Fading, Mixing, Slicing, and Looping: the Deconstruction of Fashion Through the Creative Process of Music

Abstract

Fashion as mirror of socio-cultural evolutions. In light of the ever-increasing plurality and hybridization of languages, fashion change, through disassembling and reconstruction actions according to creative processes capable of generating new design approaches. The creative process, having passed the phase of revival, rediscovery and re-proposal of styles, today acts more and more according to an approach far from citationism. A method that deconstructs and reassembles products, materials and styles, in a mash-up, generating new signs, meanings and shapes, that recall, but do not refer didactically to precise references. Shapes, symbols, textures are thus deconstructed and recomposed according to logics and approaches that generate a multiplicity of meanings. Brands such as Vetements, Off-White, United Standard, Marcelo Burlon borrow from music not only cultural references but also a design approach. There is a form of deconstruction that looks more like a music mix using techniques such as Fading, Harmonic Mixing, Slicing, Swap or Looping. Thus a new identity of contemporary fashion takes shape: we witness to a meta-design process that, thanks to a group of emerging figures hovering between DJs and fashion designers, defines an idea of deconstruction according to approaches that owe much to consoles, mixers, and synthesizers.