Shirt and Trousers - Skjorta och Byxa

Shirt and Trousers - Skjorta och Byxa
This story, about a shirt and a pair of trousers, starts a weekend in April
2009.
I work as a teacher in a fashion school in Göteborg. I like this job, it gives
me the opportunity to try out different ideas I have concerning
performance, art, fashion and teaching.
I spent Friday 17th of April teaching in the fashion school. After work, I
was going to take a bus to the near by city Borås, where my wife Kajsa G
Eriksson waited for me. We were going out to the countryside for the
weekend to relax and visit a good friend.
I left work, and thought I would just pop by one of the fashion stores on
my way to the bus station. I entered a boutique and went straight for the
unique fashion brands, that also happened to be on sale that day. On one
hanger I found a shirt and a pair of trousers, not in the style I usually like,
but still intriguing.
The shirt looked like a “normal guy shirt”, but this one was double, like
two shirts on top of each other. The trousers were designed as a pair of
jeans, but made in wool instead of denim. The inside of the pockets were
made from the same fabric as the shirt, with the same pattern and all. It
was a complete outfit, and when I tried it one I looked like an average
man in contemporary western society. At first it made me think of some
kind of normality camouflage, a dress to go unnoticed in. But then I
realized, it was an outfit I had seen before. It was my physic and math
teacher from high school, it was the ”uniform” of C.G. There was no
question about it, this outfit were put there for me me to buy it.
The strange thing was that the designer behind the shirt and trousers was
the same designer that I was going to listen to two days later. My wife
Kajsa, who is an artist and at that time also were writing on her PhD in
fashion, art and performance, had invited Siv Støldal to keep a lecture on
her design and thoughts about conceptual fashion, to be held Sunday the
19th of April.
I work as a performance artist, and one of my practices is to merge
teaching and performance art. I knew that the outfit was some kind of
prop for a performance piece, but this one was not created solely by me.
This was an ongoing, and by its own force living art piece, created and
based on different relations that coincidentally hooked up with each other.
I hooked up with the outfit because it reminded me of my teacher C.G.
from high school, and it also went perfect in to my wardrobe of different
outfits and ties that looks like they could be worn by teachers. But the
outfit had also decided that it wanted to hook up and back to one of its
creators, the designer Siv Støldal. On her homepage you can read,
”Clothes discovered within the wardrobes of three disparate Norwegian
men - a pensioner, a professional diver and an engineer - have provided
the inspiration for much of this collection. This bemused trio were
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initially interviewed by Støldal about their respective pieces of clothing,
and these various garments were then photographed in detail by the
designer.” (www.sivstoldal.com, text by James Anderson)
So even if the shirt and the trousers came from the collection Three
Wardrobes A/W 08/09, designed by Siv Støldal, the performance, or
maybe I should call it the ongoing relation, were actually waiting to step
out of the closet, figuratively speaking, from the homes of a Norwegian
pensioner, a professional diver and an engineer.
I went to the lecture that were held by Støldal, dressed in my new
performance outfit Shirt and Trousers, the C.G Uniform, or Three
Wardrobes as Støldal calls it. She noticed the outfit and came up to me
just before the lecture to complement on my good taste in picking out
shirts. After the lecture my wife, Siv Støldal and some of the designers
and artists that were taking part in the lecture went out for dinner. At the
dinner I decided that this coincidence of relations was to valuable to not
be continued, so I decided to bring it back to just before it started for me.
To bring it back to the fashion school that I had left half an hour before
finding the shirt and trouser.
On Monday the 27th of April I dressed up in the C.G. uniform, went to
the fashion school and gave the students an assignment.
Assignment 1: What?
– What am I wearing?
– What are you wearing?
Look, think, write.
Look, think, write.
All student looked carefully at my outfit, they asked question and wrote
down there thoughts. I talked to them about, storytelling, myth making
and the importance of understanding context when working with
conceptual design and art.
When they had written all they could think of concerning the outfit, they
started to analyze and write what they had put on them self this morning.
After they were done writing I told them who the designer was, and the
background story to the outfit. I showed them her homepage and Three
Coats, a film by Siv Støldal and Ruth Hogbenshe made for Political
Fashion at www.showstudio.com.
I told the students that it was now our turn to take part and develop the
ongoing relation between all people that were involved in this shirt and
trousers.
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Assignment 2: Staging
We decided to take photos, and use the shirt as we thought fit. I told them,
that I wanted the photographs to be connected to the clothes they wore
that today. It was important to ad something to this new part of the
relation that we created. If the three Norwegian men were kind enough to
open up their wardrobes for Siv Støldal and thereby also for us, the least
we could do, was to ad the way that we dressed to the relationship,
manifested through the double shirt.
Petra Månsson to me
show details 6:03 PM (16 hours ago)
Reply Follow up message
Hej Fredric!
Här kommer min Siv stodal text. Gör vad du vill med den. Som sagt kan jag inte
skriva normalt eftersom att jag gillar att skriva å inte renskriva eller tänka så
mycket. Jag är inte så bra på att fatta normalt heller. Använd den om du vill.
"Två skjortor, rutor vågrätt brun blå, halv skjorta fastsydd i sidosöm,två kragar - en
mindre, en större. Den mindre knäppt ända upp, den större uppknäppt tre knappar.
Ok dubbelt * 2.
Ullbyxa. Två fickor på ena sidan bak. Veck i fickorna fram. Ej fållade.
En dubbel skjorta som är gjord för att vara dubbel. En byxa i fin ull, gjord för att
matcha skjortan. Idag bär Fredric Gunve precis den skjortan och precis den byxan.
Plaggen har åkt spårvagn. Fått frukost spill, smulor från en knäckemacka som har
hamnat mellan lagren i skjortan. Byxfickorna har skaft sin fina ull mot de
behandlade, grova polyestersätena på spårvagnen. Fredric bär plagget som sitt eget.
Skjortan och byxan har ingen exakt kopia. De ska vara unika och speciella. Till
vardags till fest som gäst som värd som lärare som elev, som om 10 år. Skjortan snor
det mesta av uppmärksamheten. Byxan är mer blyg, vill bara visa lite av sitt rutiga
jag i form av fickfoder. skjortan visar allt och döljer inte mycket. Byxan visar
mindre och döljer desto mer. En medveten tanke från en medveten designer?"
// Petra
Participants:
Anastasiia Vilenska
Ellen Eistrand
Jonas Collberg
Moa Sandqvist
Petra Månsson
Klara Hobbs
Klara Veiczer
Louise Wånggren
Fredric Gunve
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