French fashion designer Jean Paul Gaultier – whose designs are featured at the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) until February 2015 – has always had an unsettling relationship with museum fashion exhibitions…
Hipsters are so mainstream now that they’re the subject of mathematical papers. Jonathan Touboul, a mathematical neuroscientist from the Collège de France, claims to have answered one of the great mysteries…
Australia’s art galleries are currently enthralled by fashion. In Melbourne Jean Paul Gaultier: From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk and Express Yourself: Romance Was Born for Kids, are both at NGV; Adelaide’s…
This year marks the 100-year anniversary of the first bra patent. Amazingly for the time – 1914 – it was made by a woman in her twenties, Mary (Polly) Phelps Jacob (nee Crosby). Polly made her bra initially…
I recently went to heaven, aka attended a week-long conference in Oxford devoted entirely to fashion theory. I presented a paper on catwalk shows, which you’ve heard me bang on about before here (and here…
The publicity material for The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier exhibition, which opened last week at the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV), unsurprisingly came decked in stripes. The blue and white…
Converse is taking action to protect its famous All Star sneakers from alleged imitators. The product in question is the All Star Chuck Taylor shoe that was first marketed by Converse in 1917. The trainers…
One moment: one recent Saturday afternoon, I was sitting on the top deck of a red London bus, watching a sea of shoppers flood over Oxford Circus. The cream of the British high street have their flagship…
Dear Music Industrial Complex, Do you mind if I call you Mic? I normally don’t write about pop music, but I am upset. I know that sex sells, but may I make a special request of no more music videos consisting…
A large group of protesters have successfully shut down an exhibition in London. Curators intended Exhibit B, a “human zoo” comprising caged and chained black actors, to demonstrate the evils of slavery…
Putting together words like normal and fashion feels like a contradiction, but that’s exactly what Gap is doing with its autumn/winter 2014 advertising campaign, called Dress Normal. It makes a virtue…
Fashion photography conjures together dress and body to create images that aim to seduce. On the cusp between art and commerce, this apparent dichotomy meant the genre only became a gallery staple in the…
Here’s a phrase that strikes terror into my heart: boyfriend jeans. I came of age in the era of the skinny jean, which started out like a low-slung pair of denim stovepipes and ended up, in recent years…
A Twitterstorm about Barack Obama’s tan suit can hardly have been what the president was expecting as he spoke at a press conference about foreign policy issues ranging from the IS insurgency in Iraq…
Islamic veiling is a global political issue and the debate tends to move in two different directions: it’s framed as either a matter of the freedom of female self-expression or as emblematic of gender…
Augustus, who died 2000 years ago, was the first emperor of Rome. He brought peace after the turmoil in the republic after the assassination of Julius Caesar when he defeated the forces of Antony and Cleopatra…
During the first world war in Australia there was a restriction of styles of clothing available to both men and women because of shortages in fabrics. Everyday dress became more sombre due to a lack of…
The words “trench coat” might make you think of a stylish, clean, unisex jacket. That feeling of exchanging your heavy winter coat for smart belted beige, striding down the street in springtime. Or perhaps…
While sometimes I teem with opinions jostling to be exercised over the page, at other times I’m drawn into meditation, where my engagement with the happenings, and the actual materiality, of fashion loosens…
A peculiar thing happened in Russia in the early 1920s. Abstract art, often considered the pinnacle of elitism and high art, was instead employed by artists as a testing ground for ideas that promised…