Amelia’s Magazine | Graduate Fashion Week 2010: Edinburgh College of Art

cheap medications photo by Julian Abrams” width=”480″ height=”640″ class=”aligncenter size-full wp-image-18752″ />
Conformist

Blythe house, prescription once a colossal bustling post office savings bank full of clerks’ activity now stands (almost) empty as a memorial to times past. Currently the home of not only the Victoria and Albert Archives but the British and Science Museum it double doors remain closed even to those who work in the museums. It takes a special request to get inside these vaults.

Luckily for a limited time (these doors swing back tight at the end of June) the V&A section has had its doors pushed slightly ajar by fashion curator Judith Clark and psychoanalyst Adam Philips. Together they have curated a delicate show examining ideas and understandings of dress alongside concepts of preservation in the midst of a vast archive that documents humanity’s progression.


Essential

Titled The Concise Dictionary of A Dress, the exhibition consists of 11 exhibits nestling amongst the archives, taking up position in the nooks and crannies of the ghostly building. The audience is shepherded silently though the sections of the building we were allowed to see, at times overwhelmed by the space and the delicate nature of the objects it protects. Eyes were all too often caught by the wondrous treasures awaiting selection by the V&A curators, their position elevated from number x of an extensive hoard into object A indicative of the human condition.

11 exhibits accompanied by 11 pieces of card form a mini-lexicon of dress (a concise representation of ideas of what it is to ‘dress’). Is it as comfortable suggests … or do you find yourself agreeing with Loose? Or do the words fall flat?

Armoured
Comfortable
Conformist
Creased
Essential
Fashionable
Loose
Measured
Plain
Pretentious
Tight

Words and their meanings can provide a point of conflict: at times the words on the card and the image of dress produced a harmonious moment of why people chose particular items of dress. In this moment the dictionary of a dress becomes clear as the exhibition mirrors the dictionary’s almost circular nature of providing two meanings for one word.

The curators have invited the audience into a hidden world; the vast depths of the museum. The audiences’ eye drawn to objects not in the exhibition but whose presence demands attention: Why is it there? Why did they choose this room or that cupboard? Can meanings be created between the juxtaposition of dress and the objects in the room?

A weekly definition taken from the website: MEASURED 1. Against chaos; a way of thinking about disarray; calculated excess. 2. The fitted as fitting. 3. Proportion as the mother of virtue. 4. The milder ecstasies of the considered. 5. Contained by the idea of containment.

The word and their phrases present one idea of what it is you are viewing, whilst the objects potentially visualise and neuter simultaneously them. The sentences add conflict as they embellish the meaning of the single word and the idea of why we dress, collect and preserve.

No word is mealy a word, it becomes heavy through each individual understanding of it’s context. Each interpretation of the exhibits arrived upon by our unique thought processes formed by our own experiences. It is an oddly lonely experience wandering though the locked archives looking at how meaning is embedded into objects. Can meanings be created from the idea that a function of the archive is personal, an act of preservation and eventually historical.

Creased the final exhibit presented a Junya Watanabe dress behind the bars of an old coal bunker open to the outside world. The end mimics the beginning (the first exhibit high on the roof stands a ghostly gown open to the elements, it’s resin skeleton delicate in the glare and heat of the sun) two decisions that scream against the museums usual desire to keep everything hidden, safe and in temperature controlled room to ensure the objects preservation.


Armoured

Seen against the sky scape of London, the resin dress showed just how delicate the human body, our sense of dress and concepts of who we are can be against the hard bustling ever moving city.

Take yourself on a guided walk through an unseen section of our national museums, question the ideas of preservation and the difference between the museum’s archive and your personal ‘hoard’
Watch the trailer here: the_concise_dictionary_of_dress_trailer

Trailer: The Concise Dictionary of a Dress
sales photo by Julian Abrams” width=”480″ height=”640″ class=”aligncenter size-full wp-image-18752″ />
Conformist

Blythe House, once a colossal bustling post office savings bank full of clerks’ activity now stands (almost) empty as a memorial to times past. Currently the home of not only the Victoria and Albert Archives but the British and Science Museum it double doors remain closed even to those who work in the museums. It takes a special request to get inside these vaults.

Luckily for a limited time (these doors swing back tight at the end of June) the V&A section has had its doors pushed slightly ajar by fashion curator Judith Clark and psychoanalyst Adam Philips. Together they have curated a delicate show examining ideas and understandings of dress alongside concepts of preservation in the midst of a vast archive that documents humanity’s progression.


