Art School á la mode

In the realm of fashion, there are some distinctions to be made.

There’s fashion, and then there’s Fashion: i.e., commerce is to art what the Gap is to Givenchy. And yet neither is taken as seriously as, say, painting or architecture, though fashion is usually the medium that’s the clearest cultural indicator of “the now.” Because its nature is indefinite — think of the fluidity of silk versus the solidity of brick — fashion rarely matters in Serious Art Discourse. As Susan Sidlauskas wrote in the exhibition catalogue for the Intimate Architecture exhibition of 1982, one of the first exhibitions of costume in a museum, that “as a design discipline, clothing routinely has been considered the frivolous sibling to responsible architecture and pragmatic industrial design.”

But when fashion meets art school, where the edicts we see in Vogue are second to the power of self-expression via one’s chosen media, the complexities multiply: With a program that focuses more on studio expertise than marketing lessons, fashion students at SAIC learn an art and a trade at once. They create eccentric wearable art and simultaneously amass solid garment-construction career skills.

The extraordinary talent of 65 such students was on display at the 2003 installment of the Fashion Department’s annual runway extravaganza, which took place last May in the SAIC Ballroom. Fashion 2003 featured individual outfits by sophomores and collections of three and five from juniors and seniors, respectively — on professional models amid the kind of lights, music, video, and sound that screams glamour. The models stalked the runway in the exactly the same authoritative, one blink-and-you’ll-miss it manner one imagines models do.

But the whirlwind splendor of the show wasn’t nearly as stunning as the clothes themselves. Without exception, they were marked by incredible craftsmanship that could dazzle even the jaded intellectual, the fashion-clueless, and the anti-materialist. As anyone who has ever so much as hemmed a pair of trousers knows, the intricate beauty of couture is easy to appreciate.

This is not to say that the majority of designs were well-made interview suits or dresses for tea with Grandma. These were clothes for iconoclasts. Incongruous, yet brilliantly executed amalgamations of style were everywhere: Coral Marie McLain’s long black satin and green ultrasuede coat, paired with a nylon minidress and high stiletto boots, topped with an orange nipple-pointed hat, looked elfin and mod all at once. Abby Sturges bedecked the ’80s club kid slumming at a tiki bar with an iridescent purple and green “hula honey” dress. SiHyang Park’s tropical-chic confections, alluring messes of pleats and gathers in Thai silk and georgette, were mesmerizing in their intricacy, yet they conveyed a nonchalance that perfectly exemplifies unstudied elegance.

One of the most dynamically avant-garde collections was by junior Lara Miller. Her garments, all made of natural fibers, included a long, grey boned wool jersey gown with bulbous growths that billowed around the model’s body. Such extraneous shapes, which augment the body rather than enhance or flatter it, were reminiscent of work by the new wave of Japanese fashion that rocked the industry in the ’80s and ’90s, when designers like Rei Kawakubo made clothes that move independently of the wearer. Miller says she is concerned with the difference between motion and animation: the former connotes action, while the latter entails evolution.

Taking a more traditional, unabashedly luxe route, Maja Haraslic combined red velvet and yellow upholstery with square design detailing, notably a floor-grazing full skirt and matching, high-collared fitted coat, while a bare little camisole top kept the look youthful amid so much heaviness. Others integrated tradition into innovation, re-working everyday, utilitarian elements of clothing. Anna Fifer’s military-inspired collection included a men’s design that redefined the cargo pant. She added cartoonishly large, khaki envelope-like pockets all over a pair of dark-green fleece trousers. She paired them with a hooded coat screenprinted with an Israeli flag, an undershirt trimmed with fringe, and a hand-knit arm piece, infusing soldierly staples with irreverent wit.

R’amon-Lawrence Allen Coleman’s designs are for the woman whose love of fine tailoring is matched only by her confidence to wear leather panties and a perforated face harness. Coleman, who graduated in June with numerous design awards, presented five shockingly sexy ensembles that also included sky blue crocodile-print embossed bustier atop a floaty cotton pleated skirt. Fellow senior Christopher Shields’ extremely wearable, yet no less sexy collection, inspired by the graphic nature of Robert Mapplethorpe’s work, especially “the idea of a line that trails around the body,” recalled the ’80s in all the best ways: vivid jewel tones, shimmering metallics, and severe, precise tailoring juxtaposed with blouson tops.

If any common threads (pun intended) can be found in the whole of Fashion 2003, it is a concern with structure, specifically with how the clothing relates to the body. The architectural concerns of some designers were particularly evident, including those of F News’ own art director Wilson Tjuatja Widjaja and senior Deirdre Carrigan. Widjaja contrasted a nylon and mesh wisp of a dress with the stuff of furniture and buildings: he embellished the grey dress with white wood paillettes, and built a white birchwood veneer vest lined in white leather, as well as strappy sandals in gleaming steel and white leather. The stiffness of the vest and square pailletes stood out starkly against the fluidity of the dress, looking radically fresh.

Carrigan’s designs were inspired by the work of Richard Nickel, a photographer and preservationist of Chicago buildings who died on a salvage mission for abandoned, demolished architectural treasures. Her boxy jumper and coats juxtaposed with stripped and frayed under-layers are lyrical interpretations of exploration of a decaying structure. Thus Carrigan’s clothes create an intriguing complication of the links between fashion and architecture.

Of this dichotomy, fashion historian Holly Brubach has said that fashion represents a feminine aesthetic and architecture a masculine one:

“Architecture has been revered and accorded a place in the history of art, [and] fashion has been dismissed as inconsequential. Buildings, made of concrete and stone, are ‘permanent,’ while clothes, made of fabric, are ephemeral. Architecture’s scale is public, while fashion’s is intimate. Architecture is high-minded and serious; fashion, mindless and capricious.”

If art itself has traditionally been ruled by patriarchy, Carrigan and her SAIC fashion compatriots are set to turn Serious Art Discourse on its head with an often-dismissed medium to consider.