In their clothes

An exhibition showing at the newly opened Arts Maebashi museum in Maebashi brings together work from nine groups of designers, magazine editors and other creative artists. Titled “Wardrobe Memories”, it explores the joy of clothing and the way it is worn. 

The exhibition focuses on everyday clothing and invites people to experience art more closely in their lives through fashion. The meaning of clothing is explored through about 260 pieces.

One exhibit space is based on the idea of yarn and cloth and features a curtain of threads hangs from the six-metre-high ceiling. The work, by Kaoru Hirano, an artist based in Germany, used to be a dress. She unravelled the threads and put them back together, creating a tactile piece that shows how clothing is the work of many people’s physical labours.

The colours used in each striped and plaid piece by Store are different.

Store, a brand headed by a male-female duo, has pieces in plaid patterns and horizontal stripes on display. The designs appear to be simple, but the yarns used in each article are subtly different, with no two patterns alike.

An area devoted to the theme of “Wardrobe Memories” is home to designer Nigo’s collection of vintage pieces. This includes jeans from denim brand Lee and embroidered satin baseball jackets, affectionately called “sukajan,” which were made in the post-war years as a souvenir for people returning from Japan to the United States. The rich assortment of vintage items brings back the feel of each era.

Another area centres on “myths about what I am”. Anrealage designer Kunihiro Morinaga exhibits pants made with high-tech fabric, in which changing temperatures create a patina of worn-in effects. Through clothes that change along with their environment, Morinaga breaks down the idea of “expressing oneself” that has been symbolised by what one wears.

Form on Words, a fashion brand that has been based in Tokyo since 2011, has created five pieces based on stories told by five residents of Maebashi about their lives. These articles can be tried on by visitors to the exhibit. The experiment is to invite the viewer to experience other people’s lives through clothing that “captures their worldviews.”

One of the five pieces was inspired by the idea of a man who has quit his job at a company to work on a farm. In the piece, a suit is sewn to the back of a T-shirt and jeans.

“A diverse sense of values are incorporated in the act of selecting and wearing clothing,” says Mizuki Tsuji, the curator behind the exhibit.

From vintage clothing to high-tech articles, the exhibit shows us what hot undercurrents run through fashion today. The show wraps tomorrow.