Approaches to fashion

[Faust]

Ah, and here I thought that the ultimate failure of art is bad art. Silly me.

[525252]

well, I don't know. Glorified bad art is a failure of art. Good art which is bought and put into storage because the multibillionaire who now owns it is only really interested in re-selling it: also a failure of art. Which of those is more or less tragic is not really a concern to me, you can take the cake if you want.

[laika]

well, I don't know. Glorified bad art is a failure of art. Good art which is bought and put into storage because the multibillionaire who now owns it is only really interested in re-selling it: also a failure of art. Which of those is more or less tragic is not really a concern to me, you can take the cake if you want.

it would be interesting to compare the aims and failures of art and fashion, relative to their larger programs (i.e., not what a particular designer is trying to do with a particular collection, but what the greater possibilities and aims of fashion are, etc.)...when and how does fashion fail? or maybe it always, inevitably fails? i kind of agree with you about that type of private ownership being the great tragedy of art, since, among other things, it prevents art from being seen. on the other hand there is fashion, which is always privately and elitely owned, and never "general access"... i suppose some collaborations try to address that, but in that regard, most of them fail on multiple registers. And of course, buying a piece from a collab still comes down to private ownership...

sorry for the run-on thinking.

[525252]

when and how does fashion fail? or maybe it always, inevitably fails?

clothing does not inevitably fail because it possesses intrinsic value and purpose

Interesting that I find these are two points of view which do not contradict each other- Fashion always fails, it is designed to fail because it is only successful for the limited time that it is new. Clothing never fails unless it is excess.

(to be continued later)

[laika]

much closer to this issue is the uncertainty people feel in making alterations to what they own for fear of affecting either 'the designer's intent' or, even more hilariously, the value. do you recall that post some years back when a person seemed mortified at the concept of removing drkshdw tags from the shirts, citing potential difficulty in resale down the road?

economy of exchange value confronts economy of desire, in the individual no less. properly absurd, but a great anecdote. even more absurd that it's drkshdw.

only on SZ have i observed this behavior of buying fashion in the moment with keen consideration of resale possibilities in the future. but maybe i'm wrong? it seems like an interesting economic study, nonetheless...

[Patroklus]

at this point it might be more artistic to leave the signature off of it
you know, when people want to ask the question about fashion being art, i just point out that duchamp's urinal is almost a hundred years old and tell them i'm not very interested in that question anymore. people attach too much damn value to the label of "art" and will make distinctions between art and fine art and stuff that merely has artistic aspirations because it's necessary in their eyes for art to be good and meaningful but i'm comfortable accepting something as being art and being meaningless drivel at the same time

it's off topic but that's my approach to video games too
"is it art"
yes, but it's awful. read a book.

do you recall that post some years back when a person seemed mortified at the concept of removing drkshdw tags from the shirts, citing potential difficulty in resale down the road?

i have a y's jacket i've been meaning to put in classifieds for months (that's a hint it's size 1 = tru 46 hmu) because it doesn't fit me and that's kind of the crux. i only buy garments that move me, selling is for garments that didn't fit. i think we know my opinions on the value of money, i just want to get cool clothes and wear them into the ground

i keep drkshdw tags tho i like dangling straps
maybe i'll start leaving the price tags on em too

[trentk]

at this point it might be more artistic to leave the signature off of it
you know, when people want to ask the question about fashion being art, i just point out that duchamp's urinal is almost a hundred years old and tell them i'm not very interested in that question anymore. people attach too much damn value to the label of "art" and will make distinctions between art and fine art and stuff that merely has artistic aspirations because it's necessary in their eyes for art to be good and meaningful but i'm comfortable accepting something as being art and being meaningless drivel at the same time

The question "is this art?" always strikes me as ridiculous... as if the world could be cut in binary oppositional fashion into art and not art.... .
Better to ask: where/how/to-what-extent does art express itself in fashion (or x potentially artistic domain) and conversely (this portion can sometimes be more interesting) where/how/to-what-extent does fashion (or x) express itself in art?