Essential

Titled The Concise Dictionary of a Dress, the exhibition consists of 11 exhibits nestling amongst the archives, taking up position in the nooks and crannies of the ghostly building. The audience is shepherded silently though the sections of the building we were allowed to see, at times overwhelmed by the space and the delicate nature of the objects it protects. Eyes were all too often caught by the wondrous treasures awaiting selection by V&A curators, their position elevated from number x of an extensive hoard into object A indicative of the human condition.

11 exhibits accompanied by 11 pieces of card form a mini-lexicon of dress (a concise representation of ideas of what it is to ‘dress’). Is it as comfortable suggests … or do you find yourself agreeing with Loose? Or do the words fall flat?

Armoured
Comfortable
Conformist
Creased
Essential
Fashionable
Loose
Measured
Plain
Pretentious
Tight

Words and their meanings can provide a point of conflict: at times the words on the card and the image of dress produced a harmonious moment of why people chose particular items of dress. In this moment the dictionary of a dress becomes clear as the exhibition mirrors the dictionary’s almost circular nature of providing two meanings for one word.

The curators have invited the audience into a hidden world; the vast depths of the museum. The audiences’ eye drawn to objects not in the exhibition but whose presence demands attention: Why is it there? Why did they choose this room or that cupboard? Can meanings be created between the juxtaposition of dress and the objects in the room?

A weekly definition taken from the website: MEASURED 1. Against chaos; a way of thinking about disarray; calculated excess. 2. The fitted as fitting. 3. Proportion as the mother of virtue. 4. The milder ecstasies of the considered. 5. Contained by the idea of containment.

The word and their phrases present one idea of what it is you are viewing, whilst the objects potentially visualise and neuter simultaneously them. The sentences add conflict as they embellish the meaning of the single word and the idea of why we dress, collect and preserve.

No word is mealy a word, it becomes heavy through each individual understanding of it’s context. Each interpretation of the exhibits arrived upon by our unique thought processes formed by our own experiences. It is an oddly lonely experience wandering though the locked archives looking at how meaning is embedded into objects. Can meanings be created from the idea that a function of the archive is personal, an act of preservation and eventually historical.

Creased the final exhibit presented a Junya Watanabe dress behind the bars of an old coal bunker open to the outside world. The end mimics the beginning (the first exhibit high on the roof stands a ghostly gown open to the elements, it’s resin skeleton delicate in the glare and heat of the sun) two decisions that scream against the museums usual desire to keep everything hidden, safe and in temperature controlled room to ensure the objects preservation.


Armoured

Seen against the sky scape of London, the resin dress showed just how delicate the human body, our sense of dress and concepts of who we are can be against the hard bustling ever moving city.

Take yourself on a guided walk through an unseen section of our national museums, question the ideas of preservation and the difference between the museum’s archive and your personal ‘hoard.’

Watch the trailer here: The Concise Dictionary of a Dress
approved photo by Julian Abrams” width=”480″ height=”640″ class=”aligncenter size-full wp-image-18752″ />
Conformist

Blythe House, once a colossal bustling post office savings bank full of clerks’ activity now stands (almost) empty as a memorial to times past. Currently the home of not only the Victoria and Albert Archives but the British and Science Museum it double doors remain closed even to those who work in the museums. It takes a special request to get inside these vaults.

Luckily for a limited time (these doors swing back tight at the end of June) the V&A section has had its doors pushed slightly ajar by fashion curator Judith Clark and psychoanalyst Adam Philips. Together they have curated a delicate show examining ideas and understandings of dress alongside concepts of preservation in the midst of a vast archive that documents humanity’s progression.


Essential

Titled The Concise Dictionary of a Dress, the exhibition consists of 11 exhibits nestling amongst the archives, taking up position in the nooks and crannies of the ghostly building. The audience is shepherded silently though the sections of the building we were allowed to see, at times overwhelmed by the space and the delicate nature of the objects it protects. Eyes were all too often caught by the wondrous treasures awaiting selection by V&A curators, their position elevated from number x of an extensive hoard into object A indicative of the human condition.

11 exhibits accompanied by 11 pieces of card form a mini-lexicon of dress (a concise representation of ideas of what it is to ‘dress’). Is it as comfortable suggests … or do you find yourself agreeing with Loose? Or do the words fall flat?

Armoured
Comfortable
Conformist
Creased
Essential
Fashionable
Loose
Measured
Plain
Pretentious
Tight

Words and their meanings can provide a point of conflict: at times the words on the card and the image of dress produced a harmonious moment of why people chose particular items of dress. In this moment the dictionary of a dress becomes clear as the exhibition mirrors the dictionary’s almost circular nature of providing two meanings for one word.

