Bonnie English: Fashion as Art: A cultural dialogue. (part 1)
Senior Lecturer in Art Theory and past Deputy Director (Staffing and Teaching & Learning) at Queensland College of Art, Griffith University, Brisbane Australia.
BIOGRAPHY – Academic and Author
Bonnie English B.A.(Hons FA), B.Ed.(Toronto), M.Phil.(Griffith)
To refigure the catwalk is to redefine what fashion can be, and the means by which it colludes with or seeks escape from the powers of the commercial market. How has fashion, as a form of consumption, been transformed into a cultural entity re-assembled in the art museum and redefined as a form of artistic tour de force? In this double presentation, we will consider the changing notions of fashion display and presentation that transformed fashion from consumer product displayed in the shop window to objet d’art as seen through artists’ eyes; and from a collection showing on the catwalk to an art performance underlined by theatrical device and artifice. Finally, we will consider the links between art, fashion and museological exhibitions.
Part 1
When Emile Zola referred to the department store as the ‘cathedral of modern business’, his prophetic words heralded a significant change which was to take place in the marketing of consumer products, especially fashion, over the course of the 20th century. Museum methodologies of presentation and display were mimicked by department stores to develop a visual narrative which attracted and sustained the viewers’ interest. This new type of display ‘staging’ underlined the notion that the ordered display of valued objects turned customers into spectators, that the consumer object could be elevated to the same stature as the priceless art treasure. Window displays and the use of mannequins to display fashion goods, as seen in most department store windows by the turn of the 20th century, and the presentation of in-store fashion parades became central to mass marketing and modern methods of retailing and held a great fascination for artists and craftspeople alike. Varnedoe and Goprik have dared to suggest that the new theatrical display of window display in Paris might well have prompted Marcel Duchamp’s interest in transforming the art object into a display object (1990:284).
In historical terms, fashion had become associated with the superficial notion of ‘fashionability’ and couturier designers, such as Paul Poiret, prior to 1914, attempted to dispel this stereotyping by presenting his fashion collections in department stores in both Europe and America. By linking fashion commerce with a cultural theatrical performance, he attempted to link fashion with meaning and significance – and this manifested itself, in contemporary terms, with a more profound intellectualism.
However, only a few of today’s designers were able to achieve this outcome – to legitimise fashion as a significant reference to aesthetic, social and cultural developments of a particular age. Arguably, in the eighties, the second wave of Japanese designers, Yamamoto and Kawakubo legitimately tied meaning with memory by linking their work through symbol and association with their cultural heritage. Viktor & Rolf ‘s cerebral underpinnings appeal to an audience keen to enjoy a critical re-appraisal of the elitist notions of couture history. Their stage embraced performance art and the performance critiqued notions of elitism, beauty, and designer styling. Margiela deconstructs the form as well as the process when he diss-assembled the catwalk altogether by presenting his fashion collection for Autumn/Winter 1997 in a new format which was modelled on a treasure hunt. Like the ‘New Theatre’ of the 1960s, audience participation became integral to the performance, just as the fashion ‘shoot’ is linked with the parade. Appropriating historical dress and re-contextualising the setting became another form of visualisation that prompted conceptual links between commerce and culture. Through themed productions, John Galliano became a master of visual spectacle and virtual reality. The audience becomes integral to the experience and shares the designer’s vision. The ultimate ‘fashion-as-theatre-as-art’ presentation was a collaborate event organised by Tom Ford of Gucci and American performance artist Vanessa Beecroft at New York’s Guggenheim Museum of Art entitled ‘Show 2001’The fashion collection was transformed into the art installation, which in turn parodied both the art museum collection and the fashion industry.
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Bonnie English is senior Lecturer in Art Theory and past Deputy Director (Staffing and Teaching & Learning) at Queensland College of Art, Griffith University, Brisbane Australia.
She has been teaching the history of art and fashion to undergraduates/postgraduates since 1975. Her research has focussed on the inter-relationship of fashion design and fine art throughout history and, in particular, the decline of elitist practice and the rise of democratisation in fashion in the 20th century.
Since 1997, her main research focus has centred on the work of the contemporary postmodernist Japanese designers – Miyake, Yamamoto and Kawakubo. In 1999, she was co-curator, with Craig Douglas, and catalogue editor of Tokyo Vogue: Japanese and Australian Fashion (Brisbane City Hall Gallery), the 1st major fashion exhibition ever held in Queensland and the first major exhibition of contemporary Japanese fashion in Australia. She has produced two teaching and learning CD ROM library resources entitled Fashion and Art: Portraiture from the 15th to the 18th Centuries and Japanese Postmodernist Fashion: art, tradition, culture. She is currently working on a book entitled A Cultural History of Fashion in the 20th Century: From the Catwalk to the Sidewalk for Berg Publishers, Oxford to be published in July 2007.