Eliise: The Vulgar: Fashion Redefined

For this blog post I have visited this week “The Vulgar: Fashion Redefined” exhibition in Barbican, London. The exhibition “The Vulgar: Fashion Redefined” is about taste of fashion, from the renaissance through to contemporary design. Examining the constantly evolving notion of vulgarity in fashion whilst revelling in its excesses, you are invited to think again about exactly what makes something vulgar and why it is such a sensitive and contested term. (Barbican, 2016)

Vulgar: The common People

Vulgarism: Grossness, meanness Vulgarity

Vulgarity: Meanness, State of Lowest People

Vulgary: Commonly: in the ordinary manner: among the common people

(Samuel Johnson: A Dictionary of English Language, 1755)

“The word “vulgar” is used to police the boundaries of taste. Fashion is where good taste and bad taste mix and match” (Adam Phillips)

Karl Lagerfield to Chloé

So in “The Vulgar: Fashion Redefined” exhibition I kept asking from myself were the garments good taste or bad taste? For the exhibition space there was used dark black background and the lighting was used to spot garments, which made them even more special and it made you to focus to the details. On the walls there was multiple definitions of the vulgar from the psychoanalyst Adam Phillips, which subdivide the exhibitions into sections. The exhibition begins with classic shapes and well shelving dresses like example dress from Karl Lagerfeld to Chloé “Crétoise” dress. I think they have started with that because it is easy to understand as a “good taste” and then exhibition continued to different themed sections and with garments that can be combined with the idea of being vulgar.

The exhibition space was big and I spend two and a half hours going it through. This exhibition felt for me really overwhelming. If I could take the experience again I would walk through the whole exhibition, then had cup of coffee and gone back to explore more of its meaning and the details. I also felt that the video middle of the exhibition was what really opened the idea for me. The video told about what being vulgar means for different designers from fashion industry. The video and stopping point where you were able to browse through books about the subject helped me to but my conflicting thoughts together.

On the video on of the designers said something what I can reflect what being vulgar means to me. I think one year something can be vulgar, but after 10 years it can be fashion again! I think in every fashion designer wants to be unique and things what are unusual interests them, which I think makes their designs vulgar. So how would you define is it a good taste or bad taste? Or is it normal or not normal?

“So the only thing that interests us about the vulgar is what´s wrong with it, because it is pretending to be something that is not” (Adam Phillips)

What I got from this exhibition was that it made me to think a lot! Here is some of the garments/outfits what interested me and made my to questioning is it good taste or bad taste?