FASHION-able

100

lenge the pret-a-porter logic of buying things ready-made off the hanger. The kits

were aimed at merging fashion, art and theory within the fashion store settings,

not the gallery or the bookstore, but where consumers are used to meeting fashion.

Through this effort the Abstract Accessories aimed to expand the range of expres-

sions and formats fashion can take.

Through a happy coincidence and a lot of collaborative work the kits were taken

care of and distributed by a fashion company in Stockholm. The kits were later

launched at the +46 fair for progressive fashion during the Stockholm Fashion

Week in August 2007. I held a presentation of the kits after the last catwalk show.

The kits were later sold at conceptual fashion stores in Stockholm, such as Aplace

at the PUB department store, and also bookstores like Konst-ig. However, we are all

still waiting for them to make a major breakthrough.

The problems with these kits are many layered. They are not ready-to-wear, but the

opposite; they require work and process, and it is not entirely obvious to the buyer

what the outcome will be in the end. Likewise, they are abstract and also closed in

form and they look more like work from an experimental poet than of a fashioni-

sta. They do not directly connote to fashion and are not glossy or attention seeking

in a world where attention is at stake. In addition to this, I soon came to realize how

the kits need an easier point of entry, a text on the backside or at least an ingress.

The form I had given them was not inviting enough and I also made a mistake in

putting the three of them together in a collection package, in a paper wrapping.

This meant that the potential buyer will have to open the whole package just to

look at one of them, and them must open each of them to see what is inside.

Disneyland can wait is

a collection of methods and

a reform cookbook. It shows

step-by-step instructions how to

make the garments as well as

photographs of the finished items

of clothing on a model. The kit

contains two self_passage labels

if the reformer wants to label the

new creations.

36

highCollarShirt

ingredients:1 old shirt

needle and thread

37

1. take an old shirt with a large
   collar, preferably one with exag-
   gerated points.


2. fold up the collar and cut a
   curved shape out of it, as in the
   illustration above.


3. zigzag stitch along the edges
   with as narrow a seam as possible,
   add extra stitching for decoration.


4. be the 21th century dandy.

QR

The Disneyland can wait cookbook, the

first kit of the Abstract Accessories, shows eight

step-by-step clothes transformations. This is the

highCollarShirt, from pages 36-39