Installation view of OUT OF FASHION Luxembourg + Co., London. Photo: Richard Ivey.
‘Art is art. Fashion is fashion.’ (Karl Lagerfeld)
Or is it?
A creative industry as much as a trendy disposition, fashion encapsulates the overlap between the seasonal (as well as daily) imperative to change clothes and the notion that taste is always evolving. Its relation to art, in turn, reveals that there is more in common between these two disciplines than either would like to admit. Both art and fashion are rooted in traditions of craft-making deeply linked with luxury, commerce, as well as public expressions of ethical and aesthetic values. Moreover, they also rely on rebellious acts of defiance against existing trends as means for growth and development while thriving on the principle of repetition of familiar historical themes.
The present exhibition brings together a select group of works that were executed across the span of 400 years in which careful observation of patterns and symbols was employed in order to link with or oppose the fashion of a specific time and place. Made directly ‘out of fashion’, the works on display are at once historical documents of important trends. But they are also contentious statements whose status is in constant flux depending on the spirit of the moment as well as our capacity to see beyond it.
OUT OF FASHION includes works by Balthasar van der Ast, Alighiero Boetti, Domenico Gnoli, Eugene Knaus, and Rudolf Stingel.