Barbican exhibition to examine vulgarity in fashion

London’s Barbican is set to host a new fashion exhibition this autumn, ‘The Vulgar: Fashion Redefined’, which will feature pieces from leading modern and contemporary designers including Christian Dior, Pam Hogg, Chloé, Christian Lacroix, Moschino, Prada, Philip Treacy, Viktor and Rolf, Louis Vuitton and Vivienne Westwood.

The exhibition will question the notion of vulgarity in fashion, while also “revealing in its excesses”, according to the press statement, and will invite visitors to think about what exactly makes us consider something to be vulgar, a word that it states conjures up strong images, ideas, and feelings that can be potent, provocative and sometimes shocking.

Opening on October 13, the exhibition will feature more than 120 exhibits from the Renaissance through to the 21st century, using historic dress, couture and ready-to-wear fashion, textile ornamentation, manuscripts, photography and film to illustrate how taste is a mobile concept.

Encompassing a 500-year timeframe, ‘The Vulgar’ demonstrates how fashion through the ages actively breaks with and revises taste to create new expressions of style, often celebrating, courting or exploiting so-called vulgarity and its possible pleasures.

London’s Barbican to showcase garish fashion in ‘The Vulgar: Fashion Defined’ exhibition

Highlights will include 18th-century mantuas, with overskirts of nearly 2.5 metres in width, as well as modern items such as Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren’s “tits” T-shirt bearing a photograph of naked breasts, and oversized hats from the milliner Stephen Jones.

Barbican head of visual arts, Jane Alison, said; “I am so thrilled that we are staging The Vulgar at the Barbican. With such a bold and brilliant concept, Judith Clark and Adam Phillips have created a highly original, redefining and hugely enjoyable exhibition about fashion past and present.

“Playing with juxtapositions, different themes and vistas, they’ve set the stage for visitors to wonder, ponder, question, reflect or just revel in why some costumes are considered vulgar, how that changes through time, context and experience.”

The exhibition builds on the Barbican’s other fashion exhibitions, including Jam: Style+Music+Media in 1996, The House of Viktor & Rolf in 2008, Future Beauty: 30 Years of Japanese Fashion in 2010, and most recently The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier: From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk in 2014.

The exhibition will take place at The Barbican from October 13, 2016, to February 5, 2017.

Images: Barbican - courtesy of Guy Marineau and Chloé Archive Paris