30 years of Japanese Fashion Exhibition in London
You have just a few days left to organize an unmissable visit to the Barbican Art Gallery in London. For several months now, Europe's largest multi-arts centre has been hosting this first European retrospective on Japanese fashion. Spanning three decades of experimentation, traces, and signs that have disrupted the history of global costume, the exhibition is curated by the most distinguished historian of Japanese fashion design, Akiko Fukai, Director of the Kyoto Costume Institute.
A deep dive into the diverse poetics of the forerunners of "made in Japan": Yohji Yamamoto, Issey Miyake, and Rei Kawakubo, known as Comme des Garçons, as well as their direct cultural heirs: Junya Watanabe, Jun Takahashi, and Tao Kurihara, to name but a few.
Supplemented by catalogues, magazines, and videos documenting the prolific collaborations formed during this period with famous representatives of other visual arts, the exhibition also features many collateral events: music, cinema, theatre, ballet, and workshops.
A rare opportunity to admire and immerse yourself in the futuristic world of the so-called Japanese school—a radical expression of the fashion world that, since the Eighties, has revealed the endless opportunities derived from basing clothing design on a complex intellectual project. In total contrast to the Western tradition, which conversely always places the human silhouette as the starting and ending point of any work, the fashion art expressions at the Barbican exhibition reveal collections shaped around aesthetic-philosophical subjects. An uncommon syncretism of traditional worlds and ultra-modern impulses, conveyed through textile skills entirely unknown in Europe, shifts clothing from its role as a fundamental daily accessory to an artistic and permanent expression of an entire era.
Future Beauty. 30 Years of Japanese Fashion
October 15th 2010 – February 6th 2011
Barbican Art Gallery, London
Catalogue
For those who cannot make it to London, we would like to highlight the opportunity to purchase the catalogue of the exhibition online: Future Beauty: 30 Years of Japanese Fashion (Merrell) by Fukai A., Vinken B., Frankel S., and Kurino H.
Furthermore, for those wishing to see or purchase the clothes of the designers exhibited at the Barbican, in addition to the extensive selection available on the www.ivomilan.it website, we would like to draw your attention to the special room section, which presents a selection of the most representative garments from the poetics of each collection. An actual “private collection” of real works of art.
