Mapping Fashion, Cities, Identities and the World Fashion Conquest

In 2006, WESSIELING had two solo exhibitions and contributed to two group exhibitions. In her first solo show, WESSIELING presented ‘Mapping Motifs: An exploratory journey through fashion, cities and identities’ at the AVA Gallery in London. The work comprised six Chinese dresses (qipao); otherwise identical, each dress had the fashionable streets of different fashion metropolises printed on the textile. Another one, ‘Game on: The World Fashion Conquest’ (Exhibit, London) took up the topic of a globalised fashion world. In a rework of the classical board game RISK, the visitors of the show were asked to battle for supremacy in a contested global market. Rather than different countries, WESSIELING’s map showed the host cities of 85 fashion weeks. Her contributions to the London Design Festival and the New Directions in Fashion Research exhibition both played with the adaptation of Oriental styles in the West. WESSIELING is also a Senior Lecturer at the London College of Fashion, University of the Arts London. The following dialogue will focus on two of WESSIELING’s solo exhibitions, Mapping Motifs and Game On, and will discuss these works in relation to broader questions of fashion, consumption, ethnicity and gender.