Skin + Bones
Parallel Practices in Fashion and Architecture
MOCA Los Angeles November 19, 2006–March 5, 2007
a n exhibition devoted to the extensive and telling similarities between architecture and fashion design will be The Museum of Contemporary Art’s major winter show this year. Skin + Bones takes its point of departure design from the beginning of the 1980s, a period marked by significant events and advances that contributed to formal and cultural shifts in both fashion and architecture. Japanese fashion designers Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons and Yohji Yamamoto first presented their work during the Paris ready-to-wear collections in April 1981. The oversized, often asymmetrical black clothing they presented featured intentional holes, tatters and unfinished edges, and as a result, challenged accepted ideas of fashion, femininity and beauty. The following year, architect Bernard Tschumi won the international competition to design Parc de la Villette in Paris. His project, and the resulting collaboration between architect Peter Eisenman and philosopher Jacques Derrida, introduced ideas of deconstruction to a much larger audience, and like the work of the Japanese designers, heralded bold new directions that changed the public’s perception of both buildings and clothes. In 1982 an exhibition, curated by Susan Sidlauskas at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology called Intimate Architecture: Contemporary Clothing Design, for the first time examined formal aspects of fashion from an architectural point of view. While a number of recent exhibitions have explored the relationship between art and fashion, less attention has been paid to the relationship between architecture and fashion, despite the increasing overlap in strategies and techniques shared by the two disciplines. Since the 1980s, a growing number of avant-garde fashion designers have approached garments as architectonic constructions, while architecture has embraced new forms and materials — developments due in part to technological advancements that have revolutionized both the design and construction of buildings and made techniques such as pleating, seaming, folding and draping part of the architectural vocabulary. Garments of increasing conceptual sophistication and structural complexity have been seen on the runways and in the streets as buildings of unparalleled fluidity and innovation grace major urban centres around the world. Skin + Bones features the work of Azzedine Alaïa, Hussein Chalayan, Comme des Garçons, Alber Elbaz for Lanvin, Tess Giberson, Yoshiki Hishimuna, Elena Manferdini, Martin Margiela, Alexander McQueen, Miyake Issey, Narciso Rodriguez, Ralph Rucci, Nanni Strada, Yeohlee Teng, Isabel Toledo, Olivier Theyskens for Rochas, Dries Van Noten, Viktor & Rolf, Junya Watanabe, Vivienne Westwood and Yohji Yamamoto. The architects include innovative practitioners—both established and emerging—who have had, or promise to have, an indelible impact on our built environment: Shigeru Ban, Preston Scott Cohen, Neil Denari/NMDA, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Winka Dubbeldam/Archi-Tectonics, Miralles Tagliabue/EMBT, Peter Eisenman, Foreign Office Architects, Future Systems, Gehry Partners, Zaha Hadid, Herzog + de Meuron, Toyo Ito, Jakob + MacFarlane, Greg Lynn FORM, Morphosis, Neutelings Riedijk, Jean Nouvel, Office dA, Rem Koolhaas/OMA, Kazuyo Sejima+Ryue Nishizawa/SANAA, Testa & Weiser, Bernard Tschumi, Wilkinson Eyre and J. Meejin Yoon.
Curator Brooke Hodge describes the origins of this exhibition: During the course of my research on Comme des Garçons I was fascinated not only by visual similarities between clothing and buildings, but also by how the garments could be more aptly described using architectural terminology. I was also impressed by Kawakubo’s desire to create a total environment for her work—one that embraced not only the clothes but also the design of retail spaces, graphics, and furniture, much in the same way members of the Wiener Werkstatte or the Bauhaus strove to create a gesamtkunstwerk (synthesis of the arts). That fashion and architecture have a great deal in common may be surprising given the obvious differences between the two. Fashion can often be ephemeral and superficial, and uses soft, fluid materials; whereas architecture is considered monumental and permanent, and uses strong, rigid materials. Regardless of differences in size, scale, and materials, the point of origin for both fashion design and architecture is the human body— both practices protect and shelter us, while providing a means to express our identities—whether personal, political, religious or cultural. g clockwise: J. Meejin Yoon. Möbius Dress, 2004. Hussein Chalayan. Aeroplane Dress, Autumn/Winter 1999. Frank Gehry. Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles, California, 2003. Shigeru Ban Architects. Curtain Wall House, Itabashi, Tokyo, Japan, 1995. Foreign Office Architects. Yokohama International Port Terminal, 1995- 2002.
Skin + Bones: Parallel Practices in Fashion and Architecture is co-pub- lished by The Museum of Contem- porary Art, Los Angeles, and Thames & Hudson. The book is edited by Brooke Hodge, MOCA curator of Ar- chitecture and Design, and Lisa Mark, director of Publications.
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