He draped the fabrics tangling the models’ bodies in successive layers of material, yet loosely leaving out long cords on their arms to sway like seaweed. The Accuser is, in turn, all about black capes, satin corset dresses and transparent textiles, patchwork and scarlet sequins. Gothic in a glamour version. There are a lot of references to liturgical costumes, some satanic influences, afterimages of Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut and stylized stitching inspired by the anatomy of the human body. As if those things, which are usually suppressed in the major circulation of ideas and art, came evidently back to disrupt and undermine the seemingly natural state of things. city trash
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Designers associated with the Polish Gothic label, mostly show their collections in various postindustrial spaces, emphasizing the urban contexts of their collections and exploiting their trashy character. Raw and dark interiors, street vibe. Street fashion. Poor image quality, dirty aesthetics, shabby walls, abandoned buildings and post-industrial lofts that have their glory days long behind them. The use of this kind of spaces became popular in the fashion world after being initiated by Wolfgang Tillmans’ photo sessions for iD and Corinne Day’s for The Face, who photographed friends living in the famous Soho and infamous Brixton as well as the club scene of the nineties. In 1996, Dazed & Confused published Surveillance – a series of photographs by Rankin that represened low resolution aesthetics and blur characteristic for CCTV cameras6. After a while, more sessions in a similar style began to appear. However, this type of photographic practice was not marked by signs of voyeurism and did not use a hidden camera mechanism – Tillmans, Day and Raskin preferred to explore situations in their natural environment. Their models wore T-shirts and jeans while laying messily sprawled on sofas, often captured in pretty much intimate situations. However, while in The Face or D & C such photographs were simply regarded as a progressive element, on the pages of Vogue they immediately took on the hardly subversive nature. So far, fashion photography was usually combined with sex, class and good taste. 6. Rankin, Surveillance, [in:] Dazed & Confused, nr 17, April 1996.