The clothed body in fashion and performance

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. This paper discusses largely un-chartered territory into the relationship between clothing design for fashion and performance and the hybrid area of practice that emerges between the two disciplines. As performance and fashion practice both increasingly moved 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 clothing designed as costume for performance have arguably become less clear. What is notable in both disciplines is the use of the body as a catalyst and canvas for creation and communication of meaning.

Costume design as implicit to its process deals with the body as a site for communication of narratives, character and concepts whilst conceptual approaches to fashion design over the past decade have also increasingly employed approaches focusing on concepts over commerciality, addressing issues of identity, character and narratives. Simultaneously fashion theory has increasingly embraced the concept of the body itself as a site for the communication and more specifically the generation of concepts and communication of meaning, theorists have begun to analyse fashion from this perspective: (Warwick & Cavallaro (1998); Entwistle & Wilson (2001) Entwistle (2000) and Fraser and Greco (2005). These texts begin to deal with the idea of ‘situated bodily practice’ Entwistle (2000) which has real potential for further analysis from the perspective of the designer.

This paper explores the clothed, communicating body as a site for the meeting of fashion and performance practice. It discusses the relationship between the body and clothing as a form of communication in contemporary fashion and performance practice and specifically investigates the symbiotic relationship between the two in conveying narratives and concepts from and on the body. By placing clothing at the centre of this debate I will take into account how the emotional and physical factors as well as the site of the body itself contributes to the making, intention and reading of work in the context of hybrid practice between fashion and performance.

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