Fashion Exhibitions as Participants to the Participatory: A Study of Mugler’s “Couturissime”
Written by Denisa Marginean
Edited by Sophia Kamps
The act of collecting dress in western society has existed since the late-nineteenth century as an educational study of historic costume [1]. In the twentieth century, dresses that were exhibited to the public were associated with tradition and longevity, while fashion was seen as transitory and modern [2]. Fashion exhibitions still face a lot of critical backlash in the twenty-first century. They are seen as a “fashion” themselves: a trendy and separate endeavour to bring money into the museum, which reflects the vulgar commerciality of the present [3]. I want to complicate this perception as more than simply negative or positive. I argue that the “Thierry Mugler: Couturissime” of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts is a participant to the participatory turn, a vital condition of the present time because it intensifies the aspects of the body, provocation, and multidimensionality that qualify the concept itself. In a broader sense, my goal is to demonstrate how fashion exhibitions nourish the participatory and are not separate from the wider museology shift.
Figure 1: Acte 1: Macbeth and the Scottish Lady (2019), Mugler Exhibition “Couturissime,” Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Montreal, Canada.
Figure 2: Acte 2: Stars & Sparkles: Staging Fashion (2019), Mugler Exhibition “Couturissime,” Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Montreal, Canada.
Figure 3: Helmut Lang & Black-and-White Power Dressing (2019), Mugler Exhibition “Couturissime,” Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Montreal, Canada.
Section IA: Defining the Exhibition
Figure 4: Fetish Style (2019), Mugler Exhibition “Couturissime,” Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Montreal, Canada.
The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts held an exhibition on French designer Thierry Mugler from March 2nd to September 8th, 2019 [4]. The name of the exhibition, “Couturissime,” refers to the central theme of the show as “a total work of art from a sculpting couturier,” [5]. This is also a reference to the phrase haute couture, a handmade manufacturing technique [6]. In actuality, Mugler’s work did involve careful tailoring, but the majority of the garments in the exhibition would technically be classified as ready-to-wear designs, rather than haute couture, meaning that they use standard measurements or were factory-made. The show was curated by Thierry-Maxime Loriot, a previously unknown name in the world of curation until the MMFA’s Jean Paul Gaultier exhibition in 2011. The Mugler exhibition drew close to 300,000 people at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, which makes it the sixth most popular in the museum’s history [7]. Although its display is over at the MMFA, it is now bound for an international tour in Rotterdam and Munich [8].
Seven rooms were part of the experience; each one was an access into one of the designer’s worlds [9]. The show displayed a total of 150 garments, both women and menswear, that were made between 1973 and 2001 [10]. These garments were intermixed thematically on mannequins, as well as in photographs, projections, and videos. The first room presented Mugler’s Macbeth costumes that were created in 1985 (figure 1) [11]. The Shakespearian costumes were put behind glass on each side of the large, horizontal room, with a significant piece (the First Witch) emphasizing its center [12]. Dark colours, melted latex, and metal studs linked each costume together in a twisted revisiting of the renaissance-inspired style. Behind the centerpiece, there also was a 4D artwork projection by Michel Lemieux where Lady Macbeth’s dress slowly disintegrates resulting in her own body’s evaporation.
The following room is “Act 2: Stars & Sparkles: Staging Fashion,” which was organized under the theme of celebrity endorsement, and names like David Bowie, Céline Dion, and Lady Gaga were summoned (figure 2). Unlike the first room, the space was organized around an elongated platform that evoked a catwalk podium. There was no glass that separated the viewer from the mannequins anymore. On the end wall, a large screen played a video compilation of music videos and awards ceremonies of celebrities wearing Mugler designs.
Then, there was the Helmut Newton documentation of the black-and-white power dressing (figure 3) [13]. Similar to the second act, the walls were covered with photographs, but the room figured mainly one particular artist that collaborated with Mugler: photographer Helmut Newton. The connection between the two men was made by the inclusion of the only photographs of Thierry Mugler in the show taken by Helmut Newton.
