Fashion + Time = Fashion Time
Introducing a new guest edited series, and where you can find the cosiest things this weekend
Good morning!
So sorry we’ve been a bit irregular. But you can rest easy now knowing that we will be back to our usual scheduling from now on: bright an early on Friday mornings. (Well, mostly. We might take a teeny break on the 26th to work on some very important exciting things, but for the most part, we are back to Friday publishing. Don’t hold this against us, please!!!! We are only human!!)
Fashion / time has been a big theme of the week, coincidentally, but we are not here to talk about the cute af panel that our editor was on at the Barbican this week – which, if you think about it, was very much to do with fashion and the passing of time…. (ty for coming :’) But a whole new exciting project for you to sink your teeth into in the coming months.
First of all, though, we wanna promo our very exciting event this weekend, the annual winter fair we do with twos, CC-Steding, Cecile Tulkens, Supporting Material and Tom Dean. Expect cosy gift things for friends, family and, of course, yourself. As well as a twos exclusive bog bags made of silk that kinda looks like wrapping paper??? You’ll have to pop in to see it 😎
We will also be doing a solidarity tombola, with all funds from ticket sales going to the Filton 24 support fund, which supports those imprisoned with costs for material things (phone credit, books, etc.) as well as funding their media campaign (all the more important considering the media blackout on the current hunger strikes); and the Sameer Project, which provides on-the-ground support to people in Gaza by providing free meals, investment in infrastructure rebuilding and rubble clearance. If you can’t make it to buy a ticket, you can donate to them using the links we have provided. *Just to note, the Sameer Project has a couple of different branches depending on location and purpose, and all are equally as important as the other, so you might need to do a bit of clicking around to find the right link.
Prizes we currently have confirmed for the tombola will be from all of us, as well as Jess Maybury, Rights for Weeds, Perfect Lives, Stefan Cooke, Donlon Books, Tasos Hair, Chicken Foot Soup (Goya Gumbani and Dom P), Deathmask, Jawara Alleyne, Independantes de Coeur, Lore Archive and Yuki Bar. GUARANTEE you’ll want like 90% of it (depending on your vibe of course, but the quality is remarkably high).
As well as this weekend’s festivities, we wanna shout out Mainline’s sample sale with Effe that’s on for just one more day today, and our friend Amurmur’s launch night happening at the Horse Hospital next Thursday the 18th December.
Also, a new lesbian pub The Baroness is having its inaugural night in South Bermondsey on Saturday night!! We managed to speak to Sel as she was rushing around putting the finishing touches on the pub plans, who’s the brains behind the bar. Keep scrolling to find out what’s in store, and who’s pulling pints this weekend…………..
But now, we’re excited to be bringing you a new-ish project, called Fashion Time initiated by our friend Marlie Mul between September 2021 and May 2022 during her professorship on the Work.Master MFA programme, HEAD Genève. She asked her cohort of fine art students to respond to what the making of ‘fashion’ is, both as spectacle and within its material form.
The results were delightfully free: a giant pair of papier-mâché shoes, slogan tees bearing the name of their maker stitched together into dresses, clothes that are barely clothes, that have become sites for sploshing paint, ripping, stitching and pinning. The results, these sculptural interpretations of ‘fashion’, were shown to (and tried on by) members of the public in a one-day exhibition-slash-fashion-show at artist-run gallery MALA in Lisbon in May 2022.
After the project had wrapped, Marlie was asked by HEAD to edit a book celebrating the project, which was meant to be published, like, a year ago or more…. After months of work, of commissioning and writing and editing and designing, the funding from HEAD was pulled, leaving the work produced for the book, Fashion Time, with nowhere to go.
So, over the next little while we will be hosting Fashion Time, by publishing the three texts commissioned by Marlie for the book over the course of the next few months. The first in this series is from Alberta Romano, Lisbon-based curator and writer who visited the exhibition at MALA, titled ‘Learning from (Fashion) Time’.
The text outlines the various ideas behind the project, as well as bringing to the fore Lisbon’s own deep-seated countercultural fashion history through the Manobras de Maio, guerrilla fashion shows that took over Lisbon’s streets intermittently over the 1980s and 1990s.
Learning from (Fashion) Time
Words: Alberta Romano
Immersed as we are in a deluge of images and fresh news, it often slips my mind that amidst the labyrinthine depths of the internet, one can still stumble upon rare archival images and videos adorned with the dusty patina of time.
