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Wednesday, September 16, 2015

A Speculative History of Dutch Fashion Design @ HNI Rotterdam/ September 2015

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."

 [photos below: Michiel Keuper]













The Temporary Fashion Museum / Article Spiegel.de, September 2016

...wie dieses Plakat der Ausstellung verrät, das die Designerin Maureen Mooren...
HET NIEUWE INSTITUUT/Daniela Dostálková



The exhibition The Temporary Fashion Museum at Het Nieuwe Instituut / HNI Rotterdam, for which I created an installation, made it in the German press. 

From the article:
[English] "The unusual transformation of the whole museum follows the path of the product from the designer to the user and puts the user perspective into focus. The house celebrates the eternal creative renewal power of fashion and writes simultaneously - often casually, sometimes deliberately speculative, sometimes clearly evaluated - their history anew."

[German:] "Die ungewöhnliche Umwandlung des ganzen Museums verfolgt den Weg des Produktes vom Designer zum User und stellt dessen Perspektive in den Fokus. Das Haus zelebriert kreativ die ewige Erneuerungskraft der Mode und schreibt gleichzeitig - oft nebenbei, bisweilen bewusst spekulativ, bisweilen sauber evaluiert - deren Geschichte neu."

Click here to read the full article in Spiegel.de.