Figure 5: Acte V: Metamorphosis: Fantasy Bestiary (2019), Mugler Exhibition “Couturissime,” Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Montreal, Canada.
The viewers continued to the room displaying the fetish style of Mugler (figure 4). The garments in this room had an undeniable sexual connotation that was linked to power dynamics and violence. Dresses were attached to the nipples of the mannequins, and some even had whips as accessories.
“Act V: Metamorphosis: Fantasy Bestiary” is one of the most distinct rooms in the show, distinct from all the previous spatial organizations. The theme was the animalistic inspiration of Mugler’s designs (figure 5). The room was navigated as a circular labyrinth. Mannequins were clustered together on multiple mounted elevated levels, in a method that required movement from the viewer to see every piece correctly. Instead of photographs, the exhibition’s walls reflected projections of both marine and jungle life. The room even had sounds echoing the environment. One of the display structures also rotated, as to stop the movement that was previously required from the viewer thus complicating the viewing act.
The final room “Act VI: Futuristic and Fembot Couture” represented the cyborg (figure 6), a theme reflected in its metallic walls. Only the end wall had groupings of models, contained behind glass. Half-robotic and half-human, the cyborg presented a fitting finale to the show with implications of the future [14]. Art Historian Julia Skelly states that the exhibition can be conceived as a fashion opera, with every room beginning a different act of the spectacle [15]. Therefore, understanding the spatial composition of the exhibition is critical for the study of the participatory in the exhibition.
Section IB: Defining the Participatory
The first author that I am using to define the participatory is museum director Nina Simon. Her extensive book The Participatory Museum, one of the most referenced texts in participatory museology, and also one that clearly outlines the condition’s goals. In The Participatory Museum, Simon argues that in response to dwindling audiences attendance at museums and the predominantly older and whit demographic of this audience, museums can reconnect with the public by actively engaging them as cultural participants and not as passive consumers. She highlights three fundamental theories in the technique: first, the idea of an audience-centered institution that is relevant and accessible, just like a “shopping mall,”[16]. Second, that visitors construct their own meaning from the experiences, and third, the idea that users’ voices can inform and invigorate project design and public-facing programs. The terms I want to highlight are audience, relevancy and experience; three aspects that are at the base of my understanding of participation in relation to fashion.
Beforehand, I want to broaden the term participatory and look at the word in usage in other academic fields. The Participatory Condition in the Digital Age is a useful source in investigating the concept through a transdisciplinary method. The multi-authored text argues that participation has been an aspect of everyday life in all of human history from the moment we decided to live and act together. Participation is essentially about being involved in doing something with others. However, in the present context, participation is not just an aspect of everyday life; it is a priority. This is linked to the popularization of digital media and its “spreadability,” which assumes that anything relevant will circulate through any channel possible [17]. The book defines participation as the promise and even expectation that someone can be actively involved in the decision-making process that affects society with media technologies facilitating this condition [18]. The importance given to digital media in this process is crucial to note.
Section IIA: The Body
Figure 6: Acte VI: Futuristic and Fembot Couture (2019), Mugler Exhibition “Couturissime,” Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Montreal, Canada.
From its conception, “Thierry Mugler: Couturissime” is different than most blockbuster exhibitions at the MMFA. This is not because of its enormousness, but rather through its emphasis on the body: the body of the audience, and the body of the model. In all three aspects of Simon’s theory, the focus is on the audience’s presence. Even the technique itself has the goal of bringing more diverse bodies into the museum space.
First, fashion is attached to the human body since the created object’s function is to be worn. Clothing plays a significant role in someone’s conception of the bodily self as the limits of the body seem to be extended or limited by clothing [19]. In other words, the garments displayed prompts the viewer to think about the body, both the presented silhouette of the apparel in front of them and their own body in relation to it. Unlike with a vase or a painting, the viewer imagines themselves wearing the displayed object themselves. Writer and cultural critic Alisson Bancroft argues that fashion goes beyond just identity, trends, and branding; its primary concern is innovation by decorating the surface of the body, thus making the wearing and the act of wearing central to fashion [20]. Fashion exists only in the process of being worn, which is why when garments are not being worn there is something rather unpleasant and even unappealing to the viewer.
