I was waiting for a fashion exhibition like this! MIRROR MORROR, FASHION & THE PSYCHE, curated by Elisa De Wyngaert,is shown simultaneously in Mode Museum in Antwerp and in Museum Dr. Guislain in Ghent, until 26th February 2023. https://www.momu.be/en/exhibitions/mirror-mirror
As explained in the introduction, it explores the connections between fashion, psychology, self-image, and identity. Unlike other fashion exhibitions focusing on garments, this one tells the story of the human body beneath the clothes. Can the dress empower the wearer and give him/her mental protection? What are the contemporary ideals of beauty, if any? These are the questions addressed by the curators.
The exhibition is arranged in three sections, each occupying its own, separate space.
The first one focuses on the relationship between human body and the dress, highlighting the fact that it can shape the body and the space around it.
This is no novelty in the history of fashion. After all, for hundreds of years corsets were used, shoulders were padded, crinolines and bustles were worn. All this to give the figure a slightly altered shape and proportions, bringing them closer to the ideal of beauty in force at the time. And the latter changed frequently, making more and more demands on people. Interesting reflections can be read in the comments on this part of the exhibition. Did you know that psychiatrists paid attention to disorders of body image as early as the 19th century.
Someone suffering with body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) thinks obsessively about their appearance or features that they consider ugly or abnormal……. People with BDD often spend hours a day trying to fix or hide certain parts of themselves and frequently examine their appearance in the mirror.
Sounds so familiar regarding millions of social media users, applying filters to improve their image. Online beauty demands are very high and to comply with them digital alterations are needed. Alas, they erase individual traces, leading towards image uniformization. In selfie culture everyone begins to look the same and the emotional price for it is high as many people wrongly consider themselves ugly.
How does contemporary fashion addresses these issues? Issey Miyake reached for the Japanese concept of ma (space in-between) making pleated coats for his spring /summer collection 1995.
Molly Goddart used 80 running meters of tulle to create voluminous, layered dresses allowing the wearers to hide within and to annex more space around them, spring/summer 2020.
Walter van Beirendonck and Erwin Wurm created their Cloud collection in 2012 which consisted of surrealistically shaped but wearable outfits, distanced from real body forms and proportions.
And of course, Rei Kawakubo’s designs for Comme des Garsons. This well-known collection, Body Meets Dress, Dress Meets Body, was created in 1997. The silhouettes are slightly deformed as if exaggerating the “imperfections” of human body in real life, except this time they were celebrated and proudly shown – breasts too small and located too low, irregular hips, deposits of fat tissue, unexpected bumps, shoulders disobeying perfect proportions and so on.
The second room explores the changing concept of human replicas – the dolls of all shapes and sizes, old and new. Dolls or mannequins, often found spooky due to their ambiguity between living and lifeless, have been used to convey fashion ideas in Europe since at least the 14th century. They were doing the same job human fashion models do today. The oldest example of such fashion doll at Momu is a French doll (1760) presenting ceremonial court dress from Versailles.
There is also more recent example – 1954 doll with its 115-piece collection of London based House of Lachasse. Not spooky at all, very cute instead.
With time, dolls became a powerful tool to express criticism about the society and its moral condition. Two thought provoking and emotionally disturbing ones are included in the exhibition – Half-doll by Hans Bellmer (1972). At first it looks like a broken toy but looking closer, all missing or misplaced body parts are noticed. It looks macabre. With these dolls Bellmer conducted his dispute with nazi propaganda which adored healthy, strong, and fertile female bodies.
Another one is rather provoking work of Sarah Lucas, a series titled Bunny Girls consisting of female sculptures in very uncomfortable poses, expressing suffering and despair and equipped with such feminine attributes like high heels and large breasts. The very title of the series, clearly referring to Playboy’s bunnies is a critical comment to patriarchal social order, often putting women in vulnerable and uncomfortable positions.
The final space is where the physical body is replaced with digital image. You have been able to see them in video games and animated films for the last few years. Recently avatars made it to fashion industry, which is scary because these bodies do not exist and may convey completely wrong message about what we should want to look like. The exhibition ends with video installation “Ribbons” by Ed Atkins with many close ups of a digital male character.
Overall, I found the exhibition quite profound, touching very contemporary issues and putting fashion in the context that is rarely brought up to our attention. If it was up to me, I would bring teenagers to visit it or at least I would make them read the comments and reflections displayed there. It can save someone’s sanity to understand that there is no such thing as perfect body!