Is Fashion Modern?

This is the question currently being posed on the 6^th floor of the Museum of Modern Art. Plum takes the question seriously. She doesn’t care for rhetorical questions. A question mark, to Plum, is not something one should throw out into the world simply to attract attention and generate chin-rubbings and hmmms. A question mark requires a response.

Plum thinks about this. Just because she is fashion-conscious doesn’t make her an airhead. She understands that the title of this show is a reference to the title of the 1944 MoMA show, Are Clothes Modern?, the only other fashion exhibition MoMA has ever staged. This question has history. You have to know the context to comprehend the gravitas of this issue. Plum gets it, although she thinks the earlier question is quite different from the current question.

Plum thinks fashion is many things. At this particular moment she mostly thinks that fashion is uncomfortable. She loves her Alexander McQueen knock-offs, but, honestly, she can’t even stand up in them, let alone walk. Plum wonders if that is what makes them fashion, rather than footwear.

A lot of fashion isn’t created with real, living people in mind. This is one of the reasons why Plum believes she looks so outstanding in this outfit.

She thinks perhaps that’s part of what makes fashion art. But does it make it modern?

Plum is still pondering.

Plum is made out of Halloween costume scraps. The brown velvet scraps came from my son’s monkey costume. I’m not sure why I originally bought the white velvet, but I know it has been used for part of a mountain chickadee costume, and I think an orca costume as well. Plum’s little black dress is made from stretchy black fabric that was part of my daughter’s Star Trek officer costume. Her shoes, however, are ordinary black felt, and they’re two-dimensional (I couldn’t figure out how to make them have actual heels) so they look reasonably convincing in photos but are strictly non-functional.

“On a daily basis, clothing constitutes the first interface between us and the world; it is at once a deeply embodied form of design, intimately bound to psychology and identity, and part of a set of systems that exploit labor and greedily strip the environment. [This exhibition] suggests that we dismiss this field of design at our peril.”

–Glenn D. Lowry, Director, The Museum of Modern Art