Transboundary Fashion Seminar 4.2
Japan-France Joint Seminar 2.0

Art in Fashion, Fashion in Art
ファッションのなかのアート、アートのなかのファッション
Art dans la mode, Mode dans l’art

Held at Bunka Gakuen University& The National Art Center, Tokyo

March 3,4 20181

Organised by:Transboundary Fashion Seminar 4.2 (Bunka Gakuen
University, JSPS KAKENHI Grant JP17K02382)
Séminaire Anthropologie des Mondes de la Mode (IIACLAHIC, CNRS-EHESS)The National Art Center, Tokyo
Dr. Yoko Takagi, Art History, Fashion Studies, Professor, Bunka
Gakuen University, JSPS Kaken Grant “Transboundary Fashion:
Creation of Theoretical Frameworks and Promotion of International
Collaboration,” General Director of the Society for the Study ofJaponisme
Dr. Anne Monjaret, Ethnology, Sociology, Head of Research,
IIAC-LAHIC, CNRS, EHESS, President of SEF

March 3: Fashion in Art
Venue: Bunka Gakuen University, C041

Time: 10:30-17:00

Dr. Yoko Takagi
Art in Fashion/Fashion in Art
Colette Huchard
From Art in Stage Costume to Art in Fashion, a Durable Love Story
Dr. Michela Niccolai
Beyond Tradition and Modernity: Madama Butterfly’s Costumesand Sets (1904-1993)
Dr. Yutaka Nakamura
How to Do Things with Fashion: Making and Remaking the Worldthrough Hip Hop and Street Culture
Dr. Toby Slade
Kusama Yayoi: Fashion and Abstraction
Dr. Anne Monjaret
Statues in Paris or How Men Envision Women's Fashion
Dr. Clemens Thornquist
Fashion Design at the Borders Between Art and Fashion

Yayoi Motohashi, Art History, Sociology, Curator, The National Art
Center Tokyo, PhD student, Hitotsubashi University

Discussion

Saskia Thoelen, Art History, Japanology, Fashion Studies, PhD
student, Bunka Gakuen University

March 4: Art in Fashion
Venue: The National Art Centre Tokyo, Seminar Room A, B
Time: 12:50-17:00

Kristell Blache-Comte, Anthropology, PhD student, IIAC-LAHIC,CNRS, EHESS, PSL, Photographer

Saskia Thoelen
Art Nouveau in Kimono - Mitsukoshi’s Promotional Discourse
Kristell Blache-Comte
Hogushi Ori, the Art of Hand Painting Textile
Dr. Machiko Sawabe
Agency in Silk: Senses and Techniques of the Silk Industry
Yayoi Motohashi
What Was Happening at the Fashion Shows in Japan in the 1950s
and 60s? -Focusing on Chiyo Tanaka
Dr. Leyla Belkaïd Neri
Beyond Replicas: The Embodied Canvases of Yves Saint Laurent
Discussion2

Saturday March 3, 10:30~12:30
Colette Huchard
Costume designer for performing arts, Costume History Professor
From Art in Stage Costume to Art in Fashion, a Durable Love Story
Since ancient times, art has always been present in costume and fashion.
From Egyptian beaded dresses to the rich embroidery on waistcoats in theeighteenth century, through the Renaissance period to Agnès B.'s dresses
with printed artist photos; art has undoubtedly inspired fashion. Thispresentation will approach two specific cases of the presence of art infashion and costume, and will be support through my practice as a
costume designer in Belgium and in Japan. How does art give an impactto and inspires the work of creation in costume stage design? What about
art in kimono, is it not a textile living work of art itself?

Dr. Michela Niccolai
Music History, Cultural Studies, Staging opera, scientific collaborator,
Brussels, Université Libre de Bruxelles
Beyond Tradition and Modernity: Madama Butterfly’s Costumes andSets (1904-1993)
The present paper focuses on the costume’s analysis and the visual“couleur locale” of the sets for numerous stages of Madama Butterfly byGiacomo Puccini. Multiple productions will be analysed: the première in
Milan and the Parisian revival (1904; 1906), but also the staging of famous
directors such as Jean-Pierre Ponnelle (film-opera 1974), Keita Asari (LaScala 1983), Stefano Vizioli (Bologna, 1986), Frédéric Mitterrand (filmopera, 1993), Bob Wilson (1993), Robert Carsen (1994), and the movie
film M. Butterfly by David Cronenberg. These examples show themultiples views of Japan: from the Japonisme fin de siècle to acontemporary picture of the protagonist, inspired by Noh and Kabuki
theatre, until a meta-theatrical pantomime during the Cultural Revolutionin China. I will try to show how, on several occasions, the theatrical andcinematic artists developed, in the context of the exoticism, the image ofan oriental woman at the same time strong and fragile.

