idea that fashions of the past were the key to successful, and fashionable, dress reform also recalled the pre-Raphaelite tendency to return to medieval forms. Women's magazines in the late seventies and eighties began featuring these styles, with added elements of the newly popular orientalism, heavily in their illustrations. Wahl argues that the popularity of artistic dress suggests a need for

Art Monthly, 2011

2017

Analyzing the relationships between art and fashion, I will refer to the category the Other/ identical. For several decades, it has been popular in the humanistic debate, subject to various interpretations (Derrida, Foucault, feminism, post-colonialism). In the meaning adopted here, just as the Other is a condition for the existence of the identical, so, I believe, fashion is a point of reference for art. It functions as an element allowing art to build its identity on being different from it. This situation was particularly evident in the first half of the 20th century. In the introductory part of my paper, I will present some examples of avant-garde artists' involvement in the design of clothing treated on an equal footing with artistic activity. For the Futurists and Constructivists, the Other and the identical were equal. The second part of the paper describes the situation that arose at the end of the 20th century, when equality between the Other and the identical took a di...

This paper aims to briefly presente the path of a PhD Research "Politics Of dressing: cuts on the bias" focusing on the considerations presented in the last chapter. We will presente some artists works that exploring meanings through the use of clothing and/or body, by taking some of the force lines that cross the vestiments flows in the fashion field, as well as some of the concepts investigated along the thesis. In this way, we selected three works that touch on our outlined issues: Wanted me, Lenora De Barros (São Paulo, 2001); AZ Six Month Seasonal Uniforms, Andrea Zittel (New York, 1991--‐2002), And Detachment, Marilá Dardot (São Paulo, 2005), which will be commented.

Fashion Theory, 2019

2018

In the article author's attempt is to open the problem why the fashion as body-design in the contemporary world of shifting identities has emerged a key factor in the success of the cognitive and digital economy. I am trying to explain why the early 21st century encompasses the whole area of overlapping impacts of technologies and art sets in terms of cultural and creative industries. The cultural industries encompass creativity, production and commercialization related to the problem of intellectual property protection in the press, publishing, multimedia activities, audiovisual and cinema production; Creative industries, on the other side, comprise preferably understanding of design as the construction of a new world of life in the interaction of art and technology. Since the entire global economy of services and products has associated today with innovations in the digital sphere, it becomes obvious that fashion nowadays significantly has determined from different theoretical...

Published by Sternberg Press, the 14th thematic volume of studies from the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, Aesthetic Politics in Fashion comprises a series of fresh academic writings elaborated around applied examples. The corpus of texts calls upon fashion's dangerous liaisons: art, the body-gender-differentiation triad, techniques of display/presentation and image inquiries, which are passed through fashion's weighty economical character along with the working industry issues.