Once upon a time, fashion shows were small affairs reserved for paying customers and the upper echelons of the fashion press. Now, hundreds can attend and snap away on their phones with no intention of ever purchasing what appears on the runway. Competition has always been rife among designers, but with the social media frenzy that now exists around Fashion Month, there’s more rivalry than ever. And what better way to garner attention than by turning your show into a performance art piece?
Unlike Chanel’s elaborate airport and supermarket settings, performance art shows aim to tell a story rather than simply create a spectacle. Some turn the traditional fashion show on its head; others are a feat of human endurance that see models fainting after hours of remaining still. Some designers create the artwork themselves; others team up with performance artists known for controversy. All have one thing in common — they provide a sense of stillness to the chaos surrounding the fashion industry.
Yes, John Galliano’s theatrical finale bows and Viktor & Rolf’s Fall 2015 Haute Couture human art gallery were all great to watch, but today’s real magic lies in the show concepts with deeper meanings. These art/fashion pairings are the greatest performance pieces throughout history. Here’s hoping there are plenty more.
Performance art's fashion invasion
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Kanye West and Vanessa Beecroft
Italian performance artist Vanessa Beecroft has enjoyed a long partnership with professional loudmouth Kanye West, having designed his wedding, various album parties and now, his much-lauded fashion line. Collaborating on every single (and highly hyped) Yeezy presentation, the pair has garnered a fair share of admiration and criticism. Season 1 saw a Yeezy-clad army standing stock-still the entire time. Season 2 continued the military theme, arranging models based on their skin color with a drill sergeant directing them around the space. West’s mega album launch and Season 3 release was inspired by an image of refugees and featured a cast of 1,500 black models and extras filling up Madison Square Garden dressed in Yeezy designs and dyed secondhand clothes. The most recent collection, Season 4, involved a controversial “multiracial” casting call with the chosen models forced to stand in the blistering heat on Roosevelt Island for hours. Merging the concepts of race, female bodies and military discipline, Beecroft’s presentations (which now total 75) can be known for their grueling treatment of models. Horror stories of girls being made to stand in ill-fitting stilettos for 16 hours a day and having all of their body hair waxed off without prior warning have become commonplace. Whether it’s a statement on the torturous nature of the fashion industry (or the world on women in general) or simply an oversight on Beecroft’s part still remains to be seen.
Image: Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for Yeezy Season 4
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Riccardo Tisci and Marina Abramović
“Marina is, for me, the world,” Riccardo Tisci once said. The creative duo and longtime friends have worked together on a number of projects: an opera, a campaign and, most recently, Givenchy’s epic Spring 2016 show. Set in New York in view of the World Trade Center on the anniversary of 9/11, Serbian performance provocateur Marina Abramović orchestrated seven performers to hug, submerge themselves in water and wander aimlessly through the waiting audience. Providing a calm alternative to the usual destruction of Fashion Week, this was a different look into the mind of Abramović; an artist most well known for shocking stunts, including harming her body through whipping and carving and sitting in a chair for three months straight. Music came from six different cultures in a bid to show that tragedy can unite people of all faiths, while the debris-filled set was made from recycled materials, leaving no waste. In a note written to Tisci before the show, Abramović displayed the duo’s intentions: “The 11th of September is the most sad day in recent American history. This event that we are creating together is about forgiveness, inclusivity, new life, hope, and above all, love.” If only all fashion shows could be the same. Image: Victor VIRGILE/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images
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Alexander McQueen
In 1997, London’s enfant terrible gave Time Out a quote to remember: “I don’t want to do a cocktail party. I’d rather people left my shows and vomited.” Throughout his sadly short-lived career, Alexander McQueen delivered sensory and provocative shows, causing discomfort and wonder from his audience. Although he didn’t collaborate directly with artists, his creative inspirations and bold ingenuity caused three shows in particular to go down in history. Spring 1999 — known as No. 13 — was inspired by artist Rebecca Horn’s installation of two guns firing blood red paint. In McQueen’s mind, this became two car paint sprayers mechanically violating model Shalom Harlow in shades of black and yellow; the colors of danger. The setting of Voss, McQueen’s Spring 2001 collection, was perhaps the most controversial. Housed in a makeshift asylum, models paced the box, banging against the glass in a performance of pure anxiety. Even the designs had a hidden comment on the state of the fashion industry. Erin O’Connor’s razor shell dress fell apart as she walked with McQueen telling WWD, “The shells had outlived their usefulness on the beach, so we put them to another use on a dress. Then Erin [O’Connor] came out and trashed the dress, so their usefulness was over once again. Kind of like fashion, really.” Spring 2004, Deliverance, saw McQueen and choreographer Michael Clark team up to teach the likes of Karen Elson and Lily Cole in the ways of ballroom dancing. Many designers have used this theme since, but as with many things, McQueen was among the first. Image: Courtesy of Vogue.com
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Hussein Chalayan
The Turkish Cypriot designer has been a walking piece of performance art ever since he graduated. His 1993 Central Saint Martins collection was buried with iron filings in his back garden so that it would decompose. Surprisingly, it was still sold in its entirety, creating a new meaning to the term “luxury”. From then on, Hussein Chalayan continued to provoke emotions, whether awe from his technological advancements or shock from something like his Spring 1998 show, which combined graphic nudity and religious dress. “The way I see it, everything in fashion has been done over and over again. I decided very early on that the only way you can do something new is by using technology,” he remarked in a 2013 Dazed interview. And his illustrious career has been a testament to that very statement. Just like with his very first collection, Chalayan’s subsequent work has seen fashion become art. Ordinary-looking furniture has transformed into wooden skirts, dresses have prepared to take flight and designs have virtually disappeared from models' bodies. Now, he sees fashion’s limitations and, like so many performance artists, has turned to the world of dance, designing costumes for a 2015 ballet that tied the dancers together. Fear not, though, for Chalayan’s brilliantly conceptual work will go on as he demonstrated with his Spring 2016 dissolving designs. Image: SINEAD LYNCH/AFP/Getty Images
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Rick Owens
Rick Owens has a knack for the uncanny. Two of his recent shows have carried the same note, albeit in very distinctive ways. For Spring 2014, Owens commissioned a step dance team to model and perform on the runway. Snarling and shouting, women of all shapes and sizes demonstrated the power of the female form. Owens continued this theme through to Spring 2016 where gymnasts were bound to each other by (rather strong) ribbons. Hanging upside down in some cases, each duo took to the runway as if wearing nothing more than a lightweight chiffon gown. Instead of fashion’s usual bitch fights and cattiness, this was Owens’ take on the supportive nature of women. The “human backpacks” were a riff on a piece by well-known performance artist Leigh Bowery (coincidentally, the same man that inspired Alexander McQueen countless times). In its execution, it became Owens’ first true work of art. Image: Catwalking/Getty Images
