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| A Speculative History of Dutch Fashion - Installation overview, September 2015. Foto Johannes Schwartz/ HNI |
One of the projects that kept me busy in August, was the re-creation of 13 toiles for the exhibition A Speculative History of Dutch Fashion in the Temporary Fashion Museum, just opened at Het Nieuwe Instituut/ HNI Rotterdam (to be seen till May next year).
These Simoulages, as I call them (since they are simulations of moulages; interpretations and not straight copies of originals), reflect on the design vocabulary from the so-called Arnhem School in the 1990s, now ArtEZ Fashion Design Arnhem.
A time when, especially at the fashion department of the Academy of Arts in Arnhem, the idea that fashion should present a new face every season is critically challenged. Designers start developing a reflective practice which investigates fashion itself and provide a commentary on the consumption of clothing and the fashion system. This translates into an extreme concentration on construction and a resistance to any form of decoration just for the sake of decoration.
From the catalog- "In the early nineties the School introduces a new legitimacy for the designer, namely through his cultural position. The autonomous designer moves away from the street towards the museum and, finally, the idea of 'fashion-as-communication' becomes subject of investigation."
