With both the Hermitage Rooms and the Gilbert Collection long gone (the Decorative Arts really are plumbing the depths of unfashionability), Somerset House has had another refit and inaugurates its new contemporary space, the Embankment Galleries, with a slick show that traces parallel practices in fashion and architecture – think ‘What Not To Wear’ meets ‘Grand Designs’.
The crossovers are there: fashion has never been so architectonic (witness Hussein Chalayan’s dress that doubles as a working table) and architecture gets more fluid with every technological leap (note the sequin-like surface of Birmingham’s bulbous Selfridges by Future Systems). Yet there’s just as much evidence here to argue that the two fields have not combined in the middle but have missed each other like passing ships in the night, crossing over to try on each other’s looks for a while. Couture is built up in ruched masses by Commes des Garçons or crimped forms by Junya Watanbe, but the corresponding architecture by Foreign Office Architects or Toyo Ito is merely draped in these forms – the construction is hidden beneath an overcoat of frou-frou decoration.
Occasionally the two disciplines do coalesce (albeit in spectacular impracticality), as in Shigeru Ban’s flapping ‘Curtain House’ in Tokyo or in architectural firm My Studio’s loo-paper roll ‘Mobiüs Dress’, that shows how a woman might look wearing Frank Lloyd Wright’s New York Guggenheim. Getting clothes and buildings to speak to each other – la mode meets architect’s model – is hard enough, but with such vast shifts in scale, the language barrier often seems all but insurmountable.
