IT'S A DIRTY CIRCUS
TEXTILE ARCHIVAL, 2001 - 2008
IT'S A DIRTY CIRCUS
TEXTILE ARCHIVAL, 2001 - 2008
Dirty Circus Couture is the capitulation of party form to party function.
It is circus contrivances re-mastered by dirty incidentals.
The circus aspect is painstakingly contrived.
The dirty aspect is strictly incidental.
Heartfelt dedication to design is rarely so exhaustively attended by acquiescence to external impositions as within the realm of Dirty Circus.
Together, dedication to contrivances and acquiescence to incidentals manifest the lifecycle of wear and redesign.
This transparency showcases design intentions and the impact on these intentions by limitations of resources including time, skill, and materials.
Dirty Circus is taxonomically contiguous to and philosophically divorced from two stylistic classifications of lesser cultural significance:
Fucked-up Party Doll and Tomboy Prom Queen.
The former leans unbalanced toward contrivance over incidence.
The latter, the reverse.
Starting out with dirt before the circus has begun is not the same as Dirty Circus.
Like a one-way ferry ticket from the mainland/ island, forth or back, depending on the starting point the cost is twice or half.
A non-native this way visits but will always tourist born.
In the context of Dirty Circus:
Dirty means possessing the physical quality of being unsanitary or disarranged.
Circus means silliness that is as otherworldly as it is accessible.
Couture means tailored to unique specifications.
Dirty Circus Couture brandishes against imperial fashions standardized by top-down control visual moments that cannot be understood as fully conscious design decisions nor as fully accidental happenstance.
It is defined by this singular characteristic.
Dirty Circus captures these moments, explicates their awkwardness and strings them together into a narrative collection, an aesthetic discourse on ambiguity.
Kirby Fowle
The Dirty Circus Review, 2013