The new medium of the Met Gala

2016

On 29 January 2013, the Fashion and Re-Collection postgraduate symposium was held at London College of Fashion, co-organised by Sara Chong Kwam, Morna Laing and Mario Roman. The symposium brought together a group of postgraduate scholars, with different approaches and vocabularies, to reflect on fashion through the lens of memory. Although presenters span a range of disciplinary backgrounds, running through the day was an emphasis on what can be remembered, or remembered differently, through fashion – in both academic and curatorial contexts. But alongside this, it is also worth thinking about what fashion wants to forget: whether it be side-lined histories and subjectivities, the conditions of production, landfill, or last season. Put differently, what does fashion – as object, image and text - seek to include and exclude? And what methodologies are appropriate for uncovering, or rather re-constructing, those memories? Keynote speakers were Professor Caroline Evans and Dr Linda Sandino.

2009

Art Monthly, 2011

Sociology, 2006

This article, based on two studies of the fashion industry examines one of its key institutions, London Fashion Week (LFW). Drawing on the work of Bourdieu, we argue that this event is a materialization of the field of fashion.We examine how LFW renders visible the boundaries, relational positions, capital and habitus at play in the field, reproducing critical divisions within it. As well as making visible the field, LFW is a ceremony of consecration within it that contributes to its reproduction. The central aim of this article is to develop an empirically grounded sense of field, reconciling this macro-structural concept with embodied and situated reality.

Fashion Studies, 2018

In this review, I critically examine the fashion and art exhibition "fashion after Fashion," April 7-Aug 27, 2017 at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York City, curated by Hazel Clark and Ilari Laamanen. The exhibition design was commissioned work by six interdisciplinary artists/designers who incorporated a mix of sculpture, performance, and audiovisual material into their installations. The different installations, taken together and experienced together, acted back and upon each other in interesting ways in the exhibition, which was a strength of the curators' method; the use of commissions exclusively acted as a kind of artistic method in itself. The first and most notable thing about the exhibit was that there were no clothes on mannequins. While the exhibition's premise was on fashion, the intentional absence of clothing was a risky strategy the curators pursued to intervene in how viewers think about fashion. The installations were purposely amorphous and abstract as well to inspire a broader consideration of what fashion can be and what bodies can do. Though the relationship between fashion and the body has been a constant topic in fashion scholarship, this exhibition offered a new perspective through commissioning and showcasing the category-defying work of recent fashion and art school graduates and performance artists.

In fashion world, fashion shows are the most significant part for fashion presentation, marketing and communication. In the last twenty years, fashion shows transformed themselves: They became a huge consumer market in a large hoop, which includes press and public relations professionals. At this point, fashion shows had a special role with their exclusive show pieces, which are not for production: they only function as image. This image is constructed by capital. Fashion shows gained a meaning with consumer culture. When people buy a product, they do not purchase only a product: They feel themselves as a part of the brand. In here designer’s name is sold through its image not only by it’s a product. Thus, people purchase their dreams and their fantasies, which are in their unreal world.

Current Trends in Fashion Technology & Textile Engineering, 2017

The Turkish Online Journal of Design, Art and Communication - TOJDAC, 2019

Fashion weeks are of significant importance since in addition to new designs to present, within those weeks a fashion shows’ effect sometimes moves ahead of the designs. When collections are completed, fashion designers introduce them through the “fashion show,” a field used to present their collection ideas in an impressive and striking manner. Through this form, the designer employs performative presentation to help put across the intellectual message, the allure of a fashionable creation, or to mediate diverse creations in a visual way as a collection. Fashion shows have a strong impact due to the atmosphere created which is surrounded by music, video art, performance and stage design. These 20-25 minute shows represent the whole collection through the background idea of the collection and designer’s inner world, by using colors, textures, stories, forms and visuals. Thus, an artistic approach is key when designing a show in order to reveal the collection’s idea in its most relevant form. The aim of this paper is to examine how fashion shows are curated by artistic applications and to reveal the ways of narrating stories which are not written but are conveyed to communities through performative presentations. In this respect, an interpretative approach was adopted and related artistic applications from contemporary examples held between 2013 and 2018 were analyzed as part of narrating a collection. The finding of this study is that the audience has gained a new role as becoming participants in the fashion shows themselves with the opportunities offered by technological developments which creates new meanings for the fashion shows. It is understood that the function of fashion shows is now changing from a means of promotional to audience communication.