Actually, I am curious to ask, seeing as I don't think I've seen it asked on this forum: where is the fashion in art? how does fashion appear in art?
(of course... a facet of this question is implicitly answered whenever experience with art - or, in the general case, a domain outside of fashion - reinforces, modifies, potentiates, synchronizes with, counterpoints etc... fashion-experience)

to illustrate what I mean, here's an example of music expressing itself in visual art. especially in the works (http://jorindevoigt.com/blog/?p=4185) where voigt explicitly "translates" a piece of music to images.

[trentk]

whether clothing should be treated with the same amount of inquiry and analysis that is traditionally reserved for the realm of fine art.

Don't forget, there's also the closely related (and, I think more interesting) question: how do you analyze clothing/fashion? simply grafting fine art, or semiotic, or sociological etc... methods onto clothing/fashion doesn't work, you need to adapt methods to fit the object in question. Francois Laruelle's non-standard aesthetics* could be interesting here... but I don't currently know his work well enough to speculate as to what light it could shed on fashion.

off topic, but, bsr, christian, fumma etc... what type of reputation does laruelle have in france? (for the record, I'm not especially interested in his project... just thought it might be interesting in the context of fashion analysis methodology.)

*"Non-standard aesthetics is creative and inventive and its genre is that of a philo-fiction, a philosophical artistic genre that strives to make a work with pure and abstract though, but not to create concepts parallel to artistic works like the Spinozist Deleuze proposes (even if that was a giant step toward a non-standard aesthetics)." - Laruelle, photo-fiction

[Patroklus]

ey
the part about signatures was significant bcuz i see a lot of duchamp devontionalism in supposedly very modern art and it kills me because it's 2013 and the urinal was signed in 1917
seriously fuck signatures
pls include that in your quote

Don't forget, there's also the closely related (and, I think more interesting) question: how do you analyze clothing/fashion?

i've been meaning to put together a required reading list that details a few textbooks that i feel do a good job outlining pattern drafting and draping and sewing as disciplines and gives a little insight into why i (and other people who have my esteemed and brilliant and correct foresight) love certain designers and do not care for others into context.
it's currently 12:24am but hey i'll get back to you brb

[525252]

i think the question posed in the beginning of the thread, and what led to it in the first place was whether clothing should be treated with the same amount of inquiry and analysis that is traditionally reserved for the realm of fine art. in terms of whether it is or isn't considered to be fine art, i agree - that is sort of irrelevant.

apparently, asking if "art" is even art is a redundant question, according to Arthur Danto

Actually, I am curious to ask, seeing as I don't think I've seen it asked on this forum: where is the fashion in art? how does fashion appear in art?

again, from Danto for The Nation:

Abstract painting, which came about as an effort to transform the world, reached a point where it was used simply to fill museums...The museum [MoMA] was begun to support abstraction, but now abstraction is just another style.

I wrote a terrible essay in my first year of art school which attempted to answer this question, I've been meaning to transpose it into a post to put in the "minimalism in fashion" thread because while the writing is shit, the idea is there.

edit: and here it is

[Faust]

i think the question posed in the beginning of the thread, and what led to it in the first place was whether clothing should be treated with the same amount of inquiry and analysis that is traditionally reserved for the realm of fine art. in terms of whether it is or isn't considered to be fine art, i agree - that is sort of irrelevant.

Exactly. And we still don't have a compelling "yes."

An interesting side question opens up about the role of museums. They have accepted fashion wholeheartedly, and have been ridiculed by art critics and academics for it to no end. Is the reason mere crowd gratification and do they think it's all a sham too? In this case aren't continuous Andy Warhol exhibitions and the like also crowd pleasers? Do we then stop taking museums seriously altogether?

[BSR]

off topic, but, bsr, christian, fumma etc... what type of reputation does laruelle have in france? (for the record, I'm not especially interested in his project... just thought it might be interesting in the context of fashion analysis methodology.)

very very bad (apart on the side of his cult's followers)

[Chant]

i should probably read to rid myself of ignorance, but on the surface this sounds like fluff. what is an idea if it cannot be verbalized (or explained in some way) ? sounds like confusion and vagueries ...

