| This project is part of the larger NWO-programme Dutch Fashion Identity in a Globalised World and explores the dynamic relationship between fashion and identity. The central question is how theoretical notions of cultural performance can help us understand how fashion and dressing function in the construction of individual and collective identities as embodied practices. The project looks at two levels of performance. First, the artistic performance as it takes place on the stage of the fashion show and in the medium of fashion photography. The main question here is how Dutch design keeps cultural heritage alive through continual innovation, and hence creates a specific identity or style over a period of time. Second, the cultural performance of identity through fashion. The hypothesis that fashion is an important way of performing one s identity will be tested by analysing Dutch fashion firms, from C&A, V&D and De Bijenkorf, via Mexx, G-sus and G-star, to Claudia Sträter, Van Gils, and Cora Kemperman and many others. Next to a selection of Dutch firms the corpus will be expanded by a textual and visual analysis of recent intermedial phenomena such as fashion glossies (BLVD), the work of internationally renowned Dutch fashion photographers (Inez van Lamsweerde & Vinoodh Matadin) and Dutch television programmes (Project Catwalk). The project aims at understanding the dynamics of identity as it is expressed through fashion as an intermedial aesthetics as well as an embodied and creative performance. |
