On the concept of Radical Fashion

IVO MILAN — Comme des Garçons, Spring/Summer 2018

In 2001, Claire Wilcox, curator at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, inaugurated an exhibition destined to leave its mark on the history of contemporary fashion: Radical Fashion.

Eleven designers, from different cultures and backgrounds, were brought together in the same exhibition not because they shared a common style or language, but because they were united by their ability to challenge the conventions of fashion and, through it, those of society.

Among them were Rei Kawakubo / Comme des Garçons, Junya Watanabe, Issey Miyake, Martin Margiela, Yohji Yamamoto and Vivienne Westwood. All designers who, over the years, have been featured or hosted by IVO MILAN.

IVO MILAN window — Issey Miyake, 2005

The choice of the term radical, adopted by Wilcox, is significant.

Beyond indicating a decisive shift, a break from what had been seen before, it described collections deeply rooted in a personal and complex creative project.

Each of these designers interpreted the garment through different and multifaceted aspects of personality, capturing traits that could reveal and express themselves precisely through what one wears.

No longer, therefore, a means of displaying a recognizable status through adherence to different seasonal trends, but rather an intellectual and creative challenge: the garment becomes a driving extension of the personality of the person who wears it.

Although linguistically reminiscent of it, the concept of Radical Fashion has therefore nothing to do with the expression Radical Chic and its negative and contradictory connotations.

More than twenty years after the London exhibition, despite the many rapid changes that fashion has undergone, the meanings of Radical Fashion continue to describe the “IVO MILAN way” of imagining and selecting seasonal collections, according to criteria that have remained constant over time: aesthetic emotion, the courage to embrace even the most daring garments, and openness towards lesser-known and less-travelled creative languages.

A pioneering way of understanding fashion, free from the reassuring seasonal trends and well-trodden paths, faithful to the expectations and sensibility of its independent audience.

IVO MILAN — Junya Watanabe, Spring/Summer 2017