Additionally, the model’s body makes the viewer conscious that the garments need to be put on in order to fulfill their primary function as fashion. Some exhibitions such as “Jean-Claude Poitras: Fashion and Inspiration” at the McCord Museum display garments without a mannequin. Without any corporal relation, the garment seems to be floating which creates a ghostly sentiment that verges on the uncanny [21]. The presence of mannequins in the Mugler Exhibition, to the point of even employing high-end company Hans Boodt Mannequins in the process, is noteworthy. It is a conscious decision by the curation team.
The Chimera gown displayed in Act V is a suitable case study (figure 7) [22]. In the photographic documentation of the runaway show, the human model dramatically raises her right-hand. This imagery figures on the majority of the posters for the Mugler exhibition and the photograph was even displayed alongside the gown (figure 8) [23]. While curators will sometimes choose a headless structure to emphasize the design, the Chimera mannequin has distinct facial features that echo the colour pattern of the gown. The life-like quality does not end there, the mannequin is also on a rotary device that makes any viewer in the room able to see her from any angle imaginable. While Chimera is an extreme case of life-likeness, other mannequins have accentuated lips, and dramatic poses, a central characteristic of the Mugler runway shows.
The relationship between the model and the viewer cannot be investigated without looking at their differentiation. On the one hand, some might not see the two bodies as in opposition; the viewer can easily imagine themselves as the model that wears the garment. Yet, the body of the model is noticeably separated from the viewer. It is on a literal pedestal and a symbolic one. The body of the model is associated with the body of a celebrity. If Mugler is wearable art, [24] then the art is exclusive to specific bodies (e. g., Kim Kardashian). Going back to Chimera, the facial features of the mannequin imply the facial features of the model that was famously photographed. Adriana Sklenarikova had highlighted lips and cheek bones: features particular to the 1990s. These elements are also present in the mannequin’s head (figure 7). Many photographs and videos in the exhibition showed celebrities in the act of wearing Mugler; specifically, in the second room “Act 2: Stars & Sparkles: Staging Fashion,” where even the didactic panels of many gowns refer to the celebrity that wore said garment.
With the rise of fast and capable consumer culture, anthropologist Arjun Appadurai states that luxury had to strengthen and complicate the ideas of what authenticity is in order to legitimize itself and, most importantly, to stay “luxurious,” [25]. The designs presented in the Mugler exhibition were part of the luxury market and the fashion system. Gowns were worth thousands of dollars, the people with access to Mugler designs in the 1980s and 1990s were part of the elite. German sociologist Georg Simmel states that fashion is a class-based system. As soon as the lower classes adopt a particular fashion and “destroy” the distinction between ranks, the members of the elite then abandon their clothes and put on new styles in order to retain differentiation, and the game of social evolution ‘simply goes on,’ [26] Simmel’s account is a radical explanation of the fashion system. Nonetheless, we need to consider how exclusivity is an implied aspect of the experience of the Mugler exhibition.
However, the difference between the model and the viewer can be brought back to the initial idea of the viewer as included in exclusivity. French philosopher Giles Deleuze states that the body is an event, not one side of a binary opposition. It connects two multiplicities and includes a difference that goes beyond identity and representation. Thus, the “body is the expression of this sense of difference, of the being of sense itself,” [27]. What we can apply from the complexity of Deleuze is that difference is vital for the simple experience of being. It can be seen as more than just negative. Difference is also essential for the Mugler exhibition since the designer was seen as a radical opposition to the fairly conservative fashion system at the time [28]. Exclusivity can ultimately be apprehended through French philosopher Jacques Rancière’s conception. As Rancière famously stated, aesthetics is about a distribution of the sensible, which is a system of self-evident facts that simultaneously disclose the existence of something in common and the delimitations that define its exclusive parts [29]. There will always be someone excluded in any process, but in the Mugler exhibition the viewer, aware of the body, no longer needs to be able to afford the designs in order to interact with them.
