Fashion - Out of Order

Is fashion that is out of order and doesn't seem to follow any obvious rules truly accidental? Or has dissonance in fashion always been a guiding principle? Can coincidence therefore be predictable and controllable? A publication which defies all boundaries of categorisation has been created out of the workings of fashion that almost inevitably has to be out of order, so as to increase its attractive power and generate attention with its interruptions of the ordinary. The contributions, on the border between art and fashion and residing within the realms of literary theory, design theory, cultural history and technology, demonstrate in manifold ways processes, images and ideas that are striving for innovation and transgressing established parameters. The publication is dedicated to the constructive side of the development of fashion, whereby the theme of Out of Order is combined with the concept of dissonance as a creative formula.

If one starts from the premise that fashion is no longer fashion when it can be generalised, categorised, repeated and described, then the process of dissonance constitutes the significant impulse for everything new. Is the unraveling of fashion by the disruption of the conventional, known and established merely coincidental? Does it mean that what has resulted has no identifiable causes? Of course not, as every creative process, alongside its lack of rules, follows a qualitatively definable goal. It is this tension between wrong and right, trash and haute couture that creates the fashionable effect and justifies the liberty to deviate from the norm.

Whatever is successful is permissible. With contributions from: Pamela Church Gibson, Annette Geiger, Judith Gerdsen, Hanna Heilmann on Vibskov & Emenius, Iris Maria vom Hof in conversation with Oliver Sieber, Verena Kuni, Isabell Lizardi & Matt Johnson, Thomas Olah, Andrea Sick, Bitten Stetter & Daniel Spai, Terre Thaemlitz, Barbara Vinken, Harry Walter and Gundula Wolter.