Cultural Anthropology,

Dr. Yutaka Nakamura
Associate Professor, Tama Art University

How to Do Things with Fashion: Making and Remaking the Worldthrough Hip Hop and Street Culture
This paper explores the performativity of clothing, as well as otherappearance-related materials by treating them as a dynamic realm, inwhich various institutional and subjectivising forces meet and negotiate.
Such forces include market economy and corporate branding, individual
as well as collective aesthetics, desires and affects, and gestures andbodily carriages, among others. More specifically, the presentation
examines the relationship between a value system and the elements offashion in Hip Hop and Street Cultures in the US and around the world,and clarifies how the latter forms a distinct style by becoming in theparticular environment and contexts.

3Saturday March 3, 14:00~15:30

Dr. Anne Monjaret
Ethnology, Sociology, Head of research, IIAC-LAHIC, CNRS, EHESS,
President of SEF
Statues in Paris or How Men Envision Women's Fashion

Dr. Toby SladeArt History, Fashion Theory, Adjunct Professor, Bunka Gakuen University
Kusama Yayoi: Fashion and Abstraction
Abstraction remains one of the more difficult concepts of art history toapply to fashion. And yet as one of the key directions of twentieth century
High Modernism its influence is impossible to deny. Kusama Yayoi is an
artist who stands amongst the most important innovators of visual
abstraction and who also always included fashion within her creative
output, opening her first boutique in 1968, and continuing to collaborate in
fashion today.
This paper will track two different stages in Kusama’s fashion output; theNew York years when she used abstract notions of the body and ofclothing to create avant-garde pieces, to compliment a body of work which
utilized outdoor nude performances, extraverted fashion, and guerrilla-likeshock tactics, to question social norms in keeping with an avant-garde
agenda. Many of her designs, such as Squid Dress (1968), which cut
holes to expose the wearer’s breasts, buttocks, and genitalia, or her
Phallic Dress (1968) with stuffed phallic protrusions, her Orgy Dress(1968) for four people, all predated and foreshadowed more celebrated
uses of these provocations and innovations by Rei Kawakubo and others,
placing her truly amongst the fashion avant-garde. A second stage camewith her rediscovery in the twenty-first century as a member to thepantheon of abstract expressionists, along with Jackson Pollock and Mark
Rothko, who had produced an immediately recognizable abstract style.
She herself became a fashion icon with a fluorescent-hued wig and vivid
polka dot dresses. Collaborations with designers such as Marc Jacobs
and Louis Vuitton used her key stylistic themes; infinite repetitions, infinity
nets, lyrical fantasy, vivid pop-colours, cosmic vision, and a play between
monochrome and polychrome, as motifs in high-end fashion. She remains
one of most important figures in the breaking down of the conceptual
barriers between fashion and art.

Statues embodying women belong to the landscape of Paris: saints,
allegorical subjects, queens, celebrities or "women of the people" haveinspired sculptors. We will focus today on working people’srepresentations: seamstresses, vendors, etc.. We will seek to understandhow men - sponsors or creators - envisioned those women, imagined theirappearances, both reproducing fashion and revisiting it.
Five statues, including four made at the turn of the 20th century and acontemporary one, seem ideal to lead such a study and constitute anespecially unique and rare group. These artistic productions seem at firstto fit the taste of bourgeois men, with whom those female workers wentout with - and in that sense, the woman more than the worker ishighlighted here. The outfits chosen are meant to demonstrate those
Parisian women’s elegance. These statues could thus suggest a static
vision of femininity. But it is not so. Every piece of clothing and every
accessory are precisely sculpted. The folds of the fabrics, the bodygestures or the wearing of the clothes are there to suggest a specificmovement. The body expresses both a symbolic and a social language.
Dr. Clemens Thornquist
Fashion design, Professor, Swedish School of Textiles, University of Borås,SwedenFashion Design at the Borders Between Art and Fashion
If one would look seriously at the many different ways through which
artists and fashion designers engage with the world, it becomes difficult todistinguish between works of art and works of design. From more
relational aesthetic endeavors such as encouraging democratic values,
enabling conversations and challenging norms and to more formal
aesthetics examinations such as exploring expressions of materials anddefinitions while developing new methodologies, and ultimately tochallenging different ways of living – all different motives seems to be on amutually shared agenda between artist and designers. However, since it
may be true that in the way fashion usually presents itself, it may be moredifficult to abstract its contribution to more ‘serious’ issues, I would
therefore like to take the opportunity to look a bit more carefully on what 4
may be going on in fashion design at the borders between art and fashion.

