By Brooke Hodge, Patricia Mears, Mark Wigley Published on the occasion of Skin + Bones: Parallel Practices in Fashion and Architecture, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, November 19, 2006 – March 5, 2007. In recent years, the boundaries between architecture and fashion have become increasingly blurred, and this beautifully illustrated new book explores the intersections and concepts that underlie the two disciplines. Both architecture and fashion are based on the human body and on ideas of space, volume, and movement. Each functions as shelter or wrapping for the body—a mediating layer between the body and the environment—and can express personal, political, and cultural identity. Fashion designers and architects share much of the same vocabulary and similar techniques of construction: pinning, darting, folding, wrapping, draping. Fashion designers have always been able to achieve complex, often architectonic garments using fabric. Today, many architects are looking to fashion and techniques of tailoring as they attempt to achieve more and more complex forms using hard materials. This catalogue, which accompanied MOCA’s 2006 exhibition of the same title, focuses on the period from 1980 to the present and includes forty-six architects and fashion designers from the United States, Europe, and Japan. Featured designers include Issey Miyake, Junya Watanabe, Alexander McQueen, Hussein Chalayan, and Vivienne Westwood. Architects include Herzog & de Meuron, Zaha Hadid, Frank Gehry, and Eisenman Architects. MOCA and Thames & Hudson, 2006 Hardcover, 272 pages 13 x 9 inches
