The fact that Friday 13th is taking place within the context of Berlin‘s Fashion Week reflects the reality that art serves as an intellectual base camp and archive of forms and ideas for fashion. And this, it seems, is a necessity because who is genuinely still interested in fashion shows? During a punk congress in Kassel, Malcolm McLaren, the great disassembler and assembler once explained to me that gallery openings are „the nightclubs of the 21st century“. The alchemical and McLaren-style principle of „solve et coagula“ turned the pretty fashion circus and the once extremely boring art business into a great traveling circus, which in camel-rave-style draws hoards of chic people to trade fairs, auctions and gallery openings. Art seems to be in fashion. A couple of years ago there were murmurs of transience, of ‚a bubble’ about to burst. A decade ago it was fashion itself – the so-called fashion circus – which incited great exoduses to Milan, Paris and New York several times a year. In 1965 Yves Saint Laurent showed a collection of dresses printed with coloured panels in the style of Piet Mondrian. These days, those in art circles are quite rightly asking when they can expect the first collection by Terence Koh.
Joachim Bessing
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