The Decorated Shed // 2014 // Bachelorarbeit Modedesign
‚People are looking for illusions; they don’t want the world’s realities. And, I asked, where do I find this world of illusions? Where are their tastes formulated? Do they study it in school? Do they go to the museums? Do they travel in Europe? Only one place – the movies. The hell with everything else. ‚
(Morris Lapidus, architect)
Illusions are what make the city of Las Vegas the dazzling entertainment metropolis that it is today. This unlikely place in the middle of the desert represents the idea of creating a new world with own rules. If we want to learn from Las Vegas, we must consider the psychological constitution of its visitors, the desire for sparkling facades and spectacular magic and competition shows. And the knowledge that the magic shows from Siegfried & Roy are illusions, doesn’t curtail the audiences expectation and pleasure.
Las Vegas isn’t subtle or modest, but loud and ostentatious.
In Robert Venturis (architect) book Learning from Las Vegas he claims that there is a connection between the flamboyant architecture and the people that inhabit the city Las Vegas as visitors or residents. He defends the city against elitist modernists and insists, that all the buildings that they regard as ugly and trivial, serve the people’s needs much better than the handful selected buildings of their sophisticated choice.
This analysis of the architecture on the Las Vegas strip results in the idea of the ‚decorated shed‘, a functional structure with an applied, independent front side, which illustrates the content of the building with symbols and signs. The ‚rhetorical front and conventional behind‘ is representative for the postindustrial society, which is dominated more and more by the media and moves around the cities by car.
Well, is this focus on the face side symptomatic for other aspects of our visual culture? Obviously the predominant decorated facades and signs, the ‚rhetorical facade‘, can be observed analogically in human beings as well, for instance in beauty competitions and bodybuilding. These colorful imaginary worlds can still question reality and its conventions, although or even because they rely on fake and make-believe.
This research has been a thrilling starting point for my collection development. How can I transpose the interaction between ‚the rhetorical facade‘ and the ‚conventional shed‘ into fashion? Or in other words: How can I question the conventional in a garment?
All in all the metaphor of the ‚decorated Shed‘ will serve as a leitmotif in my personal examination of – and my own positioning in – the fast pace of the fashion cycle and its limits to be constantly innovative and original.
My collection ‚The Decorated Shed‘ is a clash of ‚The Rhetorical’ and ‚The Conventional’ in clothing, and an appreciation of the ostentatious, ugly and trivial, that we tend to smile at. It’s a proverbial ‚pie in the sky‘, that will question the conventional through imitation.
Betreut von: Prof. Marloes then Bhömer // Prof. Dr. Ingeborg Harms // GD Lars Paschke
