About the parallel universe of fashion. An exhibition as the ultimate shopping experience.
Photo(s): Leo van Kampen
Each fashion label evokes its own parallel universe. Advertisements, shops, fashion shows, models: all serve to create an entirely visually defined, more beautiful, more stylish, better world. The powers of imagination employed in conjuring up such worlds is perhaps the most fascinating aspect of fashion.
Yet when fashion is shown in a museum setting, this imaginative power is passed over. Museums invariably present fashion within the context of arts and crafts, merely as garments. This legitimizes the presence of ephemeral fashion in the temple of the enduring values of high art. However, it completely ignores what is most interesting about fashion.
The exhibition project Higher Truth No.5 took the opposite approach. The allure of fashion was shown in its purest form; not one article of clothing was displayed. Higher Truth No.5 revealed fashion’s gift for creating a compelling atmosphere that cannot be rationally defined or explained: fashion as an experience, as a seduction, as a high. An exhibition like the ultimate shop; creating its own reality without using any actual products: the highest attainable form of spiritual materialism.
Concept: Guus Beumer and Rutger Wolfson.
In collaboration with: Herman Verkerk, Rianne Makkink, Alexander van Slobbe and Project_Jordan.
Special thanks to: Daniel Zuiderveld, Connie de Lange en Job van Bennekom.
