Bare Bottom Dress after 1993

Marlies Dekkers made this black dress called ‘Bare Bottom’ out of a fine, semi-transparent fabric, and it reminds me of the kind of material that artists sometimes use to wipe their brushes on! The way the fabric drapes and flows is so important. It is a dance between the material and the body it adorns, a bit like the push and pull between intention and accident in art. There’s a beautiful tension in the contrast between the delicate sheerness of the fabric and the bold lines of the dress's structure. It is as if the dress is both revealing and concealing at once, playing with ideas of exposure and intimacy. This focus on form and materiality reminds me of the work of Rei Kawakubo, who also likes to explore the relationship between the body and clothing in unexpected ways. It's a reminder that art, in all its forms, is a conversation, a back-and-forth between artists, ideas, and materials.