Dress Code
Are you playing fashion?
21 May to 12 September 2021
How did you choose the clothes you are wearing today? Designer dress or jeans, suit or sweatpants, pullover or uniform – every culture, society and group has its own dress codes. They set the framework, but they leave us room to come up with our individual take on the rules. Sometimes, we make our choices depending on how we feel. At others, the decision is based on the occasion for which we dress – or the person we want to meet. Moreover, we want our clothing style to give expression to our personality. After all, fashion is not just the act of wearing clothes, it is also the act of seeing and being seen – nowadays preferably by a vast audience on social networks.
Dress Code – the hugely successful exhibition from Japan – shines a light on fashion as a reflection of society and the zeitgeist, all the way to today’s stylistic plurality. It presents a global overview of present-day fashion, especially streetwear, by celebrated designers such as Giorgio Armani, Chanel, COMME des GARÇONS, Issey Miyake, Burberry and Louis Vuitton, set in a dialogue with contemporary art. And it examines different and opposing attitudes to fashion – those of participants and spectators, individualists and conformists. Fashion becomes a communicative game that can lead us to a new understanding of the way we deal with fashion.
An exhibition by the National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, and the Kyoto Costume Institute in cooperation with the Bundeskunsthalle in Bonn