The other day, I decided to take a little trip down to London to visit my big sis, Emma, who has just recently moved down there to start her MA in Journalism at LCC. We shopped, partied and had lots of fun, but I also wanted to do something productive and worth while so I dragged her along to Somerset House for the SHOWstudio exhibition, ‘Fashion Revolution’.
The first thing we were greeted with was the dreaded room of mirrors (warning: not suitable for the body conscious!) followed by a giant polystyrene sculpture of Naomi Campbell, on which exhibition visitors can post their thoughts or doodle using a digital screen and a projector.
Visitor participation and interactivity was a key theme to the exhibition, with live photo shoots and model castings using SHOWstudio viewers, as well as interactive screens and a highlight of mine which consisted of a seat and a telephone; at selected times during the exhibition, visitors can use the telephone to contact various different models who have been styled by Simon Foxton using garments by various different designers.
Emma’s highlight was the ‘Sound of Clothes: Synaesthesia’ an extremely interesting concept which incorporates image and music to describe clothes: using one of Nick Knights photographs of a Balenciaga jacket, Composer, Nick Ryan and a full on orchestra interpreted a different element of the garment with a different sound depending on the textures and surfaces! Amazing!
Film is an extremely big part of SHOWstudio projects and experiments, and there is an intensive archive of fashion film available to view at the exhibition (I could literally have stayed there for hours and hours) from the surreal fashion fantasises to those with an important political and moral message, pioneered by many iconic figures within the industry, such as Vivienne Westwood, Gareth Pugh, Viktor and Rolf, Nick Knight, Ruth Hogben, Kate Moss, Tim Walker…the list goes on…
The link between fashion and film is a huge interest of mine (Emma had mixed thoughts though, describing some of the short films as ‘too Zoolanderish’) and SHOWstudio has been a great source of inspiration… [Reflection: I think it would make a fantastic topic for my dissertation which I am to write this year…]
