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The programme revisited the outlandish icon Leigh Bowery who in his lifetime liked ‘to appeal to maybe one or two people’ but whose influence across fashion, costume design, art and music has been immense. Equipped with a sewing machine, endless fabrics, cello tape, sequins, wigs, prosthetics and plenty of make up, Bowery was among those of the 1980s London club scene who utilised clothing and body adornment to fashion themselves as self-made (and usually home-made!) originals. Bowery’s compulsion to take this form of uncompromised individualism to the extreme eventually lead to his entrance into the world of fine art in the late 1980s – an ‘elevation’ that he very much enjoyed. Sublime, effervescent, unsettling, systematically outrageous and hilarious, his unique position of dandy-meets-clown-meets-sculpture defied not only established categories of creative practice – something that his London contemporaries were quick to point out – but also established categories of being in, and interacting with the world. Bowery, it seems, continues posthumously to grow in size, spilling his proverbial body-mass over the bondage of good taste and acceptable bad taste alike.

Programme

Friday 24 November 2006

Rewind

Nash Room 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm

Contemporary British fashion designers are currently looking to mid-eighties London as a point of reference. This session, chaired by Alistair O'Neill, raises a dialogue across two generations about the formulation of London fashion past and present, including Rachel Auburn, Stevie Stewart, Kim Jones, Shelley Fox and Boudicca.

Fashion CGI

Nash Room 2:30 pm - 3:30 pm

Antony Price will explore the relationship between fashion photography and Computer Generated Imagery by looking at exclusive work created by leading post-production retouchers, digital artists & photographers from the fashion and advertising industries such as The Shoemakers Elves, Antony Crossfield and Dan Moloney.

Fashion in Film Festival

Nash Room 3:30 pm - 5:00 pm

Curator Marketa Uhlirova has programmed a very special screening of films relating to the symposium's theme. Expect surprise and delight in equal measure.

Keynote: The Death of Taste

Cinema 1 6:45 pm - 7:30 pm

Colin McDowell, senior fashion writer for The Sunday Times Style section and one of the most authoritative fashion commentators will give his view of fashion's contemporary malaise.

Dame Vivienne Westwood interviewed by Brenda Polan

Cinema 1 7:30 pm - 8:30 pm

This is not the first time that Westwood has been interviewed by Polan at the ICA – the first interview took place in 1993. This interview will reflect on the changes that have taken place across this span, to fashion as a whole and to Westwood as a fashion designer without parallel.

Saturday 25 November 2006

Aesthetic Labour

Nash Room 1:00 pm - 2.00 pm

Fashion images have been inextricably linked to consumption, seen as visual evidence of branding strategies and consumer desire. This session, chaired by Jo Entwistle (Senior Research Fellow, London College of Fashion) focuses attention on the labour of image making behind and in front of the camera, and examines some of the material realities of fashion modelling and styling. Speakers include model Ashley Mears and Melissa Richardson (Take Two model agency).

The Fashion City

Nash Room 2:00 pm - 3:00 pm

In an era of global spectacle, fashion has become one important means by which cities attempt to assert a unique, stylised identity. This session, chaired by Dr. Alison J Clarke (Chair, Design History & Theory, University of Applied Arts Vienna), will investigate the role of fashion week in selling the city, specifically how London Fashion Week has supported British fashion design and promoted London as a global fashion capital. Speakers include Professor Christopher Breward (Deputy Director of Research, Victoria & Albert Museum), Annette Worsley-Taylor (former Creative and Marketing consultant for London Fashion Week), and Anais Horn (Art Director of Viennese fashion magazine Wienerin).

Plenary: The Future of Fashion

Nash Room 3.30 pm - 4:30 pm

Roger Tredre (trend commentator and consultant to WGSN), Lee Lapthorne (Director of On/Off) and Susan Postlethwaite (Senior Lecturer in Fashion, Camberwell College of Arts) will reflect on the kinds of predictions raised by the fashion industry and those raised across this symposium.