2019/2020
CO-CURATIOn and Art Direction Team of the Event Series:

Nobody’s Fashion Week featured works and public programs by 30+ alternative artists, designers, educators and organizers using wearables, textiles and the body as a medium. Their practices span a range of themes – such as personal identity, body politics, cultural history, sustainability, craft and technology – but all share roots in critically engaging with fashion. From September 1 – October 15 2020, we launched a six week exhibition, consisting of an online exhibition, artist residency, participatory workshops, artist talks and other public programming. We wanted to engage with and empower both emerging designers and everyday people to find fertile spaces to express themselves through clothing and to share their creations. After the show Johanna Schwab created a Zine together with all participating artists. 

Curators: Lexy Ho-Tai, Dew Igworia, Jaime Iglehart, Johanna Schwab

Nobody’s Fashion Week took place online and in the gallery of Flux Factory New York City, with support from the Ministry for Arts, Culture the Civil Service and Sport of Austria, the Austrian Cultural Forum New York, Bildrecht – Austria`s Collective Management Organisation (CMO) für Visual Arts, and a generous donation from Joe Castillo.

 

Fashion is all around us. Fashion is body politics, representation, sustainability, systems. Fashion is a medium that everybody participates in, whether they like it or not. Fashion is Powerful. 

Nobody’s Fashion Week aims to democratize Fashion by encouraging multidisciplinary collaboration, skill-sharing culture, and self-expression for everyone.

During Covid-19, we have witnessed the current fashion industry crumble as clothing sales go down, shows get cancelled, and more people turn to DIY. We ask, with hope: What will be rebuilt in the shell of the previous industry? Who’s Fashion Week is it? Nobody’s Fashion Week is a reimagining of the fashion industry from the bottom up.

Our show was dreamed up as a response to the hegemony, wastefulness and gate-keeping of the corporate fashion industry. Nobody’s Fashion Week is a growing community of independent designers taking agency in redefining our own Fashion Week and proposing alternative systems for Fashion.

We believe people of all backgrounds, sizes and abilities should have agency over their self-expression. We invite anyone to engage in our community and conversations as we collectively redefine the future of fashion. 

(Press release)