New York-based artist Michelle Handelman, whose film Irma Vep, The Last Breath is included in our current season WEARING TIME: PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE, DREAM, talks to Aya Noel about women in cinema, identity and costume as a state of mind.

Marketa Uhlirova has asked Alistair O’Neill about his curatorial process in organising the retrospective exhibition of Guy Bourdin, the photographer’s legacy and those elusive ‘fashion films’.

Caroline Evans, Marketa Uhlirova, Vincenzo Maggitti, Elif Rongen and Elizabeth Lundén caught up with film curator Mariann Lewinsky at this year’s Il Cinema Ritrovato in Bologna to talk fashion, silent film performances and archival research.

‘…it does not serve primarily as a rise to eroticism; rather, it produces an evocation of seemingly empty time, but one brimming with disconnection.’

‘It is the differing circumstances of the films’ production that divide the two, giving each its individual cinematic character and communicating something different about the process of making contemporary fashion imagery.’

‘…the film simultaneously exposes the erotic as a constructed illusion, one that these working women do not take at all seriously.’

‘Finally, the twins both pull on what look like homemade balaclavas, demonstrating that getting ready is a form of preparation for camouflage and deception.’

‘…intrigued by the confusion between the artificial body of the shop dummy and the real one of a poser who is shown in the moving image as momentarily immobilized.’

‘What place does fashion occupy during a war conflict? Is there – and can there be – room for fashion at times when poor economic conditions, coupled with great anxiety and uncertainty, permeate people’s lives, turning them upside down?’

‘An environment inhabited by highly focussed and energetic people, driven by an obsession with image, style and the look of things. A global community, in fact, with an amazing ability to promote itself.’

‘Lisa…theatrically displays her new dress…establishes the tension between the couple’s highly gendered professional lives…’

‘…the viewer an implicit part of a circuit of desire that is centered on the shoe. We lack the tactility of touch enjoyed by the shoe clerk and the customer, but we see all.’

‘The lady’s shoe holds a very special position within the film. It is not only a sign of the wearer’s gender and social class, it is also the central element of the plot, the very reason for which passions are ignited.’

‘…the seductive powers of female footwear will be explored through the male attraction to the foot dressed in a shoe, as well as through the female fascination with the actual fashionable object.’

‘The performance of (animated) actors and actresses is replaced by a performance of different kinds of gloves.’

‘…a textbook example of product endorsement, employing methods that would later became standard in television commercials.’

‘Dress shapes our bodies, makes sculptures of us. Capable of modifying not only the body itself in its proportions, but also our image of it and that of our selves, clothing shapes the self physically and psychologically.’

‘Within this context of fashionable layers and the proliferation of fasteners, trimmings and openings, the processes of dressing and undressing took on a particular symbolic significance…’

‘In the German culture of the nineteenth century, hats that fly from people’s heads were a sign of existential danger looming in the near future.’

‘The clothes themselves spring into action, as if to combat the inertia of their wearers.’

‘The Enigma programme probes in detail the behaviour of the object of fashion in the moving image. It invites clothes to step out of their closets, making their secret lives known.’

‘Howard Hawks’s Fig Leaves (1926) tells a story of a marital dispute and a transformation of a female heroine from a wholesome, housebound girl to a refined, sophisticated and independent woman.’

Quotes compiled by Inga Fraser

‘The questions he [William Klein] raises around identity and masquerade are still resonant – while the excesses of the fashion world and the mania around celebrity are even more relevant today.’

‘The fact that these images of women for women are the creation of men is emphasised…Even her subjective thoughts are spoken by a man.’

Looking at the work of four diverse directors who dared to turn the camera on that sub-species of “fashion aliens” who exist within our own society.