WOW design rubs shoulders with Galliano and Gaultier

WOW design rubs shoulders with Galliano and Gaultier at MoBA, Holland

It’s provocative, contentious, attracts more than 47,000 people – and, in the fast-evolving world of fashion and art, it’s seriously fabulous.

For the first time, the internationally-renowned Mode Biennale Arnhem (MoBA) – a prestigious art-in-fashion exhibition held in Arnhem, Holland - has included a garment from New Zealand’s World of WearableArt (WOW) Awards Show.

The high profile six-week long MoBA event which ended at the weekend is much more than a static exhibition of artful, designer garments, MoBA offers workshops and guided tours, stages live theatre and dance performances, and shows films and photographic exhibitions.

When the garment ‘Revive’ was a Supreme Award runner up and the Avant Garde category winner at last year’s WOW Awards Show, the curator of MoBA, Lidewij Edelkoort, noticed.

Well-known for his often-challenging fashion forecasting, Edelkoort made arrangements for the garment - designed by two fashion students, Mengyue Wu and Yuru Ma from Donghua University in Shanghai - to be sent to Holland.

There, ‘Revive’ is virtually rubbing shoulders with exhibition garments created by globally celebrated designers such as Vivienne Westwood, John Galliano, Jean Paul Gaultier, Christian Dior Couture, Issey Miyake, Prada and Iris van Herpen.

This year’s MoBA has a provocative theme of ‘Fetishism in Fashion,’ exploring the obsessive and ritualistic bonds we have with fashion.

“Bolder, crazier and more outlandish fashions are on the horizon, which makes MoBA a pertinent fashion festival,” says Lidewij Edelkoort. “This century will be about the blending of opposites to become an important new current.”

The inclusion of ‘Revive’ in MoBA is great recognition of the high calibre of our WOW designers, says WOW’s founder, Dame Suzie Moncrieff.

“WOW strives to enable designers to step out from commercial constraints and develop any idea that appeals to them – the more unorthodox, provocative and original, the better.”

With the full support of the Donghua University in China, the students’ design ‘Revive’ was carefully freighted to Holland.

Meanwhile, Dame Suzie and WOW Competition Director, Heather Palmer, have recently returned from Holland after lecturing at the ArtEZ University in Arnhem, where they were impressed by the quality of students’ work.

“I’m extremely proud to see a WOW design showcased alongside some of the world’s best designers,” she says. “WOW is, without doubt, a recognised platform for fashion evolution.”

www.moba.nu

© Scoop Media