Sunday March 4, 13:00~15:30
Saskia Thoelen
Art History, Japanology, Fashion Studies, PhD student,
Bunka Gakuen University
Art Nouveau in kimono - Mitsukoshi’s promotional discourse
The usage of art movements in the promotion of kimono was aphenomenon that occurred for the first time in the late 19th beginning 20thcentury in Japan. Art Nouveau was the first art movement that waspromoted as a fashion trend in kimono, and contributed heavily to thedevelopment of a modern image for the latter.
In this presentation, Mitsukoshi, Tokyo’s first and foremost trendsetter of“the contemporary kimono,” will be presented as a case study, and linked
to Art Nouveau’s promotion in kimono. The main question is: Whatdiscursive strategies did Mitsukoshi as an active agent use to promote Art
Nouveau as a trend within the “contemporary kimono”?
Through applying the method of discourse analysis, Art Nouveau’s roleand Mitsukoshi’s activities linked to the promotion of the “contemporarykimono” will be clarified. The frameworks of agency and legitimacy will
provide a lens to analyse above mentioned questions.

Kristell Blanche-Comte
Anthropology, PhD student, IIAC-LAHIC, CNRS, EHESS, PSL, Photographer
Hogushi Ori, the Art of Hand Painting Textile
Hogushi Ori is a traditional technique for making textiles using specifictools such as painting, brushes, boards, and also specific know-how suchas a high sense of colors and drawings. This technique was born in Lyon,
France, and has been imported to Japan several centuries ago. Someplaces, for example Chichibu and Fujiyoshida are now famous for thistechnique. This presentation wants to present this art of hand painting
textile, and aims to show how factories using this technique today need toadapt their practice, in order to integrate their products into contemporaryfashion. What challenges do they face in connecting their practice tofashion? What innovations do they bring today? Which part of thetraditional process needs to be saved, which part needs to be forgotten infavor of improvements? What are the limits to the connection of this art
and the fashion market? These questions will be answered with the helpof an ethnographic study taking place in Fujiyoshida, and will be explained
through aesthetic, social and economical local aspects.

Dr. Machiko Sawabe
Japanese Sericulture History, PhD in Anthropology, Hitotsubashi University,
Division Manager, Cultural Project Division, EVE Communications Group
Agency in silk: Senses and Techniques of the Silk Industry
During Japan’s modernization, the Silk industry was at the heart of Japan’s
industrialization policy, and it was the most effective way to acquire foreignexchange earnings. Silk was mass produced to satisfy the American women’s
demand for silk stockings; and at the same time, for Japanese women, it wasa practice to raise silkworms through using their physical senses, a very
sensual and emotional practice.
My presentation will argue that silk as a fashion textile was produced amidst
the intimate and emotional relationship between women and silkworms.
Furthermore I will revisit "silken dream" by the photographer Miyako Ishiuchi
as an artwork which reflects the female body found in dresses made from silk(mainly kimono).

5

Yayoi Motohashi
Art History, Sociology, Curator, The National Art Center Tokyo, PhD student,
Hitotsubashi University
What was happening at the Fashion Shows in Japan in the 1950s and60s? -- focusing on Chiyo Tanaka
The paper explores what was occurring in Japan during the 1950s and60s within fashion history, focusing on Chiyo Tanaka (1906-1999) and her
fashion shows, which had a great impact at that time. Tanaka was one of
the first prominent fashion designers in Japan, as well as a great educatorin clothes making. Tanaka designed at the Kanebo and Hankyu
department stores, as well as designed for Empress Kojun. She alsobrought Christian Dior’s patterns to Japan in the 1950s. At the same time,
she established a number of cloth-making schools around Japan, whichenabled a large number of people, primarily women, to be educated infashion and design. Through examining Tanaka’s life, who is unfortunately
fading into history but was a very important and influential figure in theJapanese fashion industry, I would like to explore the relationship between
fashion and society during the 1950s and 60s in Japan.

Dr. Leyla Belkaïd Neri
Cultural Anthropology, Fashion Design, Professor and Program Director atParsons Paris - The New School
Beyond Replicas: The Embodied Canvases of Yves Saint Laurent
Exploring the artistic practices of Yves Saint Laurent contributes to therethinking of the multifaceted connections between fashion and visualarts. This presentation investigates the pictorial forms inspired by the workof painters such as Mondrian, Van Gogh, Braque and Matisse, that thecouturier has produced between 1965 and 1988. It addresses hisrepresentations, intents and purposes from a material culture perspective
by focusing on the morphological and stylistic features of a series ofsyncretic fashion objects. The presentation highlights Saint Laurent’s deepreflection on bodily techniques, space and materiality, and his
reinterpretation of the iconic painters’ works not only as a superficial
tribute to his favorite artists, but as a recurring experimental tool toquestion more broadly his identity as a couturier and fashion design as an
artistic arena for the making of new modernities.

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