EDGE champions the gallery and museum venue as a new era of exposition for emerging designers. Fashion designers are artists. Shows can be curated with a collective vision of both a historical context and a relevance to contemporary culture.
How does this transform?
Emerging designers lack exposure and distribution to the local and international communities. One means of exposure are trade shows. They may participate in trade show venues such as M. A. G. I. C. market week in Las Vegas, however this can be costly for those designers that are new to the industry and lack the financial investment.
The EDGE exhibition at a gallery or museum is not just the work exhibited, but the interaction, conversation, and trade exchange at this event. This b2b model is what’s new – the out of the box EDGE gallery or museum exhibition is the tasteful blend of exposition and exchange.
A curated group of designers selected according to creativity, design, quality and production criteria would be part of a theme exhibition. The theme, story, or title may combine both an historic and EDGE contemporary perspective.
Mode Museum (MoMu) is an example of a museum that continually exhibits fashion-related themes in an exhibition space specifically adapted to each exhibition. MoMu is the fashion museum of the Province of Antwerp, Belgium. Founded on 21 September 2002, the museum collects, conserves, studies and exhibit Belgian fashion. The museum is specifically focusing on Belgian contemporary fashion designers due to the rise of a group of Antwerp-trained fashion designers during the Eighties and Nineties (Martin Margiela, Dries Van Noten, Ann Demeulemeester, Walter Van Beirendonck, Dirk Van Saene, A.F. Vandevorst, etc.). Source: Wikipedia
In reference to the above images, Unravel: Knitwear in Fashion exhibited a wide variety of exquisite knitted garments and accessories from across the last centuries. There was a mix of pieces by national and international designers and labels, historic couture pieces, as well as more avant-garde and cutting edge pieces by established designers and newcomers on the international fashion scene. This show was an example of combining an historical perspective with up and coming designers.
This is Part II of a three part series.
Feature image: “Behind The Scenes”. . .The Metropolitan Museum of Art | Photo Alex Hills
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