The origins of the Sourcing the Muse exhibition lie in the Powerhouse Museum's rich dress and textile collection and the emergence over the last decade of a new generation of Australian fashion designers whose original and distinct signature styles are drawing accolades both locally and internationally.
The exhibition showcased the Museum's extraordinary collection not through its curator's eyes but through the hearts, minds and vision of some of Australia's foremost fashion designers. In the process, we endeavoured to provide the Museum's audience with an insight into the often elusive and seemingly enigmatic world of creative process. Where do designers seek inspiration and what is the process that takes them from inspiration through design and manufacture to the creation of a new work?
Eight Australian fashion designers were invited to look through the Museum's textile and dress collection and select one or more items to use as a source of inspiration for a new work they would create.
The designers selected were:
• Akira – Akira Isogawa
• Easton Pearson – Lydia Pearson and Pamela Easton
• Gwendolynne – Gwendolynne Burkin
• Michelle Jank
• Nicola Finetti
• S!X – Peter Boyd and Denise Sprynskyj
• Tea Rose – Rosemary Armstrong
• Vixen – Georgia Chapman and Maureen Sohn
These designers were selected because their work is marked by a knowledge of and passion for fashion and dress history. Their collections reflect their ability to source fashion and dress ideas from across time and cultures while reconsidering it in an original, often unconventional, and very contemporary manner. Rather than being trend-driven, their work lies outside the changing 'looks' of mainstream fashion; it has a timeless quality with each collection evolving from the last in an ongoing exploration of images, ideas and techniques.
The designers were drawn from all over Australia and the selection included relative newcomers to the industry like Gwendolynne Burkin and Michelle Jank as well as established labels Tea Rose and Easton Pearson. Most of the designers were born or have spent most of their lives in Australia. The exceptions, Akira Isogawa and Nicola Finetti, originally trained in other disciplines but after being drawn to Australia to live, found themselves pursuing careers in fashion.
Having the designers select and create the objects that appear in the exhibition also highlights the broader purpose of museum collections; they are not only a resource for curators' research and exhibitions but importantly function as a source of inspiration and information for designers, scholars, students and general researchers. In the words of the late Richard Martin, former curator at The Costume Institute, Metropolitan Museum of Art '…one is aware that ours is no mere echelon of objects but a museum's extraordinary capacity to offer history for potential contribution to a creative future'.*
Thus the designers were encouraged to view the Museum's collection as a creative space where they could 'meet their Muse' and draw inspiration.
For most of them their initial visit was overwhelming, as the Museum holds one of the most extensive and diverse collections of historical and contemporary fashion, textiles and dress in Australia. Its first acquisitions of clothing were made in the early 1880s and it now holds more than 30,000 items of men's, women's and children's clothing and accessories, textiles from nearly every continent, fashion plates, photographs, swatch books, designer archives and fashion magazines.
For me, one of the most fascinating aspects of the exhibition process was to be able to experience the collection through these designers' eyes. I came to this process with certain expectations about what areas of the collection each designer would be interested in but found them making quite unexpected choices. It wasn't the most visually spectacular, technically accomplished or historically significant pieces in the collection that caught their imagination.
Rather, I found them to be most attracted to details of construction, dress components, decorative techniques and embellishments and even, in one case, the deterioration of historic textiles. They were intrigued by the craftsmanship, by the patterns and the rhythms of designs. Some were more interested in the inside of a garment, in the stitching, fabrics and the details of construction that underpin the look of the garment. Their selections were also very eclectic with items sourced from a broad range of cultures from Egypt to Zaire and China to Europe and with dates ranging from the mid 19th century to the 1990s.
The exhibition itself featured the item or items each designer selected as a source of inspiration from the Museum's collection, a 'creative process box' into which they placed design drawings, fabric experiments, production photos, inspirational images and a mannequin displaying the new outfit they created based on these 'muses'.
Each designer was also asked to work with their own team of stylist, make-up artist and photographer to create a 'fashion image' which was placed alongside the new garment they created. This gave them the opportunity to complete their vision for the garment and express how they imagined it being worn, without the constraints of commercial considerations.
The fashion image also had an important role in a museum display where we can generally only show garments on dummies, losing the clothing's critical relationship with the living body and individual personality.
I also indicated to the designers that they could be involved in the design of their display. This was with the proviso that the Museum's objects had to be displayed according to our stringent guidelines for the display of textiles and dress, but that they could be more flexible with their own work.
Nicola Finetti, and Peter Boyd and Denise Sprynskyj from S!X, took this as an opportunity to explore what resulted in art fashion fusion installations. S!X chose to display their garments like edibles on a Sushi plate highlighting their interest in Japanese design but also their commitment to exploring the process of design and construction. Nicola Finetti encapsulated his dress in a Perspex box filled with 'acid' enacting the acid treatment his garment had been through and prolonging the deterioration of his garment for the duration of the exhibition.
This exhibition came at a time when there were really two irreconcilable views of Australian fashion, one of an industry that was dying, with many closures and failures, a move to offshore manufacturing and an increase in imports. The other of an industry that was growing and internationalising through innovative design and marketing. The designers featured in the exhibition are major players in this creative push. Australia has not been considered a source of original, limited production high fashion until relatively recently but these designers are showing that this is currently where we excel and where we are attracting international media and buyers' attention. It is interesting to note that this trend continues to challenge the perceptions of international buyers, many of whom expect Australia to be a source of great swimwear and streetwear.
These designers display a new sense of confidence in their designs, particularly textile design and in their use of materials. They have forgone the potential profits of the mass-market in favour of pursuing their private passions and creativity in making garments so intimate in their design and construction that the wearer can elicit the heart, hand and mind of the designer in each piece.
- Glynis Jones
assistant curator, decorative arts and design
Powerhouse Museum
*Our new clothes: acquisitions of the 1990s, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1999.