Section IIB: Provocation
In Simon’s first theory, the author uses the word relevant. Relevance, which is the quality of being appropriate to the current time, comes from the Latin phrase relevare, meaning raising up [30]. Although not explicit in her definition, raising up does imply a provocation to do so; especially since museums who embrace the new practice of audience participation also introduce “hot topics” as exhibitions themes. As scholar Britta Tondborg argues in her article “The Dangerous Museum,” the use of hot topics, that is, controversial subject matters, is a means to reach out and engage with visitors [31]. Tondborg explores different publications on the topic, and the linking feature between all is the notion that the use of hot topics makes the museum into a forum where issues relevant to society can be debated.
Figure 7: Chimera in Acte V: Metamorphosis: Fantasy Bestiary (2019), Mugler Exhibition “Couturissime,” Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Montreal, Canada.
Initiating dialogue is something that Simon also mentions in The Participatory Museum. By being a place to share, where visitors discuss, take home, and redistribute what they saw and what they made of it, the institution can be participatory. What I am proposing is not that the Mugler Exhibition is successful in being a place of “democratic discussion” that many theorists are striving for, [32] but rather that the Mugler exhibition provides the foundation for debate. The simple inclusion of fashion, which is still not widely accepted in the museum space makes the viewer question what art even is. Moreover, the choice of Mugler as the subject matter sparks controversy in the audience. Mugler is a designer whose sexualized designs have always been a debate in both popular culture and academia. Art historian Linda Nochlin’s statement that Mugler is “so extreme that these women are not sex objects, they’re sex subjects” is included on the exhibition wall in the Fetish exploration room [33].
The presence of the fetish style complicates the negative connotation of exclusivity, which is a restriction to a certain group. The fetish style is difficult to define. Anyone in Western culture knows what a fetish is, the mere mention of the word suggests sexuality and a subversive underground practice [34]. Although the word comes with dark associations, a fetish is essentially a venerated object, a performance, or even a narrative that stands for complex meanings and desires that are pulled from the imaginary into reality [35]. There is the obsessed fanatic custom, and there is also the sadomasochistic performance that the word fetish implies. Fetish and fashion are closely associated because they are both performances that rely on “costumes.” Fashion is also arguably a fetish since it is an obsessive behaviour that is dependent on the desire it can convey [36].
The fourth room of the Mugler exhibition is an exploration of the fetish style. Fetishism belongs largely to masochism [37]. As philosopher Deleuze argues, the sadist and the masochist reach their full significance when they act directly on the senses [38]. Words are not enough to deliver; it must affect the body. Masochism is more than just experiencing pleasure in pain; it is a victim in search of education, persuasion, and concluding an alliance with a torturer [39]. Deleuze continues by stating that although humiliation is an important aspect, it is an insufficient term to define it. Instead, the masochist is like everyone else who finds pleasure where others do; the difference is that pain, punishment, humiliation are necessary for them to obtain gratification [40].
In the Mugler exhibition, the viewer is confronted with celebrity exclusivity, but this can also be a pleasurable moment comparable to the experience of the masochist. Since the model is separated from the viewer by luxury garments and a pedestal, there is a certain level of humiliation. To humiliate, which in the simpler sense means to reduce someone to a lower position, [41] does not have to be a drastic action, it can be subtle. The aspect of pain is introduced when the viewer faces the impossibility of themselves actually wearing Mugler garments or simply when they are faced with the whips and piercings of the mannequin.
Figure 8: Alan Strutt, Thierry-Mugler: La Chimière collection (1997), photograph, MontrealMuseum of Fine Arts, Montreal, Canada.
The masochist experience is also an education between both the masochist and the torturer. The Mugler exhibition presents an alternative method of enactment in regards to clothing; it displays the performative element of celebrity. With the photograph of Chimera in mind, the concept of celebrity is something that can be replicated through eccentricity and bodily movements. Exclusivity is something constructed, and experiencing the Mugler exhibition helps to deconstruct it. Especially since the viewer also obtains access to the designer’s many fabricated worlds. The study of masochism is a useful tool in observing the intricacy of exclusivity, and it can principally be summed up in one sentence: there is pleasure in being dominated [42]. Exclusivity should not be limited as mere condemnation. It is just as complex as the audience entering the space.
