Fashion and Theory: NYC
The crossroads where culture and history meet are difficult to locate, especially in a city with so many streets that already intersect. Add to this the multiple possibilities of crossing thresholds in coming into buildings, and the way ideas cross and merge whenever people meet (even when they are not talking, not listening, not even looking at each other). This is why the challenge for artists in the present day are more furiously interesting than they ever were before, because multiple possibilities also lead to many different answers to the same questions.
From the strain of long nights in the library stacks, to the comfort of a luxury NY hotel , contemplating the bigger questions about the way we are and why we do things is a wonderful thing to do. In a city where the inner life is every bit as essential as the outer one, there is pressure to be thinking deep thoughts, especially in academia, and at NYU the competition is very dense. It’s a breath of fresh air, then, when thinkers like Giana Gonzalez come around, and we get to catch them at the very beginning of their thought, in order to watch the multiple trajectories.
The kind of conception involved in her projects, like Hacking Couture, often leads to various flights of the mind, however, and it’s easy to lose track of the beginnings of any thought. This might be why clothing is such a great center from which to de-center the way that codes and structures function. By putting them in sharp focus, suddenly the threads of other moments start to become untangled, and we are left looking at ways to construct meaning. The ultimate artifacts of contemporary culture just might be found in the shopping malls, and in New York, it’s hard to find malls, but easy to find excuses for shopping, and this means that there is much more work to be done than anyone had ever considered.
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