Understanding Fashion Through The Museum

Teunissen, José

doi:10.5040/9781350050914.ch-002

Cited by 6 publications

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“…Interviewed in 2004, designer duo Viktor and Rolf outlined their ambivalence towards fashion exhibitions suggesting that ‘somehow life is taken out of the subject’ (2008, cited in Teunissen, 2014: 42). Garments seeking spectator attention within the museum space are often perceived as static entities devoid of their original function as embodied artefacts (Anderson, 2000; Entwistle, 2000; Steele, 2008; Wilson, 1985).…”

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‘Strike a pose’: Fabricating posthumous presence in mannequin design

Davies

2020

Journal of Material Culture

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Interviewed in 2004, designer duo Viktor and Rolf outlined their ambivalence towards fashion exhibitions suggesting that ‘somehow life is taken out of the subject’ (2008, cited in Teunissen, ‘Understanding Fashion through the Museum in Melchior, MR, 2014). Garments seeking spectator attention within the museum space are often perceived as static entities devoid of their original function as embodied artefacts. There is no denying an inert aura pervades listless materials that have supposedly lost their agency, now confined to the vaults of the museum-as-mausoleum. In their re-purposed role of performing as reminders of a life now departed, this article considers curatorial strategies that seek to revive a living presence in garment display with specific reference to the remodelling of Frida Kahlo in the V&A exhibition ‘Frida Kahlo: Making Her Self Up (2018)’. Addressing Dudley’s suggestion in Museum Objects: Experiencing the Properties of Things (2012: 19) that an artefact’s ‘fundamental material characteristics’ should be at the heart of contextual interpretation, the role that an object’s material properties can play in the re-materializing of embodiment is evaluated. In the V&A exhibition, a narrative emerges on clothing as an agent that conceals vulnerable corporeality. Sartorial practices armoured Kahlo’s body and the role material entities can play in containing and preserving the illusion of corporeal substance will be investigated. Given this premise, it seems wholly appropriate to focus on the contribution that the mannequin can make to this conceptual framework. After all, it is an artefact with a central occupation of establishing bodily integrity in the display of clothing. Reiterating Clark’s suggestion in The Textile Reader (2012) that the mannequin contributes to the vocabulary of a curatorial brief, this article proposes that this artefact can interrogate the tensions that exist between Kahlo’s sartorial practices and her abject body. Substantiating Appadurai’s premise of material objects’ agency in The Social Life of Things (2001[1986]), the exhibition arguably employs the once humble tailor’s dummy in a significant role, thereby reconstructing its dominant function of embodying fabric in the museum.

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confidence: 99%

‘Strike a pose’: Fabricating posthumous presence in mannequin design

Davies

2020

Journal of Material Culture

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The Ephemeral Established: An Analysis of the Narratives of Fashion Exhibitions (2009–2019)

Colares

2020

Springer Series in Design and Innovation

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Exhibiting fashion on the heritage site: the interrelation between body, heritage space, and fashionable clothing

Lan,

Liu

2023

Humanit Soc Sci Commun

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The article examines a fashion exhibition at a heritage museum on a historic site in terms of fashion museology. Fashion museology, which has emerged from the growing phenomenon of exhibiting fashion in museums, advocates the visual representation and holistic atmosphere of the curatorial space that determines the on-site audience experience. This article focuses on how the interrelation between fashionable clothing, the bodies of the audience, and the heritage space constructs a hybrid space in which bodily movement articulates the displayed clothing. We consider the heritage space to be a performative event and explore how heritage museums can harness and make practical use of the affective interrelationship within the designed museum space in terms of the quality of the fashion exhibition experience. Museum audiences are situated in and moved around by the curated spatial environment, which is a space with cultural residuals and historical inheritance, where the bodily encounter with the displayed clothing occurs. The investigation of this interaction via case studies sheds light on the overlooked haptic experience and spatial storytelling in fashion exhibitions. The site-specific interaction at the heritage space mediates the body in multiple ways. Such curated bodily movement acts as a narration that imbues the clothing on display with meanings.

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Understanding Fashion Through The Museum

Cited by 6 publications

References 0 publications

‘Strike a pose’: Fabricating posthumous presence in mannequin design

‘Strike a pose’: Fabricating posthumous presence in mannequin design

The Ephemeral Established: An Analysis of the Narratives of Fashion Exhibitions (2009–2019)

Exhibiting fashion on the heritage site: the interrelation between body, heritage space, and fashionable clothing

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