Geoff Coupe's Blog

Reflections on life at “De Witte Wand”…

Good Art, Bad Art…

Alright, I know that I’ve had a humour bypass over the subject of fashion. Put it down to bad experiences with fashionistas in the 1970s. But I really do not understand what anorexic females wearing fabric have to do with the meaning of life in any real sense. And now we have fashion that feels. A note: you have to skip forward about nine minutes into the video before you see anything that has evolved beyond paint-drying. From Boing-Boing’s panting review:

Fashion designer Hussein Chalayan premiered his Spring/Summer 2007 collection this week, and it’s full of Swarovski-crystal-embellished animatronic couture. The clothes wriggle, unfold, collapse, and transform by themselves. The final act in Chalayan’s show, at left: this piece began as a dress, morphed into a hat, then rained down as a cloud of Swarovski crystal dust. Hot.

Er, not. I am reminded of Boswell’s dog. And aurally quoting the soundtrack from Forbidden Planet was depressingly gauche. At least Boing-Boing didn’t plumb the depths of this review:

This was fashion addressing the subject of fashion, a dissection of our contemporary habit of recycling "vintage," and an embrace of high technology, all at the same time. It wasn’t just the uncanny sight of the self-undressing clothes (tech-genius courtesy of the team who made the hippogriff in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban) that provided the chills. That would have left it at the level of childlike entertainment. What really gave the show a disturbing sense of wake-up-to-reality was the soundtrack. Here, the changing shapes were connected to the sounds of the twentieth century—fragments of music, trench warfare, the ranting of Hitler, aerial bombing, jet engines, the beating of helicopter rotors.

Oh, for fuck’s sake. Catch yourself on, Mary, as a good friend says to me when I spout crap. It’s a fashion show, it’s not reality as the vast majority of the world knows it. You silly, silly, woman.
 

Categories:

2 responses to “Good Art, Bad Art…”

  1. Gelert Avatar
    Gelert

    You ever read Private Eye Geoff? My favourite part is the ‘crap-speak’ they highlight. You should send that in. They pay, and its a doozy.

    Reply
  2. Geoff Avatar
    Geoff

    I used to read P.E. on an occasional basis. I recall that they had, in those days, "Pseud’s Corner", which sounds like the "crap-speak" whereof you speak. I think I’d have to go to Amsterdam to find a copy of P.E. now. Newsagents in this neck of the woods will never have heard of it.

    Reply

Leave a comment

More posts