Some may consider art more high-brow than fashion or even architecture, but what could be a more lofty pursuit than to take something inherently necessary, like our physical need to be protected from the elements, and elevate it into a demonstration of intelligence and the capacity to create beauty? That is the question that animates architect Eva Jiricna's exhibition Skin+Bones: Parallel Practices in Fashion and Architecture, which compares and contrasts the "fashioning" of buildings with the "construction" of designs by more than fifty architects and designers.
Among the hundreds of garments, architectural models and film footage are work by Alexander McQueen, Boudicca, Eley Kishimoto, Martin Margiela, Hussein Chalayan, Vivienne Westwood, Comme des Garcons, Yohji Yamamoto, Future Systems, Frank Gehry and Zaha Hadid. Situated in Somerset House, London's exalted beoclassical palace/concert and exhibition space, the show spotlights a laser-cut lantern-like plywood tower built as part of the Hairywood collaboration between Eley Kishimoto and 6a architects that features the same pattern of Rapunzel's hair that Kishimoto used for dresses and skirts in their A/W 05 collection. Like its fellow works in this show, Hairywood transforms our fundamental requirements for shelter into a divine demonstration of what makes us more than the sum of our animal needs.