Defying the haphazard abundance of digital images, the uniformity of transnational media corporations and the swansongs to print journalism, a plethora of independent, globally connected magazines that eschew the received categories and orders of fashion are being launched from Beirut to Berlin, from Penang to Lima. A new materiality of fashion media production is emerging. It questions and interrupts imperialist spatial orders and hegemonic orders of knowledge – those of fashion as well as those of the exhibition site, the staterooms of Alte Post.
THE HIDDEN FASHION LIBRARY explores the independent fashion and style magazines that have been founded in recent years as both a reaction to the digital media boom of fashion and street style blogs and as a second wave of the 1980s and early 1990s alternative and avant-garde magazine production.
The exhibition is structured along 5 theses that abstain from a linear-causal narrative:
1. Global Tales and Stories
The names of independent fashion and style magazines unfold a narrative of global politics: migration, decolonization, casualization, diaspora, and hybrid identities. [read more]
2. Fashion featuring Critique and Knowledge
Independent fashion and style magazines opened up new discursive spaces for fashion critique and the self-reflection of the fashion system. [read more]
3. After Avantgarde
Independent fashion and style magazines advance the aesthetic and formal discourses of the late 1980s and early 1990s anti-fashion generation in the liminal space between art and fashion. [read more]
4. Shifting Geographies and New Topographies
Independent fashion and style magazines are part of historical and postcolonial shifts in decentralized fashion production and the geopolitical positioning of fashion centers. [read more]
5. Post-digital Materialism
Currently we are witnessing the transformation from digital fashion media into print media. Simultaneously to the exhibition new forms of post-digital materiality are emerging. [read more]
THE HIDDEN FASHION LIBRARY includes
A5 Magazine (Tel Aviv), Dapper Dan (Athens), 212 Magazine (Istanbul), Cool Capital (Johannesburg), Modes Pratiques – Revue d’histoire du vêtement et de la mode (Paris), Mirage (Paris/Los Angeles), Bon (Stockholm/London), encens (Paris), Fucking Young! (Barcelona), OE Magazine (Berlin), Season Zine (London), Whitelies (Berlin), Vestoj (London), i like my style Quarterly (Berlin), Dash (London), The Gentlewoman (London), Teeth (London), Magazinemagazine (Paris), Address (London), Pop – Kultur & Kritik, Texte zur Kunst (Berlin), Pashion (Cairo), Document Journal (New York), LMag (Berlin), Bend Over (Berlin), Missy Magazine (Berlin), elsewhere (Shanghai), Brownbook (Dubai), Born’n’Bread (London), Diaspora Drama (London), Riposte (London), The Outpost (Beirut), Popeye (Tokyo), OOMK, Migrant Journal (London), System Magazine (London), Boat Magazine (Lima), Arise (London), Dakarfashion (Dakar), Lifa (Dakar), Debbo (Dakar), Harper’s Bazaar China (Shanghai).
The exhibition also features the printed silk tapestry » Re-Mastering the Old World « from the Ikiré Jones archive (designed by Walé Oyéjidé Esq.) and the fashion editorials » Silent Genius « (photographed by Michelle Marshall and styled by Cynthia Lawrence-John) and » Last Stop Palenque « (photographed by Hana Knizova and styled by Sabrina Henry) from Nataal.com.
Download [Mag of Mags]
