Art Meets Fashion at Stockholm's Kulturhuset

It is the summer holidays 

and I need to fill up the days 

in edifying ways 

showing the children exciting things to make them grow

Weirdness and wonderments and new things to know

But where to go? And what to see?

I'm pretty open minded but best if it's free!

Ok, my poetry is rubbish, but the sentiments are fairly honest. I had hoped that in the socialist paradise that we live, the Kulturehuset would have free art exhibitions, for the people, to edify them and all that stuff, but sadly, we had to pay actual money to visit the exhibitions there. It wasn't much though and it was quite entertaining. First up was the weirdest that is Henrik Vibskov. Danish designer that moves between art and fashion seamlessly and very very weirdly. These puppets were props for one of his catwalk shows...

Then we get into a giant yellow banana caterpillar thingy. The kids thought it was brilliant and even more so when they realised that one of them could be outside and put their hands into the tunnel and try to capture the other one inside...hilarity ensued.

There was also a hall of his clothes displayed amongst boobs. not even realistic looking boobs, but kind of joke shop boobs. That was a bit crap.

Then we went upstairs to a fashion exhibition. I lament to say that I didn't read the blurb on what the whole exhibition was about but I would guess it is some kind of studenty thing... had the  brashness and perplexing nature that only students bother with...just guessing though. Most of it could be captioned:

 'Just because it is physically possible to make this, should you really though? I mean really?'

A lot of indulgent ugly pretentious nonsense... however there were some pearls of light.

I loved the embroidery work by Karin Holberg who is exploring the juxtaposition of traditional craft with modern street fashion.

And also exploring the similar juxtaposition of traditional dress and modern clothing is designer Mariana Silva Varela

It's funny because I had gotten all excited about the pocket of a traditional dress the weekend before at the Midsomar festival and I really love what Mariana has done here as a modern interpretation of that...

I also loved the prints by designer Linea Matei...

here is a video of her work... You can see that the print designs are the thing here, the garments themselves don't bare up to much scrutiny and are just vehicles for the fab prints...

The last room held what I can only describe as urban samurai fashion. This was a blend of American Football uniforms, samurai warrior armour and urban riot gear. Perfect protection for that bizarre uprising when all the fashionistas take to the streets throwing petrol bombs... yes, well obviously that is as likely to happen as someone actually wearing these outfits, but at least these were beautifully made and interesting as conceptual fashion...well only for  about a minute before I got bored of that sort of silliness.