2019 INVISIBLE MEN: AN ANTHOLOGY FROM THE WESTMINSTER MENSWEAR ARCHIVE, LONDON.

Professor Andrew Groves, Dr Danielle Sprecher

25 October – 24 November 2019

Drawing exclusively from the Westminster Menswear Archive, Invisible Men covers the last 120 years of predominately British menswear through the display of over 170 garments, the majority of which have never been seen on public display. Invisible Men will the most extensive exhibition devoted to menswear to be staged in the UK.

Opening in October 2019, this four-week exhibition is arranged into twelve sections, presenting designer garments alongside military, functional, and utilitarian outfits. It explores the design language of menswear, which predominately focuses on the replication of repeats archetypal functional garments intended for specific industrial, technical or military use.

Invisible Men will illustrate how designers have disrupted these conventions through minimal, yet significant modifications to produce outcomes that both replicate and subvert their source material. Through this approach, the language of menswear has developed an almost fetishistic appreciation of the working man in all his heroic iterations, referencing the clothing of seafarers, soldiers, athletes, firefighters, road workers, and explorers. 

The endless replication, appropriation and interpretation within menswear has meant that the meaning and function of the original archetypes has faded through each reiteration.

This design strategy has, for the most part, allowed men and what they wear to avoid scrutiny: these garments have remained invisible within fashion exhibitions in favour of presenting menswear largely as the story of the dandy or the peacock male.

This exhibition aims to shine a light on these invisible men.

2017 THE OVERWORKED BODY: AN ANTHOLOGY OF 2000S DRESS.

GOETHE-INSTITUT, NEW YORK

In 1971, Cecil Beaton presented Fashion: An Anthology at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Under the connoisseurship of a bon vivant, fashionable modern dress received its first museological moment.

Now in 2017 over 50 contemporary designers were included in a new anthology of 2000s fashion, curated by Matthew Linde and organized by Ludlow 38’s curatorial resident Saim Demircan at MINI/Goethe-Institut Curatorial Residencies Ludlow 38 and Mathew Gallery.

Fashion during the 2000s could be described as a period of hybrid subcultural styles remixing former selves, championing the principle of individual expression. The decade also saw the industry of fast-fashion massively expand its market, proliferating the presence of smart-casual wear. As such, fashion during this time embodied the conflicting roles of both globalization and homogeneity alongside pastiche and pluralism.

However, what makes fashion from the aughts so debatable to define is its proximity to the present. It is only through the machine of history that fashion finds its protagonists. How to define a recent history of fashion? In an effort to obstruct our tendency to assign a specific style to a decade, The Overworked Body: An Anthology of 2000s Dress surveys the iconoclastic to the underground, the everyday to the critical, and presents a period in fashion that is overloaded and overworked.​

2017   THE VANISHING ART OF CAMOUFLAGE 

LONDON GALLERY WEST, LONDON

Against a contemporary backdrop of ceaseless military action, camouflage has been adopted by civilians as a ubiquitous pattern of our lives, adorning runways, sportswear, skateboards, toilet papers and even condoms.

Used for its striking designs, its ‘patterned disorder’ and its symbolism, the exhibition explores its artistic, fashionable and political use as a strategic and aspirational means to make the visible invisible, and paradoxically the unseen seen.

Using examples that illustrate the development of camouflage from its early military beginnings at the turn of the twentieth century through its varied relationships with artists and designers, the exhibition incorporates still imagery and film to examine the stylistic, sociological, and political context; analysing its ubiquitous appropriation – from fashion to art to architecture.

Featuring a range of historical military garments alongside their adaptive high-end fashion versions, the exhibition also includes a selection of unusual artefacts that have adapted camouflage for their own means, and questions the neutrality of blending in as a means of survival.

The Vanishing Art of Camouflage is the first exhibition to draw extensively from the newly created Westminster Menswear Archive. The archive has been founded for the purpose of establishing a collection of garments and related artefacts to encourage and develop the study of menswear design from a technical and functional point of view. The archive is also intended to advance the general knowledge of menswear as a design discipline, and to be used as a resource tool to inform contemporary menswear design.