It is this very dust, perhaps, that has preserved these records so immaculately and lends them a potency that surpasses the mundane inundation of daily visuals. Such was my revelation while conducting research on Manobras de Maio.
The scene unfolded on the afternoon of 17 May 1986 in Lisbon, where an impromptu catwalk had been erected in the square facing the Chafariz on Rua do Século.
Adorned in avant-garde clothes crafted by young designers, students, and aspiring stylists – some hailing from the theatre or music scene – models wore their creations proudly. Additionally, each stylist selected their own music to accompany their group of models on the runway, resulting in a seamless procession of groups following a pre-established order.
The name Manobras de Maio was coined by the journalist Manuel Tavares, who ingeniously likened the handcrafted nature of these garments to a Portuguese play on words: histo aqui é muita mão-de-obra’. Mão-de-obra – Manobra. (‘the work here involves a lot of manual-labor. Manual-work – Manobra’).
These fashion shows recurred sporadically until the 2000s, inciting a creative fervour that, as described by Mariana Cachulo (founder of Manobras de Maio with João Romão and Rita Lopes Alves) fostered a vibrant convergence of artists, creatives and intellectuals – spurring them to innovation, literally forcing them to have ideas. It was this blend of spontaneous yet compelled collaboration, coupled with the distinctly artisanal essence of the fashion creations, that conjured the enchantment which is still clearly readable through the archive photos, newspaper clippings from the time and amateur footage on YouTube.
A palpable energy echoed the awe in the eyes of the viewers and their barely contained excitement toward this whirlwind of creativity. Of course, it was the 80s, the years during which Lisbon regained its freedom of expression after years and years of dictatorship and isolation from the rest of the European political dynamics.
As a foreigner living in Portugal for some years now, discovering the energy encapsulated in this event has been a pleasantly surprising experience. Interdisciplinary collaboration among creatives from different sectors is something rare in general, but it seems to be a nearly forgotten concept in a city like Lisbon, drained by tourism and sadly deprived of the vibrant spirit of initiative and proactivity typical of many other European capitals. And it’s precisely in a kind of desire for retribution towards a city with incredible untapped potential that I seemed to glimpse the power of Fashion Time.
Fashion Time was a project initiated in 2022 by visual artist Marlie Mul. In the context of the Work.Master MFA programme at HEAD Genève which she led at the time, Mul set up this project as a way to connect the students’ curiosity for fashion with its performative potential. The project was informed by her experience in collaboration and art education, as well as her interest in the potential of fashion as a medium.
Throughout the school year Mul developed various scenarios and outfits with the students towards a one-night-only event, which was to take place in Lisbon at MALA, a not-for-profit space that promotes contemporary art in the city. MALA organises exhibitions and events accessible to a wide public beyond the art scene.
Founded by Henrique Loja and Sofia Montanha, MALA started in 2020 as a nomadic exhibition space called Supermala, which intersected DIY fashion and contemporary art production. In 2021 Loja and Montanha inaugurated the art space in its permanent location at Rua Dom João de Castro to promote and support Portuguese and international artists at the beginning of their careers.
Often, when attending openings organised by MALA, one experiences a refreshing atmosphere rarely found elsewhere in the city. It’s not uncommon to encounter a diverse mix of people in the audience, from elderly traditional fado singers to young artists and designers. These uncommon bonds usually takes place within the spaces of the gallery, but with Fashion Time they went far beyond the perimeter walls of MALA.
It was a typical late April afternoon in Lisbon. The sun was still high and temperatures were starting to rise: enticing everyone to uncover a bit more or at least to show off that jacket that hadn’t been worn for a while. This was basically the ideal climate for what the creators of Fashion Time would invite people to do: wear the clothes that until then had seemed to form the exhibition display.
The bright colours of the clothes, the oddity of the accessories visible through the window, and the distinctly multicultural atmosphere that permeated that day in that narrow Ajuda street – all this had managed to melt even the usually impenetrable shyness of the average Portuguese inhabitant. As people gathered courage and began to put on the first accessories (hats to be worn in groups of three, oversized boots and decidedly too-large handbags), some headed towards the hanging clothes, looking at them with the same curious caution one uses in shops they enter for the first time.