The use of hot topics to make the museum into a forum where issues relevant for society can be debated is also noticeable by the presence of feminist art historian Linda Nochlin’s words on the fourth room’s wall. The statement “the models are so extreme they are sex subjects” was present to ask the viewer if they agree or not, and to spark conversation among the visitors. Of course, dialogue is rarely between people who do not already know each other. At the end of the exhibition space, there was an activity room where viewers could design garments by putting different materials onto the bodies of dolls. Although some minor interactions between strangers may have occurred, the most explicit space of conversation between people is social media. On the video-sharing platform, YouTube, strangers’ ideas can interact with others. The simple act of typing “Mugler Exhibition” provides multiple vlogs [43]. Audience members shared their ideas on the show to people who in turn comment [44]. In The Participatory Condition in the Digital Age, digital media is an important facet of the participatory turn, which is also evident here. The Mugler exhibition demonstrates how a show can be affected by “spreadability,” and the prominence of digital media in provoking dialogue between people. Provocation through the inclusion of fashion, the fetish style, and a feminist statement is a property of the Mugler exhibition that is in correlation with the desire of relevancy in participatory museology.
Section IIC: Multidimensionality
In the case of Simon’s second point in her theory (i. e., the audience constructs their own meanings from the experience), of particular importance is her usage of the word experience. Museums are performances, “pedagogical and political in nature – whose practitioners are centrally invested in the activity of making the visible legible,” [45]. Yet, when the museum visitor “no longer needs (art) historical knowledge to appreciate the displays,”[46] the experience is different. The word multidimensional means that it relates to multiple dimensions (i. e., spatial extensions). The Mugler exhibition is multidimensional in different ways. First, I would argue that it is multidimensional because it uses immersion as its driving factor.
Figure 9: Cyborg Bodysuit in Acte VI: Futuristic and Fembot Couture (2019), Mugler Exhibition “Couturissime,” Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Montreal, Canada.
In Shivers Down Your Spine, film scholar Alison Griffiths defines immersion as a sensation of entering a space that is instantly recognized as separate from the world. This space denies traditional modes of spectatorship and replaces it with more bodily participation in the experience. This allows the spectator to move freely around the viewing space [47]. Spatial relations in the immersive are complex and often (chaotically) improvised. The spectator feels that they are enveloped by the space and strangely affected by a strong sense of otherness. This complicates the sense of temporality as the viewer is not fully lost nor completely in the here and now [48]. Griffiths also brings forth art historian Oliver Grau’s definition, which states that immersion is mentally absorbing and a process of change from one mental state to another; it is characterized by shrinking the distance between the viewer and what is displayed and by simultaneously increasing emotional involvement. Immersion is something different from everyday life, it is a different spatial dimension altogether.
The Mugler exhibition is an immersion. When the viewer entered by passing through large dark curtains, heard sounds of a chanting woman, and saw Shakespearian costumes, the space was instantaneously separate from the rest of the viewer’s world. Remarkably Mugler did not have a linear chronology to frame the exhibition; any sense of temporality was stopped [49]. The exhibition was organized thematically, and the inclusion of recent events like Cardi B wearing Mugler complicated the understanding of temporality. Objects in the museum are often understood as cultural items frozen in time [50]. The exhibition did feature Mugler designs from 1973 to 2001, but their usage does not end there. They appear in popular culture and on human bodies in the contemporary moment.
However, it is also crucial to note that the functional aspect of the act of wearing is also what complicates fashion’s position as art. The category of art called upon objects that were not utilitarian; this came from the Kantian ideology that believed functionality constrained the intellectual and aesthetic expression of the artist [51]. Fine art was understood as non-utilitarian, which is why any medium of art that was useful was instantly met with critique throughout modern western history. Yet, in Mugler’s case, the utility feature, that is clothing that was worn and can still be worn, makes the exhibition go beyond a rigid temporality, and is in turn an important factor of immersion.
