Fashion Fictions

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Jun Takahashi for Undercover, "Ensemble," Fall/Winter 2017-18 (courtesy Undercover)

I worked for a designer in my early twenties who had a favourite joke he liked to repeat, describing his collections as “retro with a look to the future.” I was reminded of the humour and absurdity of this obvious contradiction as I toured Fashion Fictions, the Vancouver Art Gallery’s dazzling and ambitious summer exhibition, on view until Oct. 9. The ways that fashion considers temporalities – both past and future, often in the same piece – are very much on display. 

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Caroline Monnet, “Echoes from a Near Future,” 2022

inkjet print mounted on aluminum (courtesy the artist)

The exhibition’s focus is experimental design, exploring research-creation practices that emphasize what materials can do. National designers are featured, such as Kwagiulth-Squamish artist Pamela Baker and Anishinaabe-French artist Caroline Monnet, demonstrating the wealth of contemporary Indigenous design and wearable art. 

Yet much of the show is international in scope. High profile pieces from American designer Rick Owens and Georgian designer Demna Gvasalia – with works from his collections with Vetements and Balenciaga – mingle with the brilliance of Japanese designers Jun Takahashi, Rei Kawakubo and Junya Watanabe, among many others. 

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Maiko Takeda, “Atmospheric Reentry,” 2014

acetate, acrylic resin and metal (courtesy the artist, photo by Bryan Huynh)

The show is not a historical survey as it mostly spans the last decade. Among the earliest works is Maiko Takeda’s Atmospheric Reentry, a 2014 headpiece composed of hundreds of colour-gradient acetate spikes that glimmer as they repel, like a bird made from razor-sharp crystals. Bjork donned these pieces on the cover of her 2015 Vulnicura album and the subsequent music video. Photographed by the acclaimed duo Inez & Vinoodh, the Icelandic singer is majestic. Her spiky armour emits an aura that is almost religious; she is captivating and untouchable.

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Craig Green for Moncler Genius, Ensemble, “5 Moncler Craig Green” collection, Fall/Winter 2018

micro ripstop nylon and cotton down (courtesy Moncler)

The room dedicated to puffer fashion is a highlight of the exhibition. It’s just around the corner from a wall-mounted sneaker display connected to a flashy computerized catalogue featuring dozens of the most ingenious designs from the last decade. Taken together, they invite us to consider the influence of streetwear on high fashion. How did the once-nerdy quilted jacket, formerly the domain of outdoors enthusiasts, become the epitome of fashion? 

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Goom Heo for Goomheo, Pleated Look, “Chaos is our Comfort Zone” collection, Spring/Summer 2022 (courtesy Goomheo)

In this room, designs from Korea’s Goom Heo, alongside pieces by Gvasalia and Owens, show the puffer as anything but a practical coat. It takes the form of shoes, bags and capes in overblown silhouettes. The material’s luscious volume and ability to hold its shape is underlined by its hilarious practicality. Here, the puffer is the most forward-thinking garment in fashion, pointing to design’s preoccupation with the future. 

Maybe you, like me, once imagined that in “the future” we might zip around in flying cars, order meals from robots and have homes in outer space. (I watched The Jetsons a lot). So much of this thinking is dashed as we age, but fashion keeps such speculative fictions alive. 

The show’s three thematic sections, Material Futures, Aesthetic Prophesies and Responsible Visions, investigate how to build a sustainable future through wearable art. Funnily, perhaps because of the futures we dreamed about as children, this future focus feels like a cliché buried in the past. What about the present?

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Yimeng Yu, “Curvature Collection: IronThrone,” 2022

digital image (courtesy the artist)

The exhibition ends with a small section on digital fashion. These are clothes that only exist virtually, worn by social media avatars or sold as NFTs. Works from the Netherlands-based digital couture house, The Fabricant, are celebrated alongside British designer Taskin Goec, who makes both digital and physical clothes. This closing section allows us to ponder the culture of waste associated with physical fashion. But it is not critical, or perhaps is unaware, of digital waste. 

Information and communication technologies encompassing digital fashion are responsible for almost four per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions. To celebrate a fashion NFT is to ignore that its mere minting consumes the same amount of electricity as powering an average family household for about 47 days.

I enjoyed the theme of speculative futures and, if you can’t tell, I love fashion. But as a gallery exhibition, Fashion Fictions is light in concept. The fashion is dazzling, even overwhelming, but I wonder, given our present circumstances, how to realize these imagined futures. ■

Fashion Fictions at the Vancouver Art Gallery from May 27 to Oct. 9, 2023.

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