The curators have invited the audience into a hidden world; the vast depths of the museum. The audiences’ eye drawn to objects not in the exhibition but whose presence demands attention: Why is it there? Why did they choose this room or that cupboard? Can meanings be created between the juxtaposition of dress and the objects in the room?

A weekly definition taken from the website: MEASURED 1. Against chaos; a way of thinking about disarray; calculated excess. 2. The fitted as fitting. 3. Proportion as the mother of virtue. 4. The milder ecstasies of the considered. 5. Contained by the idea of containment.

The word and their phrases present one idea of what it is you are viewing, whilst the objects potentially visualise and neuter simultaneously them. The sentences add conflict as they embellish the meaning of the single word and the idea of why we dress, collect and preserve.

No word is mealy a word, it becomes heavy through each individual understanding of it’s context. Each interpretation of the exhibits arrived upon by our unique thought processes formed by our own experiences. It is an oddly lonely experience wandering though the locked archives looking at how meaning is embedded into objects. Can meanings be created from the idea that a function of the archive is personal, an act of preservation and eventually historical.

Creased the final exhibit presented a Junya Watanabe dress behind the bars of an old coal bunker open to the outside world. The end mimics the beginning (the first exhibit high on the roof stands a ghostly gown open to the elements, it’s resin skeleton delicate in the glare and heat of the sun) two decisions that scream against the museums usual desire to keep everything hidden, safe and in temperature controlled room to ensure the objects preservation.


Armoured

Seen against the sky scape of London, the resin dress showed just how delicate the human body, our sense of dress and concepts of who we are can be against the hard bustling ever moving city.

Take yourself on a guided walk through an unseen section of our national museums, question the ideas of preservation and the difference between the museum’s archive and your personal ‘hoard.’

Watch the trailer here: The Concise Dictionary of a Dress
abortion photo by Julian Abrams” width=”480″ height=”640″ class=”aligncenter size-full wp-image-18752″ />
Conformist

Blythe House, patient once a colossal bustling post office savings bank full of clerks’ activity now stands (almost) empty as a memorial to times past. Currently the home of not only the Victoria and Albert Archives but the British and Science Museum it double doors remain closed even to those who work in the museums. It takes a special request to get inside these vaults.

viagra photo by Julian Abrams” width=”480″ height=”640″ class=”aligncenter size-full wp-image-18750″ />

Luckily for a limited time (these doors swing back tight at the end of June) the V&A section has had its doors pushed slightly ajar by fashion curator Judith Clark and psychoanalyst Adam Philips. Together they have curated a delicate show examining ideas and understandings of dress alongside concepts of preservation in the midst of a vast archive that documents humanity’s progression.


Essential

Titled The Concise Dictionary of a Dress, the exhibition consists of 11 exhibits nestling amongst the archives, taking up position in the nooks and crannies of the ghostly building. The audience is shepherded silently though the sections of the building we were allowed to see, at times overwhelmed by the space and the delicate nature of the objects it protects. Eyes were all too often caught by the wondrous treasures awaiting selection by V&A curators, their position elevated from number x of an extensive hoard into object A indicative of the human condition.

11 exhibits accompanied by 11 pieces of card form a mini-lexicon of dress (a concise representation of ideas of what it is to ‘dress’). Is it as comfortable suggests … or do you find yourself agreeing with Loose? Or do the words fall flat?

Armoured
Comfortable
Conformist
Creased
Essential
Fashionable
Loose
Measured
Plain
Pretentious
Tight

Words and their meanings can provide a point of conflict: at times the words on the card and the image of dress produced a harmonious moment of why people chose particular items of dress. In this moment the dictionary of a dress becomes clear as the exhibition mirrors the dictionary’s almost circular nature of providing two meanings for one word.

The curators have invited the audience into a hidden world; the vast depths of the museum. The audiences’ eye drawn to objects not in the exhibition but whose presence demands attention: Why is it there? Why did they choose this room or that cupboard? Can meanings be created between the juxtaposition of dress and the objects in the room?

A weekly definition taken from the website: MEASURED 1. Against chaos; a way of thinking about disarray; calculated excess. 2. The fitted as fitting. 3. Proportion as the mother of virtue. 4. The milder ecstasies of the considered. 5. Contained by the idea of containment.

The word and their phrases present one idea of what it is you are viewing, whilst the objects potentially visualise and neuter simultaneously them. The sentences add conflict as they embellish the meaning of the single word and the idea of why we dress, collect and preserve.

