D&K Hardly Brand - Softer Sell

BACKGROUND The Future of Fashion is Now awarded D&K the Han Nefkens Fashion on the Edge Award and commissioned the duo to produce new work under the conceptual theme: 'Politics/Community'. D&K critically engage and comment from within the fashion industry, representing a new discourse and research area proposing alternative methods for fashion systems and the emerging expanded field of fashion design (Bigolin 2015). The use of installation/performance offers a reflective lens to question social and political impacts of clothing and the production of fashion beyond clothing (Arts 2014). By questioning the role of the designer and the brand (ibid.) the work D&K Hardly Brand, Softer Sell (2014) revealed the mechanisms of fashion and the crossover between personal, public and brand identity were examined. CONTRIBUTION The installation of garments, accessories, textiles, audio and live performances comment on 'the cyclic manipulations of the fashion industry... an interrogation of the disparity between the ideas-driven creations for the runway and their inevitable dilution...to the demands of the retail market' (Watson 2015). What it means to be a 'fashion brand' and a 'designer' are explored by disrupting design methods used to market high fashion products. The work extends the definition of fashion practice in multitude of ways: the composition of the installation and the use of performance explore the lineage between advertising jargon, product language and prose and design and construction of garments. SIGNIFICANCE Jury members Viktor & Rolf (NL), Editor in Chief of Dutch Vogue Karin Swerink, Vassilis Zidianakis (Director of ATOPOS Contemporary Visual Culture), Han Nefkens founder of the initiative and José Teunissen (Professor of Fashion Theory and Research at ArtEZ Institute of the Arts) selected six commissions and award winners for the exhibition. (continued on attached doc)