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Transcending the Traditional: Fashion as Performance

From fashion’s inception, there has been an intrinsic link between clothing, performance and the body. This dialogue has been evident throughout the last century and into the present. This paper will examine contemporary examples of the pose through fashion shows, fashion displays and fashion performances. It will discuss the work of Daphne Guinness and Viktor and Rolf, and how their work seeks to reflect the historical associations of the pose but updates this mode within the 21st century fashion climate. It will also consider Olivier Saillard’s work which examines the use of the pose with the contemporary fashion industry. His trilogy of work with the actress Tilda Swinton examines the history of couture, its process and creation, and the viewer’s relationship within the body and garment. These examples seek to break the barriers of the traditional modes of the pose within the fashion context. They ask questions as to our own relationship with clothing and the body, imbuing meaning and symbolism into their work. This paper will argue that these new modes help to raise the profile of the pose as performance, raising their status to work in part as a spiritual medium, evoking emotional responses in our own readings of the work.