No word is mealy a word, it becomes heavy through each individual understanding of it’s context. Each interpretation of the exhibits arrived upon by our unique thought processes formed by our own experiences. It is an oddly lonely experience wandering though the locked archives looking at how meaning is embedded into objects. Can meanings be created from the idea that a function of the archive is personal, an act of preservation and eventually historical.

Creased the final exhibit presented a Junya Watanabe dress behind the bars of an old coal bunker open to the outside world. The end mimics the beginning (the first exhibit high on the roof stands a ghostly gown open to the elements, it’s resin skeleton delicate in the glare and heat of the sun) two decisions that scream against the museums usual desire to keep everything hidden, safe and in temperature controlled room to ensure the objects preservation.


Armoured

Seen against the sky scape of London, the resin dress showed just how delicate the human body, our sense of dress and concepts of who we are can be against the hard bustling ever moving city.

Take yourself on a guided walk through an unseen section of our national museums, question the ideas of preservation and the difference between the museum’s archive and your personal ‘hoard.’

Watch the trailer here: The Concise Dictionary of a Dress

Illustration by Emma Rockett, viagra dosage from her graduate work

So on Sunday it was down to the beautifully named Anastasia Arden-Maccabee to open the Edinburgh College of Art show on Sunday. Her fresh colour palette of a variety of pastel colours brought welcome respite from a lot of monochrome collections at Graduate Fashion Week.

Models were draped in lightweight fabrics that skimmed the knee and gave shapely silhouettes. Intricate flaps and folds had created the illusion of origami.

Making more literal use of Origami techniques was Eliza Borkowska, whose models appeared like futuristic sirens. Defining creases and thick lines shaped short dresses into artistic creations, of which Martin Margiela could even put his name to.

Charlotte Helyar’s collection was one of the most innovative and enjoyable of the week – enjoyable because it was hilarious to watch everybody scrabble for their 3D glasses as her first model appeared.

She’d made use of 3D print techniques, see – and applied them to floor-length dresses and floaty, flattering tops.


Illustration by Charlotte Helyar, from her graduate work

Emma Rockett’s collection screamed English heritage, another theme we’ve seen a lot of this week. Emma had executed it with panache. Traditional tailoring techniques were employed for candy-stripe blazers and high-waisted skirts, accessorised with up-side-down Boater hats and vibrant pink stockings.


Illustration by Emma Rockett, from her graduate work

It was Lisa Leissos who presented the most demure, sophisticated collection of this bunch. Her all-red collection of maxi-dresses and knitwear had real flare, and deeper reds were used for some classic knitwear. Sweeping lines gave the collection a very modern feel.


Illustration by Lisa Leissos, from her graduate work

A refreshing change came in the form of Alistair Nimmo’s mermaid-like goddesses. Flamenco-style fringing on skirt waists and hems created this desired effect, but a palette of nude, aqua and navy kept it contemporary and grown-up. Bustiers and jackets with circles at the chest also gave the collection a sexy edge.

Alexander White’s sweetheart necklines and tulip skirts also oozed sex appeal, while harsh tailored trouser suits contrasted this. Alexander has used an interesting technique for skirts, which had an anatomical look – God knows what it was, but I suspect it may have been organza or wool (!) weaved together in organic forms.

I also loved Isabel Wong’s layered organza jackets and dresses with olive green and nude colours; Louise Manson’s bohemian-inspired collection with synched waists, blouson sleeves and tiny knitted caps; and Louise Holgrove’s exaggerated paper-bag waists and sumptuous, heavy materials.

It was to Qi Zhang to close the show, and while I really liked her modernist collection, I didn’t think it was the best. Models wore lampshade-shaped helmets which were just about translucent enough for them to see, and her patchwork ensembles inspired by her mother made great use of a variety of materials.

While Edinburgh may not have had an outrageous show-stopper, it had technique, innovation and originality aplenty.

Splendid!

All photographs by Matt Bramford

Categories ,3D, ,Alexander White, ,Alistair Nimmo, ,Anastasia Arden-Maccabee, ,Boater hats, ,Charlotte Helyar, ,Earls Court, ,Edinburgh College of Art, ,Eliza Borkowska, ,Emma Rockett, ,English Heritage, ,Flamenco, ,Graduate Fashion Week 2010, ,Isabel Wong, ,knitwear, ,Lisa Leissos, ,london, ,Martin Margiela, ,menswear, ,Organza, ,origami, ,Qi Zhang, ,Womenswear

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