Skin + Bones

I realise that every fashion blogger this side of the pond has had their say on the current exhibition at Somerset House, London - Skin + Bones - but after a recent late night visit I was amazed. The exhibition embodies everything that I love about fashion, all in one room! Focusing on the relationship between fashion and architecture; discussing the processes, materials, techniques and theories shared by the two disciplines.

You may not think the two are a very good match, however distant they seem on first inspection they are in fact like cousins. Modern architecture is borrowing techniques from fashion more and more today - in an essay for the shows catalog, Brooke Hodge, Museum of Contemporary Art's Curator of Architecture and Design (Los Angeles) comments that, "A vocabulary derived from architecture has been applied to garments, describing them as 'architectonic,' 'constructed,' 'sculptural,'". Architects, on the other hand, have borrowed some "sartorial strategies," such as "draping, wrapping, weaving, folding, printing and pleating architectural surfaces and materials."

The exhibition features over 50 world renowned designers and architects (including Alexander McQueen, Yohji Yamamoto, Rei Kawakubo, Vivienne Westwood, Eley Kishimoto, Martin Margiela, Boudicca and Hussein Chalayan), whose work will leave you gobsmacked. Whether you have an understanding about the constuction of garments or not, the collection on show will leave you baffled. My personal favourite was the shaved tulle dress from Hussein Chalayan's 2000 Spring/Summer collection. The intensity of the folded, twirling tulle seems impossible to create and it is then laser-cut around the body to create a cocoon shape surrounding the wearer. It transforms the woman to 4 or 5 times her usual size, but surely you cannot deny it's beauty....