Question was not if it was true or not, but if this conception had an influent posterity.
Nevertheless :

Au principe [...] se trouve [...] le dualisme fondamental du langage et de la pensée. L'axiome du style est donc celui-ci : il y a plusieurs façons de dire la même chose, des manières que le style distingue. La légitimité de la notion traditionnelle de style dépend donc de ce dualisme. Ainsi le style, au sens d'ornement et d'écart, présuppose-t-il la synonymie (exemple : Les Exercices de style de Queneau).

Trentk : I'm always puzzled that you're loosing your time swimming in the French contemporary philosophy foam instead of reading/working the classics. Wouldn't say that it is the best pedagogical way to master a field.

[trentk]

525252 - yes, there is that type of fashion ("what is trendy") in art. I guess I'm more interested in the moments where an artist does things or thinks thoughts that a fashion designer could do/think. Representing the body in art, "engineering new materials", making 3-dimensional forms out of 2-dimensional materials etc...

Christian - my interest in contemporary french philosophy is almost entirely a thing of the past, which is why I attached the disclaimer "for the record, I'm not especially interested in his project... ". I spend most of my time studying math, physics, and computer science now.... with just a touch of philosophy (Bill Lawvere's essays on category theory and hegelian dailectics, Alexander Grothendieck's Recoltes et Semailles etc).

[MJRH]

And, by the way, I have always spoke of fashion "as something that elevates ordinary clothing via narrative channeled through it by the designer." Is fashion at its best not exactly this? And isn't it what you are saying yourself when you sing the praises of Carpe Diem?

at its most compelling, the forum explores the subject/object relationship in clothing like very few places out there. the development of personal aesthetics in terms of our navigation through certain psychological processes, which are the building blocks of the self is a subject that, to me at least, seems more interesting than fashion as you have defined it.

merz, do you see these views as irreconcilable? for example wouldn't an Ann D piece bought by Faust that was originally part of a narrative structure become for him, upon his wearing it, a snapshot of a psychological process that he appreciates?—because if so, i fail to see how the narrative's origin in Ann would devalue the inherent worth of the process you've described so well. or inversely, when you talk of CD aren't you merely shifting the authorship of the narrative channel from designer to wearer? why is that shift so valuable, for you? (obvious caveat, we're not discussing the trope of rich-kid-wears-X or where Altieri got his hair did, we're talking spiritual symbiosis as a result of deep sympathy for a designer.) i understand the difference between what Faust said and what you did, but if anything yours seems like more of an elaboration on than a contradiction of his dictum. i really liked rilu's poetry analogy...

maybe we could start analyzing this topic by focusing on the relationship which merz brought up above.
on the one hand, there is the designer (the author). on the other hand, there is the wearer (the consumer, the reader, the interpreter).
now, if you think of an artist in fine arts or in literature, my stance is that the author in those fields is just the first reader, just the first interpreter of his/her own work, but not necessarily better in that. that's why biographical details from the poet's life don't (or shouldn't, in my view) play a role in interpreting their poems. (i'm aware that not everyone would agree with this, but i'm ready to defend this position if anyone finds it controversial and worth discussing).
now, in the context of pop culture, it seems that the author (say, a musician) isn't that detachable from their work. the way in which a song is performed, presented, the choice of the medium, of the label, of the interaction with the audience, the intention of the author play a role in the way how we perceive their work, and how we value it.

where does fashion designer stand here? how important is the intention of the designer in our interpretation of their work, or is the link between the clothes and their relevance for the (challenge directed at) zeitgeist rather in the relation between the wearer and the clothes, while the designer's intentions remain irrelevant for this?

...but, again, why the either/or distinction? seems like a false dichotomy. isn't saying that a poet's life is irrelevant to a reading of their poems as reductive as insisting that biographical trivia be brought to bear on every reading? (i really am interested in your defense of this, rilu.) and as with fashion, so with literature: the main point should be measuring oneself against the work, having a personal reaction to the work. whether that's informed by knowledge of the poet's life or the narrative intent of the designer is irrelevant to the richness of the interpretation, which is the crux of why i don't understand why merz thinks his interpretation of fashion/clothing(/jawnz) need be at odds with Faust's.

also, Faust: "I taught texts from both sides of the argument in consecutive weeks at Parsons in order to totally confuse my students"

ps, wanted to echo the thanks to Christian & BSR for their excellent points on Augustine and Barthes, illuminating posts both