Essay by Chloe Burrow, BUST Magazine

What is a Feminist Fashion Show? The idea of a Feminist Fashion Show may seem paradoxical because, historically, feminists have mistrusted fashion, perceiving it as a symptom of patriarchy and void of integrity. As Linda M. Scott observes in Fresh Lipstick, a reason that young women today deny the label "feminist" seems to be closely linked to the lingering Second Wave politics of appearance. Many of those who identify themselves are feminists today, however, are not characterised by an aversion to fashion, making the idea of a feminist fashion less of a contradiction.

Deciphering the meaning of The Feminist Fashion Show in terms of its title alone is not an option; the defining element is Art. The fact that an art establishment, A.I.R. Gallery of New York, is hosting this collection cannot be ignored. The judges' selection of pieces for the show leans towards the conceptual and artists outnumber those with a background in fashion. The real interest, I feel, behind what some might see as a stretching of the term fashion is in fact a show which explores a contemporary take on what is an old idea, that of the outsider to fashion, creating clothing.

Since the late nineteenth century, when fashion as we understand it today was born, artists as well as feminists have made clothes in resistance to what they saw as it's mercantile logic, striving to replace it with various forms of utopian "anti-fashion". The English Arts and Crafts movement, led by artist and designer William Morris, led the way in art's rethinking of everyday dress, inspiring the Artistic Dress Reform movements that followed. By the 1920s artists as disparate as Sonia Delauney and Kazimir Malevich were taking the principles of their art and applying them to dress. The second wave of feminism in the mid twentieth century saw a consolidation of the two approaches with the Hippy movement's interest in the Arts and Crafts and the emergence of the Feminist Art movement whose body centred work often included items of clothing. These artists who created art clothing or "Artwear", continued the dress reformer's critique on fashion but on a different front. They distanced themselves from fashion by subverting its norms and in doing so sought to question the hegemony that lay beneath it.

A key way in which feminist artists of the mid twentieth century distanced their artwear from fashion was by making the garment un-wearable by removing key functions of clothing. The awkward mesh of rubber that performance artist Debra Rapoport tussled with in Rubber Labyrinth (1970) is a good example of this. The gaping mesh sack provided the opposite of what clothing offers, modesty or protection, exposing her naked body whilst restricting her movements. Diane Arrieta uses similar ideas in her piece about abortion rights entitled My Right to Choose. Her shift dress, made in transparent vinyl, covered with small plastic foetuses, and that includes a wire skirt, similarly restricts movement and makes the wearer self-conscious at the same time as shocking the viewer. Wearing Vivian Massry's Shawl, made from metal washers connected by pink ribbon, also promises to be an uncomfortable experience that reflects the aging process as the weight of the shawl tires the wearer.

The feminist mission to raise the profile of traditional women's arts and crafts is reflected in Karen J. Hay's The Dark Arts. Sections of crochet, tatting, knitting and lace making, highlight the sense of connectedness imbued in such a garment compared to that of mass-produced fashion. This ideological decision to choose to create one's own fabrics has its roots in the English Arts and Crafts movement that opposed to the consumerist nature of fashion and hankered for a simpler way of life. Considering the current trend for DIY Crafting in popular feminist culture, it is surprising that there be only piece in the show that makes use of the needle arts. Similarly, Hope Perkin's hand painted dress entitled Donkey Show, follows in the footsteps of artists Robert and Sonia Delauney, who invented the robe simultanée, the dress as a living painting. The humorous image she depicts is a take on the ass-headed character Bottom, in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, who is pampered by the enamoured Queen Titania, only in Perkin's image she puts her beloved 'ideal man' to work.

The ways that artists and fashion designers approached this theme were inevitably different but are of equal importance in deciphering the feminist fashion conundrum. The presence of two fairy-themed pieces represents a view of fashion that is increasingly the norm among young feminists today. As Roland Bathes observes, fashion represents the double dream of "identity and play indeed the invitation to play with identities". Hannah Howard's outfit is a playful redefining of the idea of the fairy princess, asserting that as a feminist you can still have dreams and fantasies. Modeling the outfit herself, Howard's hot pink tutu and a t-shirt printed with a pink power fist and 'visible feminist', is a personal statement about issues of visibility as a woman of colour and size. The fairy outfit presented by Debora Bonhert entitled Public Opinion No Longer Worries Me, exhibits a carefree attitude to dressing up and collecting old clothes. Barthes best sums this attitude up when he says that fashion is a no longer the game of being, it is simply a keyboard of signs from among which an eternal person chooses one day's amusement.

There have always been feminists who have spoken out in support of fashion as a valuable platform of self-expression but feminism's traditional take on fashion was dominated by academic feminists who privileged the mind over the body. Despite this, feminists and artists alike have explored and analysed fashion, recognising it as one of the most immediate and important everyday cultural manifestations. Today's generation of feminist artists seem to be borrowing technical approaches from their predecessors whilst expressing contemporary feminist ideas that do not involve the stereotypical mistrust of fashion.

Roland Barthes, The Fashion System, trans. Matthew Ward and Richard Howard, Hill and Wang, 1983

Shari Benstock and Suzanne Ferriss, On Fashion, Rutgers University Press, 1994

Melissa Leverton, Artwear: Fashion and Anti-fashion, Thames and Hudson, 2005

Linda M. Scott, Fresh Lipstick: Redressing Fashion and Feminism, Palgrave Macmillan, 2005

Radu Stern, Against Fashion: Clothing as Art, 1850-1930, MIT Press, 2004