Fabrics that lie. Prints that look three dimensional but are flat.
Bodies that are skewed and warped by their enclosing garments.
Garment shapes that defy their own laws.
Clothing that does not seem real.
Fashion fits between reality and illusion: reassuringly tangible one moment and evading our expectations the next. Fantastical garments can be created through the use of shape, trompe l’oeil and optical prints, allowing the discovery of an alternative version of reality. The opportunity to question perceptions of fashion and the fashioned body has led a new generation of designers to experiment with illusion and visual manipulation.
R.L. Gregory, a distinguished scholar of visual perception and illusion, has broken optical illusions into four types: ambiguity, distortion, paradox and fiction. The exhibition will explore these categories, both through the objects on show and through the displays themselves, which will use optical illusions to navigate the deceptions, tricks and manipulations that clothing plays out with our bodies as conspirators.
The exhibition will be a platform for emerging British talents and their explorations into the illusory nature of dress. By presenting work from fashion graduates from Central St Martins College of Arts and Design, London College of Fashion and Edinburgh College of Art who explore visual distortions and contradictions in their work, this exhibition will not only look at how we view fashion, but how we can be tricked by it. Inspired by the dialogue between fashion and optical illusion, the objects on show will be displayed in ways that support the audience in interrogating what they see, discovering our curatorial deceptions and the gaps in their own perception. This contradiction, created by contrasting what the viewer expects to see with what they actually see, will encourage curiosity, increasing the enjoyment of the visitor and satisfying the need for unusual experiences, inherent within us all.
As curators of dress it is important that we recognise the multiple and contradictory messages that can be encoded within garments, in their very seams and surfaces. MA Fashion Curation at London College of Fashion is the only fashion specific curatorial course in the world. The course offers a unique opportunity to investigate and develop the specialist practice-based, critical and interpretative skills involved within the discipline of fashion curation.
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