Dysfashional, Paris / Berlin

Dysfashional Paris / Berlin
Exhibition and performances at the frontier of fashion and contemporary art

Paris 30th October - 29th November 2009
Passage du Désir 85-87 rue du Faubourg Saint Martin 75010 Paris

With Hussein Chalayan, Raf Simons, Bless, Maison Martin Margiela, Gaspard
Yurkievich, Antonio Marras, Bernhard Willhelm, Pierre Hardy, Kostas Murkudis,
Mathieu Mercier …


After two stages, one in Luxembourg to celebrate the European Capital of Culture in 2007, the other at the Mudac, Musée du Design et des Arts Appliqués Contemporains de Lausanne in 2008, the international exhibition DYSFASHIONAL renews itself and settles between Paris and Berlin.

The exhibition, which will be presented at the Passage du Désir in 2009 and at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin in 2010, will showcase a selection of pieces from the previous editions as well as a series of high-brow new productions by designers and artists from both Paris and Berlin.

The project will be completed by PARASITE, a hybrid space somewhere between shop and gallery, devoted to emerging artists and designers who explore the boundaries of contemporary fashion, and P.S, a show which invites choreographers to transfigure the posture imposed by clothes: the performance becomes a means to reveal how clothing shapes the body, determines our gestures and defines our identity.


DYSFASHIONAL considers fashion in the widest sense of the word. Rather than exhibiting clothes and styles, DYSFASHIONAL explores the broad range of materials that turn fashion into a way of representing personal identity and experience. Staged as a construction site, DYSFASHIONAL does not define fashion but tackles the seemingly frivolous yet vital realm of fashion by examining the approach of designers and artists from various backgrounds and invites us on a spectacular and striking journey, bringing us closer to a world in which the protagonists are not the objects but the creative process itself.

In the title Dys-fashional, the prefix "dys" indicates a disturbance, a discord within the system. The idea at the outset was to verify the dysfunctional dimension of fashion, that is to say, the elements that resist and clash with a "literal" definition of this world, as a simple collection of garments and accessories, as a production system for commercial objects, images and products to do with identity.


The idea is therefore to inverse the principles and to invite fashion designers to present instillations which reflect their imagination and creative universe, rather than their collections.

Through these environments, objects and films, a mutli-layered horizon constructs itself, where fashion appears beyond the objects which materialise it, as a field for experimentation or a state of sensibility in the making.


DYSFASHIONAL is not only a barometer for high-brow experimentation between art and fashion, but is also a bridge between Paris and Berlin, two fashion and art capitals.