Abstract
Fashion is both a global industry and a domain for small-scale independent designers who approach fashion as artistic practice. Fashion design practices that are positioned outside of the industrial fashion system are enacted in the “gaps” between the fashion industry and fine art and form alternative modes of fashion to those of the dominant fashion system. Fashion design practice in between discursive categories, institutions, and systems form a ‘middle ground’ between fashion and art, without fully belonging to either. Such modes of fashion are enacted in a context of “in betweenness”. This paper engages with how this results in the space usually occupied by the human body is left blank as a demarcation of this ambiguous position. We apply the analytical concept of boundary work” and “free spaces” to explore emerging fashion practices that probe new territory that prompt us to review prevailing notions of fashion and its structuring systems.
Keywords
Fashion design, Fashion, Boundaries, Free spaces, Body
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/nordes.2023.77
Citation
Skjulstad, S.,and Hvidsten, A.(2023) Intentionally left behind: Independent designers “free spaces” at the boundaries of art and fashion, in Holmlid, S., Rodrigues, V., Westin, C., Krogh, P. G., Mäkelä, M., Svanaes, D., Wikberg-Nilsson, Å (eds.), Nordes 2023: This Space Intentionally Left Blank, 12-14 June, Linköping University, Norrköping, Sweden. https://doi.org/10.21606/nordes.2023.77
Conference Track
researchpapers
Intentionally left behind: Independent designers “free spaces” at the boundaries of art and fashion
Fashion is both a global industry and a domain for small-scale independent designers who approach fashion as artistic practice. Fashion design practices that are positioned outside of the industrial fashion system are enacted in the “gaps” between the fashion industry and fine art and form alternative modes of fashion to those of the dominant fashion system. Fashion design practice in between discursive categories, institutions, and systems form a ‘middle ground’ between fashion and art, without fully belonging to either. Such modes of fashion are enacted in a context of “in betweenness”. This paper engages with how this results in the space usually occupied by the human body is left blank as a demarcation of this ambiguous position. We apply the analytical concept of boundary work” and “free spaces” to explore emerging fashion practices that probe new territory that prompt us to review prevailing notions of fashion and its structuring systems.