THE 'PARODY OF THE MOTLEY CADAVER'

Fashion’s inevitable decay, the concomitant changing aesthetics of appearance brought on by time and use is something that is charged with potent symbolism. Traditionally fine clothing is a marker of social status. The term respectable, for instance is connected to dressing in a proper way. The fashion vernacular historically aligns negative associations with a change in condition, phrases ‘dressed in rags’ or ‘in tatters’ are maligned states, in which clothing and its deterioration are linked, historically, to the declining morals of man.

This paper considers the ephemeral, fugitive nature of fashion in the context of documenting and presenting the history of design. Garments breaking down physically defy their original functions of wearability, the ideal image of attractiveness and overt display.

The act of collecting, selecting, preserving and in turn displaying fashion, within the context of a public collection, provides a form of immortality for the ‘dated’.  Extending the ephemeral, confronts the issues about the very nature of fashion, the design ideas that relate to a time and place. However, if fashion exhibitions can only offer a random sampling of the best condition garments, unfortunately then the most used and perhaps the most successful, are discarded due to a lack of newness, are destined to languish in storage awaiting conservation, or perhaps remain in permanent incarceration, are totally dismissed, never seen. A primary reason for this situation relates to the defining factor of selection-condition and the consequent appearance of garments or their remains. This is perhaps a far more complex issue due to the expectations placed on a fashion collection to provide the museum with the glamorous images of celebrity culture, desire, and ultimately success.

Over the past decade the fashion exhibition has become a major cultural phenomenon. Popularity generated through a mixture of slick marketing, extensive conservation, styling, theatrical and multimedia effects, producing an extraordinary experience and making big revenue for museums worldwide. Here the missing pieces are described or replaced, petticoats are remade, and accessories are assembled, and to further create a sense of completeness garments are dressed on mannequins. This constructed or imposed newness placed on objects to look good in an exhibition, understandably gives these garments a seductive veneer but also translates into a fairly bland offering where everything starts to look the same.
 
This paper proposes a parallel exhibition dialogue and witness experience, which considers the detritus. This approach would perhaps create a path leading away from the traditional vista of the museum spectacle or the department store gaze. Within this context the deterioration of a garment is read other than a conservation issue. The radical and irreversible changes that occur through decay propose a framework to consider design the continuing breakdown creates a disorder that cannot be contained, one that symbolically challenges the authority of the museum itself.

Title of abstract from:
Benjamin, W trs H.Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin 1999, The Arcades Project,     
Belknap Press, London.