Love Fashion: In Search of Myself at The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto

Dressing is a universal human activity. The clothes that we wear embody or conceal our internal desires, and they can reveal those desires along with our longings, our passions, and the conflicts and contradictions that we face. Fashion has a role as a receptacle for ‘Love’: the passions and aspirations of the wearer. Driven by those emotions, we may be motivated to wear something that we like, be inspired by someone’s look, want to be ourselves, or just want to lose ourselves. It is an expansive kaleidoscopic world of colour.

Image: Corset, c.1870, America?
Image above: Balenciaga /Cristóbal Balenciaga, Evening dress, Winter 1951.
Both images: ©The Kyoto Costume Institute, photo by Takashi Hatakeyama.

In Love Fashion: In Search of Myself at the The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, drawn primarily from the collection of the Kyoto Costume Institute, they consider various forms of ‘LOVE’ as it relates to fashion along with artworks that shed light on the fundamental drives and instincts of human beings and other living things. Viewers will have a chance to reconsider what it means to wear clothes.

Image: Comme des Garçons / Rei Kawakubo, Top and Trousers, Spring/Summer 2020. ©The Kyoto Costume Institute, photo by Takeru Koroda.

This exhibition is based on clothes and other fashion items from the Kyoto Costume Institute collection of costume from the eighteenth century to the present day. In conjunction with art that throws light on fundamental human drives and instincts, the exhibits encourage us to ponder the various forms of ‘Love’ that can be seen in relation to fashion. Through this exhibition, we gain an opportunity to think about and reevaluate what it means for humans to wear clothes.

Image: Waistcoat, c. 1790. ©The Kyoto Costume Institute, photo by Yuki Moriya.

Love Fashion: In Search of Myself is on show at the The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, Japan from 13 September - 24 November 2024.

Find out more and plan your visit:
www.momak.go.jp/English/exhibitionarchive/2024