Matthew Linde is the curator and director behind Centre for Style – an exhibition space and shop which indulges in fashions regularly ignored but optimistic and entertaining possibilities. Based in Melbourne, Australia Linde uses the fashion system as his topic as a curator and as an artist to show us all an exceptionally refreshing way of looking at the industry. Miles away from the elitism, vulgarity and extravagance which is all too often accepted and not challenged within the fashion world, Linde breaks down the way we look at clothes into its raw and democratic simplicity. We all get dressed in the morning, and everyone of us possesses an individual style.

This investigation into how characters express themselves through garments and championing the most underground and progressive thinking young fashion designers around such as Martine Rose, Ekhaus Latta, Nhu Duong, Anne-Sophie Berger and more, Linde is doing wonders in observing how fashion is changing and honestly creating something inherently optimistic for us to think and act by. Rather than accept the language of fashion as being an inescapably consumerist and capitalistic arena his performances and exhibitions show us the possibilities of how fun and creative fashion can be outside our accepted expectations of it.

On Saturday the 29th of November, we will be inviting Linde to the Sang Bleu Contemporary Art and Practice Space for a discussion with Reba Maybury about his work where more details will be announced next week.

However, in the mean time we’ve asked Linde to choose a topic for him to speak to us about which inspire him, with an in depth fashion history knowledge under his belt he’s chosen us his favourite fashion catwalks, from the most absurd, performative, intelligent and implausible shows hidden in the underbelly of Youtube.

Keupr/van Bentm, 2000

Keupr/van Bentm were a short-lived collective whose aims were to dismantle the hegemonic ideals of minimalism that dominated late 1990’s fashion. The horse, the slap stick noises, the ribbons… all actualizing the type of humorous rupture Gautier only ever feigned.

Rare Candy, 2014

Rare Candy is a Melbourne-based label. This body of work, titled Rapunzel cuts her hair, was performed at Centre for Style. They slovenly styled clothes while working with a neo-materialistic stance concerning detritus, sourcing materials from used spaces like the thrift store or public park. The performance, with people meandering in space, encounters the runway as a fragmented psycho-experience redolent of the David Lynch’s haunting scenography.

Adeline André, S/S 2010

Haute Couture at its most sublime… Caroline Evans suggests the edifice of the catwalk has barely altered from the Modernist image of its early 20th Century conceptions. If so, André works well to galvanize that latent language. The presentation’s mechanical mannequin movements elevate her studies of color theory and rudimentary cuts.

http://youtu.be/enrTVQQdU0s

and the making of:

Yves Saint Laurent, 1998

If the runway is a site of mass spectacle, there could be nothing more emblematic of this autocracy than YSL’s rendition of a North Korean stadium performance.

Bless, N.25

The strategy of using the restaurant as an engaged runway is something Susan Cianciolo did through her partner’s restaurant in Greenwich Village in the early 2000’s. Here Bless do it too, where models perform the new collection through the labor relations of waiting on fashion audiences. The great moments are seeing the fashion literati intimately catching photos while dining. Nb: Diane Pernet at 5:22 and Suzy Menkes at 5:49.

writtenafterwards S/S 2013

A tour de force. This half an hour arc takes the audience through a hyperbolic narrative of different runway modes while smashing a flurry of various Japanese cultures and imagery together. From strutting models, children frolicking, precarious moving set designs, writtenafterwards conflate lo-fi tactics onto the outrageously hi-fi setting of the runway.

Maison Martin Margiela, S/S 2006

Simply put, the perfect runway finale :’)

Tao (Comme des Garcons), F/W 2007

Tao was my favorite designer from the Comme subsidiary. This presentation employs the simple gesture of bringing bodies closer, tightening the flanks of stage and individuals. Eschewing the melodramatic soundtrack, Tao uses no music, producing the experience more palpable, articulating the sounds of cameras and coughing.

Walter Van Beirendonck, S/S 1998

I can’t. The ballroom dance.

Gucci, F/W 04/05

Since glamour and commodity have become the target of nearly all critical social theory, Tom Ford outshines all his philosophical contemporaries in this masterful self-reflexive Brechtian market critique.

+1 Rita Ackermann for Kai Kuhne, S/S 2009

Ok, so not exactly a runway but Rita is an all-time muse. This has to be the most coked-up gag of mediocre clothes ever presented. A+.

Find out more about Centre for Style here.

Matthew will also be in Norway on the 30th of November where he will be showing his new work in a group show at the Kunsthall Stavanger