Of all the artistic genres, fashion has been slapped with the worst condemnation: frivolity. It's a discipline of flounces and featherweight chiffons, seemingly all surface and no substance. It doesn't help that its main archives are glossy pages of style rags,... [more]

Of all the artistic genres, fashion has been slapped with the worst condemnation: frivolity. It's a discipline of flounces and featherweight chiffons, seemingly all surface and no substance. It doesn't help that its main archives are glossy pages of style rags, home to legions of commercial advertisements and precious little intellectual commentary. And yet, fashion is the art form that gets most deeply under our skin -- perhaps because it's the one that sits closest to it. The art of apparel is entrenched in our cultural memories; ever since prehistoric cultures discovered that clothing could be used for embellishment as well as utility, fashion has inspired a primal response. We see the Dior peplum, the Norell sheath, the Galliano embroidery, and we are moved. In a sense, clothing is the most personal art form, because it expresses a vision of the individual self, what place we would like to occupy in the cultural landscape, or what new worlds we dream of inhabiting. Clothing is part social signifier, part delicious fantasy. Truly, fashion is the artistic discipline that combines all others. The sweeping folds of a Versace gown speak to sculpture; the precisely engineered cut belies an architectural sensibility; the fabric is simply another canvas on which the designer paints his stitches. And we ourselves become integrated into the art as we wear and watch others wear. Fashion is at once visual and tactile, interactive and accessible. [show less]