Otherness, an aspect of immersion is also manifested by the presence of the catwalk in the show’s second room. The spatial organization is based upon a large rectangular platform, and the room plays catwalk videos on a loop. The live moment of the catwalk is rarely recreated in the museum, even though it is an essential part of the creation of fashion codes, and a live event subject to media obsession [52]. Being in the catwalk universe that is rarely offered in fashion curation is an immersion. Otherness can also be taken further by Mugler’s association with radicalism and sexuality themes.
While immersion pulls you in, social media, an essential aspect of the participatory, pushes the exhibition beyond the walls of the museum space and into another dimension altogether. Fashion is often associated with the superficiality of social media. The Mugler exhibition also relies on this digital realm for the show’s promotion and dialogue. The display creates an instagrammable space because it allows non-flash photography, includes provocative “hot topics,” and has reflexive surfaces. The experience can easily be photographed and shared online. Something instagrammable is something deemed worthy and attractive enough to be shared on the social media platform Instagram, and is an official word added to the Merriam-Webster dictionary in 2019 [53]. This addition shows how immensely crucial social media is to current popular culture. Moreover, sharing on social media is not limited to any social groups. Celebrities might have a higher degree of engagement with the public, but anyone can share aspects of their experience. At the beginning of the exhibition, before any garment is presented, there is a fluorescent display of lights highlighting the name Mugler. The red carpet iconography enticed a large number of people to photograph themselves and shared it on social media. The Mugler exhibition instantly went beyond the museum’s walls [54]. By including intimate immersive spaces and expanding beyond them at the same time, the Mugler exhibition was a multidimensional event, and more broadly participatory.
To conclude, the Mugler exhibition “Couturissime at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts has convincing features of body, provocation and multidimensionality, which reflects the participatory condition of the present time. Fashion is concerned with the body, but also the mind. It is a bodily experience but also one that provokes a self-questioning of the nature of art, class and sexuality. As philosophy scholar Alva Noe claims, the value of art, like the value of a joke, consists of the opportunity to get it. Framing it in the museum can take away from the chance to understand [55]. However, in the case of fashion exhibitions where it is still being contested, then the opportunity to get it is still there because it still has proper opposition. The participatory is also something that is challenged and viewed with restraint because of the expectation to participate. Fashion exhibitions offer the possibility of being participatory without having the audience being hyper-aware of it. Most importantly, fashion exhibitions are not separate from the broader museological shift to being collection-centered to community-centered, which moves the museum beyond the physical structure of the building itself, [56] and the Mugler exhibition is a distinctive example of that.
Endnotes
1. Valerie Steele, “Museum Quality: Rise of the Fashion Exhibition,” in Fashion Theory 12, no. 1 (21 April 2015): 9-10.
2. Hazel Clark and Annamari Vänskä, Fashion Curating: Critical Practice in the Museum and Beyond, (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018), p. 3.
3. Clark and Vänskä, “Fashion Curating,” p. 3.
4. Although I have been to the exhibition myself many times, I am also writing many months after I experienced the exhibition.
5. Éric Clément, “Thierry Mugler: Couturissime, l’Art Total d’un Couturier Sculpteur,” La Presse, (date of last access 20 November 2019) https://www.lapresse.ca/arts/arts-visuels/201902/27/01-5216308-thierry-mugler-couturissime-lart-total-dun-couturier-sculpteur.php
6. Mugler did produced haute couture garment but only starting in 1992, see Suzy Menkes, “Turbulance Continues off High Fashion’s Runways: Mugler Sets Couture Line,” The New York Times, (date of last access 20 November 2019) https://www.nytimes.com/1992/02/04/style/IHT-turbulence-continues-off-high-fashions-runways-mugler-sets-couture.html
7. The monetary value of the show is not specified but with 20 canadian dollars a ticket, the exhibition would have drawn a grand amount of 600,000 dollars. “Close to 300,000 Visitors to the MMFA’s Exhibition ‘Thierry Mugler: Couturissime’,” MBAM (date of last access 2 November 2019) https://www.mbam.qc.ca/en/news/close-to-300000-visitors-to-the-mmfas-exhibition-thierry-mugler-couturissime/
