Valentina Triet, Of manners, of trips

In the late 1950s, the British fashion designer Mary Quant caused a stir at a couture show in St. Moritz with a collection that flew in the face of prevailing runway etiquette: instead of the smooth elegance of ball gowns and soft music, she introduced short hemlines and leather boots, accompanied by jazz, sound with tempo and nerve. “I want girls who exaggerate the realness of themselves,” Quant said, “not the haughty unrealness like the couture models do.” Quant was one of the key figures in transforming mainstream fashion shows in 50s and 60s Europe. Her labeling and marketing, the “realness” of her models and garments, owed much to her use of street style, black culture and the nascent sexual liberation movements of the time.

Of manners, of trips pinpoints such moments of distortion, in which spectacle flirts with the attraction of the unfamiliar. Valentina Triet is showing close to thirty videos in which she transforms found footage of fashion shows from the 1980s to today, covering a range of houses from Dior and Thierry Mugler to Off-White, into pixelated images. Bars of color hint at the clothing line of the shows, the movement and pace of the grids suggest both the models walking on the runway and a camera panning over them. Flashing lights indicate the press’s constant snapping. The soundtrack remains unaltered, blasting and sharp, in contrast to all other – visual – elements of shows that are literally unfocused. Rather than the model being the obvious vehicle of desire for the object – actually wearing the clothes as well as embodying their essential vibe – the soundtrack is outed as a most conspicuous vehicle of attachment. Whether the sound of clanging machinery, classical music, pop songs: edge of industry, class of high culture, rebel of subculture, fun of the mainstream come into play as genres conjuring value of this or that prestige.

It is the first time the series is being shown in its entirety. Altogether, the videos run to around 3.5 hours of footage. In the 60s, the runway shows and marketing in general burst the limits of what and how something could be the hot thing. The sensory jolt of Quant’s fashion show, the means that have since been enlisted in all imaginable ways in order to ignite the desire of and effectively affect viewers, critics and consumers, have here been reduced to their raw components: light, color, rhythm, volume. Without a product to latch on to, the body is left to its heightened senses.