Fashion & Performance; Materiality, Meaning, Media

This publication drew on the research behind the Fashion and Performance exhibition, Arnhem Mode Biennale 2013 and was included in the book that was produced alongside the event.

The worlds of fashion and performance have tended to be analysed and understood in the context of their own disciplines as separate and distinctly different in terms of their design process and intention. However as performance and fashion practice both increasingly move into new and site-specific contexts and as focus is extended around conceptual and experimental approaches, the divisions between clothing designed as conceptual fashion and costume for performance have become less clear.

In this hybrid context I propose that the shared embodied understanding of clothing and its relationship to the body enables us to take into account how the emotional and physical factors as well as the body itself contributes to the making, intention and reading of clothing based work. It is on this level that we can understand the significance of the clothed body as visual and embodied narrative, regardless of disciplinary positioning. The body in effect is the site for the creation of and communication of meaning whether that is a narrative, a concept, an emotion or character.

I argue that it is the concept highlighted by Entwistle28 of ‘situated bodily practice’ that resonates with and in many cases drives the hybrid practice that has emerged between fashion and performance. It is the focus on the body both physical and emotional and the experience of clothing as part of a complex performative dynamic that contributes to the making, intention and reading of work within contemporary fashion performance contexts.