あたしの町、明日の町

Finally I managed to drag myself to Barbican to see this exhibition.
On the last day, nonetheless!

I had originally planned to come before going back to Jakarta. However, packing up took more time than I originally planned, and it didn't help much that I chose to spend one day seeing a number of superbly preserved specimens of aesthetically arranged human cadavers.

Since V&R's run until September, I thought that it is wiser to go to Manchester first and Barbican after Jakarta. Which was fine, except that I seemed to conveniently gloat over newer exhibitions after returning. You'll notice that it wasn't on the list. There was nothing monumental about remembering the exhibition, really... other than the slight nudge that "it was a good exhibition". (Coming from Anne, who is averse to spend money and rather disinterested in many things, it was enough indication that I'd better make the effort to go.)

A few things I noted:
White PVC/satin dresses installation
Captivating, and sublimely spooky.

The perfume hoax
So, one could technically eke off the wax top of the hoax perfume bottle? Or maybe shatter/cut the glass bottle and extract the perfume onto another re-closeable storage space? Or is it just 'plain' yellow liquid?
I want one to play with. No, wait... I think I want a few.

Mini-tiny-weeny dresses
The structural seams of the grey strapless dress were left unfinished. Was it genuinely because of 'fabric thickness consideration', or 'no overlocker small enough', or 'not enough time to pull this off'? Hrm. But they did hand-sew the hem facing's top edge.

Gold dresses and shadow-like black fabrics laid underneath
I... don't get it. But if the visual cue point was gift wrappers, then it reminds me of the garish gold cellophane wraps stashed at home. They make me shudder and I wish they would mysteriously disappear, conveniently replaced with textured bronze giftwrapping papers. Or washi papers. Or something less fiddly and easy to manipulate. Or simply, something less shiny.

The Dolls' House
Wo-awe-inducing. It's good stuff in dimly-lit rooms... which made the task of taking decent pictures (generally disallowed by the "no photographs ma'am" swarms) hard. They do make life more difficult, these folks...

'Russian Doll' preparation
I'm starting to get an idea of the kind of girls Messrs Horsting et Snoeren prefer. It reminds me of toy doll dress-up games on a real-life, we-need-to-sell-perfumes level. On another hand, their meticulous attention to even the model's slightly misaligned hair is finely notable.

Bluescreen
Let's face it... I like the silhouette. I like the detailing. I like images of twirling highway roads and helicopters superimposed onto it. In three words: I like it.

The balooned suits and stuff
Wasn't thinking of much of it when one of my classmates presented it as part of her tailoring project. But today, I thought it was reminiscent of Kawakubo's lumpy-bumpy collection. (And so did the curator think, apparently.)

Black Lights
Couldn't believe my eyes at how deceivingly two-dimensional the white suit looks like. And so, at how thin silk gazar could be.

Bells
Aw! Ow! Cheat!!
(can I say that?)

Silver-dipped
I wonder how they did it...

Tilda Swinton
"There is only one." Yes, only one. (It applies both ways, %&@*#.)

Bedroom
A proof that someone who put that song on the show knows a thing or two about reading (raiding?) the Bible as source of inspiration.

Ballroom
I remember that this was on the paper when I started in Fashion Portfolio. It was... okay. And, YAAAAY! when it comes to the perfume advertisement part. Chandelliers and dancing men! How could I say no to them? ;))

...and many more.

I'll find out if this exhibition will travel the world (I hope it will.)
And in the meantime, you can get your hands on one of these sweeties. V&R and/or Barbican better pay me for singing praises to them...

That's it, folks. Good night.