8. There is also talk of the exhibition going to the United States as well.
9. “Thierry Mugler: Couturissime,” MBAM (date of last access 2 November 2019) https://www.mbam.qc.ca/en/shop-online/exhibition-tickets/thierry-mugler-couturissime/7862/
10. Some sources say it was 140, others say 150. Julia Skelly, “The Phantasmagoric World of Thierry Mugler,” Fashion Studies (date of last access 2 November 2019) https://www.fashionstudies.ca/phantasmagoric-world-thierry-mugler
11. Skelly, “The Phantasmagoric World,” (date of last access 2 November 2019).
12. These are part of the collection in the Centre National du Costume de Scène in Moulins. Skelly, “The Phantasmagoric World,” (date of last access 2 November 2019).
13. Helmut Newton was a prolific fashion photographer closely associated with the sexual revolution of the 1960s and 1970s. Not only did he photograph models with an amplified sense of sexuality, there is also a sense of violence in the work, earning the nickname the “King of Kink.” See Jesse McKinley, “Helmut Newton, Fashion Photographer, 83,” The New York Times, (date of last access 20 November 2019) https://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/24/nyregion/helmut-newton-fashion-photographer-83.html
14. Like Julia Skeely, I also believe that a lot of didactic information was missing from the show, especially concerning issues of race and representation that was a part of Mugler’s designs and present in many rooms of the show, see Skelly, “The Phantasmagoric World,” (date of last access 2 November 2019).
15. Skelly, “The Phantasmagoric World,” (date of last access 2 November 2019).
16. Nina Simon, The Participatory Museum, (Santa Cruz: Museum 2.0, 2010), p. ii.
17. Darin Barney, Gabriella Coleman, Christine Ross, Jonathan Sterne, and Tamar Tembeck, “The Participatory Condition: An Introduction,” in The Participatory Condition in the Digital Age, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 2016), pp. vii-viii.
18. Barney, Coleman, Ross, Sterne, and Tembeck, “The Participatory Condition,” p. viii.
19. Mary Shaw Ryan, Clothing: A Study in Human Behaviour, (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1966), p. 83.
20. Bancroft, “Fashion and Psychoanalysis,” p. 2.
21. The uncanny is a psychological experience as something strange and familiar with a high degree of mystery attached to it. Bancroft, “Fashion and Psychoanalysis,” p. 3.
22. Chimera is a reference to Greek mythology. As a fire-breathing monster with a lion’s head, a goat’s body and a serpent’s tail, the emphasis is on the composition of incompatible parts. The word is also used to imply an illusion of the mind, which is an excellent reflection of the Mugler exhibition as a whole. “Chimera,” Merriam-Webster, (date of last access 20 November 2019) https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/chimera
23. Benjamin Hammond, “The New Exhibition Chronicling Thierry Mugler’s Wildest Most Radical Looks,” Dazed Digital, (date of last access 20 November 2019) https://www.dazeddigital.com/fashion/article/43605/1/new-exhibition-thierry-mugler-couturissime-montreal-museum-cardi-b-solange
24. Christine Long, “Thierry Mugler’s Wearable Art Collection ‘Couturissime’ on display at the MMFA in March,” CTV News, (date of last access 20 November 2019) https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/thierry-mugler-s-wearable-art-collection-couturissime-on-display-at-mmfa-in-march-1.4298259
25. Arjun Appadurai, “Introduction: Commodities and the Politics of Value,” in Arjun Appadurai, ed., The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986): 44-45
26. George Simmel quoted in Frenchy Lunning, Fetish Style, (London: Bloomsbury: 2013), p. 108.
27. Nathan Widder, “Matter as Simulacrum; Thought as Phantasm; Body as Event,” Deleuze and the Body, (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University: 2011), p. 111.
