Chapters
Chapter 1: Born to Be Nature
The first materials used in clothing were bestowed on humankind by nature. Perhaps the legacy of those memories has left us infatuated with the touch and warmth of fur, and led us to adorn our clothing with bird feathers and beautiful floral patterns. Despite today’s civilisation and advances in technology, our affection and love for nature is even deeper and our desire to make nature a part of our looks has produced an even greater variety of clothing. This first chapter of this exhibition focuses on fashion employing animal products and floral patterns throughout history. Exhibits include a splendidly embroidered floral-pattern waistcoat worn by men in the eighteenth century, hats from the early twentieth century embellished with feathers and taxidermized creatures, a faux fur coat advocating an ecological approach that does without animal furs, and works by Odani Motohiko, who uses human hair as his material.
Beret with staffed bird
c.1946
©The Kyoto Costume Institute
photo: Hayashi Masayuki
Coat A/W
1988
©The Kyoto Costume Institute
photo: Koroda Takeru
Chapter 2: Dress Me Up
We find ourselves tossed to and for every day between an admiration of beauty and a feeling of failure in being able to see beauty.
The shape of clothing through the ages reveals the imaginative depiction of diverse forms of beauty which were pursued during different periods in history. Shapes include sleeves so exaggerated that they were larger than the wearer’s face, S-bend figures created with tightly laced waists, and skirts spread out so widely that the wearer could barely walk. This chapter presents dresses structured with such undergarments as corsets, crinolines, and bustles that supported the body image of the nineteenth century, works of mid-twentieth century haute couture designers such as Cristóbal Balenciaga who created designs that transcended beauty of form as fabrics and works of art, sculptural contemporary fashions from labels like Yohji Yamamoto and Jil Sander, along with exhibits introducing creativity behind the diversity of beauty revealed in the shape and form of clothing.
Evening Dress
Winter
1951
©The Kyoto Costume Institute
photo: Hatakeyama Takashi
Evening dress
S/S
1951
©The Kyoto Costume Institute
photo: Koroda Takeru
Chapter 3: Just the Way We Are
We also feel the desire to just be ourselves as we play various roles in society. Will we ever be able to realise the dream of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who, back in the eighteenth century, advocated naturalism and pursued the ideal of depicting the natural self? This chapter presents the minimal designs of garments based on our actual physical shape, and ultimate minimal fashions that revealed underwear, driven in the 1990s by brands such as Prada and Helmut Lang. These fashions resonate with photographs by Wolfgang Tillmans that reveal the everyday lives of his friends and paintings by Matsukawa Tomona that depict the reality of women living in contemporary society.
Nevertheless, I am a mother
2018
private collection
©Tomona Matsukawa, courtesy of Yuka Tsuruno Art Office
photo: Kato Ken.
Dress
A/W 2021
©The Kyoto Costume Institute
photo: Koroda Takeru
Chapter 4: Break Free
Clothing can at times bind us to its narrative. We each share a desire to escape from such a “me” narrative, and seek refuge in clothes. Virginia Woolf, in her novel Orlando (1928), relates the tale of someone who, over a three hundred year period, underwent changes that transcended gender and status, portrayed as associated with a change in the protagonist’s clothes. This chapter presents a trilogy of designs inspired by the changes in identity portrayed in Orlando: the Comme des Garçons Spring/Summer 2020 women’s collection and Homme Plus collection, both conceived (created) by Kawakubo Rei, who also designed costumes of the opera Orlando by the Vienna State Opera (2019).
Although produced in times that differ greatly from those when Woolf was writing, they share a universal concern with her narrative of identity.
Top and Pants
S/S 2020
©The Kyoto Costume Institute
photo: Koroda Takeru
Chapter 5: Take Me Higher
We all sense the desire to wear particular clothing, the excitement of imagining how it would feel to wear a certain garment, and the elation of actually putting on the clothing of our desires. Looks like Tomo Koizumi’s delightful frills and ribbons on a jumpsuit as voluminous as an anime mobile suit and a Loewe garment in which the body has been taken over by lips convey the instant thrill and joy of wearing them. Clothes have the power to cast a spell on us. Nevertheless, at some point, even the garments that you yearned for will suddenly feel jaded, and you will go on to seek another new garment. Perhaps we are projecting our interminable human desire onto the hermit crabs that change their dwelling, like the crabs that appear in AKI INOMATA’s works. Or perhaps this is an example of us being linked with other creatures through an even deeper instinct.
Jumpsuit
S/S 2020
©The Kyoto Costume Institute
photo: Koroda Takeru
