“Gendercodes in fashion throughout the 20th century”

Paul Smith (1946)

Pop-up expo by Modemuseum Hasselt & Bonnefantenmuseum
during FASHIONCLASH Festival 2015 

03.06.2015 - 14.06.2015

Fashion is considered to be an important medium for individual self expression, as well as for the genderrelated aspects of this indentity. It's traditionally split into womens- and mensfashion, but because of its expressive character, fashion has become a platform for breaking down conventional social roles. Additionally, the fashionchoices of gender variant people illustrate that biological sex is a relative concept in fashion. Furthermore, the fashion world adapted this crossgender approach as a strategy causing the cross-fertilization of men's and women's clothing to grow more and more apparent throughout the recent years. Since the arrival of genderneutral clothing the ends of the genderspectrum have gotten explicitly entangled. People now have complete freedom of choice to express themselves how and as who they want.
FASHIONCLASH Festival 2015 wants to celebrate self expression. That's why they collaborated with Modemuseum Hasselt and Bonnefantenmuseum Maastricht to set up this pop-up exhibition as an element of their gender program. The expo travels through the costume and fashion history of the 20th century to show that gender has always been a precondition for fashion design and that fashion has always played a role in gender fluidity.

http://www.bonnefanten.nl
http://www.modemuseumhasselt.be

Jean Paul Gaultier

Rei Kawakubo and Junya Watanabe for Comme des Garçons 

André Courrèges