“The first thing I noticed was the racks being high above my head,” recounted the artist Guilherme Curado. “This reminded me of the feeling I used to get when I would go into my parents’ closet and search for something fun to dress up in, then take a little walk around the house.” Once the majority of people were clothed in their chosen outfits, the music grew louder and those who wanted could take part in an impromptu parade along the small street facing the gallery.
The Ajuda neighborhood where MALA is located is purely residential. Developed around the Palácio Nacional da Ajuda, it is made up of narrow and steep streets, populated mainly by small businesses such as bars, butchers, food shops and trattorias. The whole catwalk was framed by the decadent aesthetics of two overpass arches at the far end of the street. In an instant that small street in Ajuda was transformed into an open-air walkway.
A teddy bear-top, a shower curtain dress, an ambiguous dress made of fabric leaves, flaming pants and articulated dresses stating out loud – NOUS AVONS BESOIN DE CABINES D’ESSAYAGE, QUI VA FAIRE LES FRINGUES? were just some of the clothes that fluttered amid the shouts of encouragement from those who, until a few hours before, had been busy sewing them. Fashion Time evoked the spirit of its most famous predecessor Las Manobras de Maio in the hand-making of the clothes and accessories, but importantly also through the incredible energy unleashed by the event.
“The liberating feeling of walking down a public street in Lisbon is still vivid after two years,” recollected the artist Beatriz Neves Fernandes, when I called to ask about her memories of that day. “I wasn’t aware I was going to perform until I arrived and the suddenness made it more exciting. I’m reminiscing over MALA’s neighbours astonishment as they looked out of the window and we were flooding the street with glamour.”
“It didn’t feel like we were in Lisbon that afternoon, the atmosphere was lively and cheerful. In some ways it reminded me more of London,” recalled the young designer Giulia Bortilno. The event not only demonstrated its success through the turnout and enthusiasm of the public on the day: it continues to do so as it gives us the opportunity to reflect on the valuable lessons to be gleaned from such multidisciplinary approaches that engage the community.
For some reason, our century loves to roll the word ‘interdisciplinary’ off the tongue as much as it enjoys demonising the concept; especially when it comes to evaluating the professionalism of someone who performs more than one job or has diverse passions. Although it is widely proven both in the educational and professional fields that the confluence of stimuli from different knowledge areas contributes to a significant development of the creative impulse of every individual, this always seems like a taboo when professional fields get too intertwined.
A desire to create new images and connections is strongly present in the project of Marlie Mul, who states in the manifesto accompanying Fashion Time: “Maybe calling what we will do in this project FASHION is just an incentive to be hyper-creeaaative and inspired to make things”. The stimulus, the invitation, the obligation to make something new seems to be the impulse that drives these interdisciplinary and participatory practices – albeit so different from each other in time and nature.
Maybe the lessons from an event like Fashion Time extend beyond mere learning (like the title of this essay states) towards the importance of remembering. Remembering that a playful approach, without clear boundaries in terms of themes or audience, is a productive one and for this reason, it should be protected and encouraged in order to stimulate a public consciousness based on exchange rather than resignation.
Credits
Series editor: Marlie Mul
Editor: Perri McKenzie
Q&A with Sel (aka The Baroness)
Why are you opening a new pub for lesbians?
There is not a single specifically lesbian pub in London! There are amazing lesbian-run venues like The Old Nun’s Head, but we want to see a lesbian-specific space like the many gay male pubs in London.
What’s the vibe? Chic? Moody? Pub-like?
Pub-like! Down to earth, good craic, welcoming, merry. A liiiiiitttle chic but only by nature. 💋
Tell me about the location? Why is it there?
In an unspecified car park in south east london. 1: it’s the only place that’d have us 2. i feel safe in the bosom of the surrey canal road triangle (ormside, MOT and avalon) 3. we would not be able to do this without Mike Levitt 4. SE london needs a lesbian spot!
Who do you hope becomes a regular?
People with warm hearts.
Who would be your dream celeb client?
I would just love Kendall Jenner to finally come out, come to the pub, love it and leave a £10k tip.
What’s the dress code for the opening night?
Dress to impress The Baroness!
Most exciting thing on the menu?
Fake snow machine!
Most importantly: who’s behind the bar?
The ultimate cast: Rosie Woodhouse, Sophia Al-Maria, L’Oyin, Hesse K and of course Maxou <3
Keep up with The Baroness here. X
Ciao for now!