FLYING THE FLAG

From time immemorial, the female form has been sliced and diced by fashion’s ephemeral fancies: Elizabethan trends clasped our necks in stiffly-starched ruffs whilst locking up our legs, and the crinoline which commanded 19th-century skirts restricted its wearers to a snail’s pace. Such whimsies define our silhouettes as objects on display, prompting design which works against, rather than for, the bodies societally forced to sport it. Sure, the pick-n-mix pastiche of modern fashion has garnered us (on paper) greater choice than ever before, but subjective standards of beauty, decreeing the perfect body and how best to echo it, still pervade the spaces we occupy and the content we consume. This corporeal hierarchy of sorts is shattered by Sinead O’Dwyer’s practice. Intent on dismantling the damage wreaked by bodily elitism, her silicone wearables are moulded by casting an assemblage of body shapes and sizes, each unshackled by fashion’s transient demands. Having presented ‘Wear Me Like Water’ – a liberating, colour-bursting collection – at London Fashion Week SS20 last September, a selection of O’Dwyer’s existent works, curated by Waves and Archives, has just decamped to New York for a month-long solo show launching Friday 6th. Considering the sculptural splendour of her work, vibrantly boasting a fibreglass finish, this exhibition seems like a seamless next step – especially upon scanning through the Waves and Archives manifesto which, among other mould-breaking statements, endorses “the right of fashion to be acknowledged as one of art’s mediums”, thus fostering a site “where fashion artists can operate as contemporary artists”. I swear, system disruptors will save this sector.

@sjodwyer + @wavesandarchives