Already in 1827, the Italian poet and philosopher Giacomo Leopardi identified the kinship between fashion and death. In Dialogue Between Fashion and Death, the unruly, diabolical Fashion claims to be the sister of Death, as she has power over being and non-being by deciding what’s in and out. Fashion constantly makes people change their minds, introducing the new to quickly make it old and obsolete. Death, on the other hand, points out that she is final, unlike Fashion, whose work is temporary. Although Death has the last word in people’s lives, Fashion argues they have the same goal: to make people abandon the old and embrace the new. Fashion and Death drive us away from comfort and stability.
In Swedish designer Ann-Sofie Back’s retrospective Go As You Please at Liljevalchs Konsthall, fashion and death go hand in hand in a grimy assemblage with hundreds of garments from her entire career from 1998 to 2018. The exhibition opens with a gravestone placed at the end of a red carpet the size of a coffin. A projection rolls names from the present and past fashion world on the gravestone, like the credits of a movie. It’s time for everyone who has somehow been part of Back’s career to go to their graves.
In the large hall of the kunsthalle’s concrete annex Liljevalchs+, mannequins are packed tightly in messy groups. They mostly stand right on the floor, but sometimes lie or stand on stainless steel autopsy tables, with high heels taped to their heads and clothing skewed or stuffed to deform the body. When placed on the floor, the creations are easily mistaken for other visitors, unlike conventional fashion retrospectives where mannequins are placed on pedestals or in showcases. Here, the lighting flickers in one corner: the mannequins are in the process of being cremated, and the entire exhibition is permeated by the anti-aesthetic that made Back one of Sweden’s internationally recognised fashion designers.
Back studied fashion at Beckman’s College of Design in Stockholm before getting her master’s at Central Saint Martins in London in 1998. Her graduation show was bought on the spot by the Soho boutiqueThe Pineal Eye. She got a Japanese agent and often appeared in magazines like Dazed [& Confused] and Purple, where she collaborated with photographer Anders Edström to create fashion editorials or campaigns for big brands like Miu Miu. Yet, she was never absorbed into the glossy, glamorous world of fashion. On her catwalks, regular people walked instead of supermodels, and she always had one foot in the art world, including being part of the scene that coalesced around the alternative space Ynglingagatan 1 in Stockholm.
Back is often referred to as “Sweden’s Margiela,” and there are certainly similarities in how both have worked with upcycling and everyday objects, as well as in the way they deconstructed and reconstructed classical garments. But unlike the Belgian icon, Back was never interested in creating sophisticated luxury. Margiela worked throughout his career with historical references and strict systems; for instance, everyone in the office had to wear white lab coats. For Back, it was about letting beauty and glamour rub up against the ugly, shameful, or failed. The result was fashion, but also critical observations about fashion, style, and clothing as phenomena. In this way, she has less in common with Belgian avant-garde fashion and more with Swedish artists from the 1990s who were fascinated by mass production and celebrated its trashy underbelly, like Peter Geschwind and Gunilla Klingberg.
On one mannequin, a beer belly bulges out from under a polyester Harrington jacket from 2004, as if the body doesn’t fit in the garment. It’s paired with a skirt where the fabric is intentionally torn on one side and a hat with a brim drooping down the face, a pair of sweater sleeves tied like a scarf around the neck. Another has a small grey polyester wig fastened with a rubber band around the chin, from Back’s 1998 degree collection, paired with a grey coat padded to create a hunched back. Several of the exhibition’s bodies seem unable to hide their shapes under the clothes. Instead, it’s about exaggerating and highlighting what happens when things go a bit wrong, with bellies and rolls bulging under the fabric.
Upstairs, life-size runway photos are taped onto mannequins creating crumpled silhouettes with wasp waists. From the other side, the mannequin’s bare asses are revealed. In the final, dimly lit room, the looks are laid flat in coffins. For faces, there are grey wigs, or Back’s own wrinkled death mask, which looks more like a tired Halloween mask than a resting despot in bronze or plaster. This embodies Back’s affinity for the trashy, mass-produced, and synthetic, haunting the entire exhibition by way of kitschy sequin, beige nylon stockings, or plastic jewellery sometimes still attached to the little piece of plastic they hang on in stores (Display earrings, 2005).
The German philosopher and critical theorist Walter Benjamin argued that fashion is the eternal return of the new. As a phenomenon, fashion embodies the passage of time and reflects the impossibility of ever fully grasping our desire’s ultimate longing. Contrary to what Leopardi believed, fashion’s cyclical obsession with what’s in and what’s out is more about a defiance of death than an alliance with it. But in Back’s case, there’s always been something else there, and perhaps that’s precisely why her work translates so well into an art exhibition in 2024. Instead of chasing contemporary desires, her creations seek out the abject, making the viewer directly aware of decay, shame, disgust, grief, and, ultimately, death. A skirt made of thongs, a top that is impossible to put on correctly, or a plastic bag over the head creates just the mix of attraction and repulsion that keeps Back’s world fascinating.
As I wandered around the coffins to solemn doomsday music and watched a slideshow of Back’s career, I understood why she’s asking us to say farewell to her as a fashion creator. Many of her approaches, like upcycling old clothes or photographing non-models, have in today’s fashion world become a way to virtue-signal “sustainability” and “inclusivity.” It’s not to say that Back would refuse to support sustainability and inclusivity in principle; on the contrary, the political commentary on class and gender constantly bubbles beneath the surface in her work. But I feel that her entire drive lies in finding what itches, in always doing things a little wrong. Perhaps that’s why she’s always been ahead of her time and hasn’t fit into the fashion world, which ultimately seeks to capture our desires and embody our ideals rather than highlighting sorrow and flaws. Seeing the late 1990s and early 2000s approach of playfully mixing genres and engaging with symbols of popular culture in a touching and humorous way without tipping over into moral statements was titillating.