28. Noreen Flanagan, “An Exclusive Interview with Fashion’s OG Bad Boy, the Mysterious Manfred Thierry Mugler,” Fashion Magazine, (date of last access 25 November 2019) https://fashionmagazine.com/fashion/thierry-mugler-archives-couturissime/
29. Jacques Rancière, “The Distribution of the Sensible: Politics and Aesthetics,” in The Politics of Aesthetics (London; New York: Bloomsbury, 2004), p. 7.
30. “Relevant,” Oxford Dictionaries, (date of last access 20 November 2019) http://english.oxforddictionaries.com/relevant
31. Bretta Tondborg, “The Dangerous Museum: Participatory Practices and Controversy in Museums Today,” Nordisk Museologi 2 (2013), p. 3-16.
32. The experience of every single visitor is diverse, the success of democratic discussion is therefore very hard to examine, unless specific research is initiated.
33. Skelly, “The Phantasmagoric World,” (date of last access 2 November 2019).
34. Frenchy Lunning, Fetish Style, (London: Bloomsbury: 2013), p. 1.
35. Lunning, “Fetish Style,” p. 108.
36. Lunning, “Fetish Style,” p. 2.
37. Giles Deleuze, and Leopold Sacher-Masoch, Masochism, (New York: Zone Books, 1989), p. 32.
38. This is fairly similar to the bodily participation present in the immersion and the participatory. Deleuze, and Sacher-Masoch, “Masochism,” p. 17.
39. Deleuze, and Sacher-Masoch, “Masochism,” p. 20.
40. Deleuze, and Sacher-Masoch, “Masochism,” p. 71.
41. “Humiliate,” Merriam-Webster, (date of last access 20 November 2019) https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/humiliate
42. Many feminists note that there is an inspiring moment of power that comes from seeing Mugler’s models wearing bondage and leather whips as accessories.
43. A video recording of someone’s thoughts and experiences and published on the internet. “Vlog,” Cambridge Dictionary, (date of last access 20 November 2019) https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/vlog
44. The top videos found on YouTube by typing Mugler exhibition are not from official broadcasting news channels but rather personal vlogs. Even on the official news channels’ videos, there are many comments posted by community members disregarding the show as perverse.
45. Donald Preziosi and Claire Farago, Grasping the World: The Idea of the Museum, (Aldershot,
46. Tondborg, “The Dangerous Museum,” Nordisk Museologi 2 (2013), p. 11.
47. Alison Griffiths, Shivers Down your Spine: Cinema, Museums, and the Immersive View, (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), pp. 4-5.
48. Griffiths, “Shivers Down your Spine,” p.-5.
49. In my personal experience each time I would exit the space, I did not know if 5 hours or 25 minutes had passed.
50. Preziosi and Farago, “Grasping the World,” p. 5.
51. Ruth B. Phillips, “A Proper Place or the Proper Arts of Place,” On Aboriginal Representation in the Gallery, (Hull, Quebec: Canadian Museum of Civilization), p. 46.
52. Nathalie Khan, “Intervening Fashion: A Case for Feminist Approaches to Fashion Curation,” in Fashion Curating: Critical Practice in the Museum and Beyond, (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018), p. 162.
53. Katy Steinmetz, “Instagram is now officially a Verb, According to Merriam-Webster,” Time, (date of last access 28 November 2019) https://time.com/5386603/instagram-verb-merriam-webster/
54. The process of immersion is also noticeable in other collection displays at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, like the nineteenth-century Belle-époque room that implies the Salon style. This makes the viewer enter an imitative rendering of a previous century.
55. Alva Noë, Strange Tools: Art and Human Nature, (New York: Hill and Wang, 2015), p. 110.
56. Arnold Vermeeren, Licia Calvi, Amalia Sabiescu, Raffaella Trocchianesi, Dagny Stuedahl, Elisa Giaccardi, and Sara Radice, Museum Experience Design: Crowds, Ecosystems and Novel Technologies, (London: Springer, 2018), p. 1.