Introduction

Fashion thrives on appearance. It presents itself as effortless, immediate and self-evident. Yet every garment is the result of decisions, negotiations and labour that rarely remain visible.

the emperor’s new clothes examines fashion from the point of making, where value is not discovered, but constructed, and where myth is carefully assembled rather than inherited.

(DE-)MYSTIFICATION OF FASHION Happening, Photo: Alina Bäcker, Photo 2: Chulgyun Yoo,
Fashion: Jonathan Tschaikoiwski

Construction and Illusion

Fashion is built. Patterns are drafted, materials sourced, silhouettes adjusted and images constructed. None of this is intuitive or natural.

The central illusion of fashion is not emptiness, but autonomy. Fashion presents itself as self-generating, while systematically obscuring the processes and dependencies that sustain it. Construction is replaced by aura; decision-making dissolves into style.

This illusion is productive. It stabilises authority and preserves distance.

Breath Magazine vol 5, Model: Talia Ölker, Photo: Jonathan Tschaikowski

Labour and Displacement

Fashion is the outcome of collective work. Yet visibility is unevenly distributed. Authorship is concentrated, while labour is displaced. What appears unified is in fact fragmented; what appears singular is sustained by many.

Fashion depends on this asymmetry. It allows complexity to be absorbed while responsibility remains diffuse.

Models: Hyunjin Lee and Jeonglim Baek, Photo & Layout: Chulgyun Yoo,
Fashion: Jonathan Tschaikoiwski

Visibility and Power

Every fashion situation contains an implicit politics of visibility.

Staging amplifies certain bodies while diminishing others. It produces focus, hierarchy and emotional alignment. These effects are not imposed through instruction, but through sensation; through what is felt rather than what is stated.

The power of fashion staging lies in its subtlety.

Materiality Against Narrative

Materials are never neutral. They carry economic, ecological and social histories.

Within fashion’s representational systems, however, materiality is often reduced to symbol. Craft, rarity and quality are invoked as narratives, while the conditions under which materials are extracted, processed or assembled remain marginal.

To approach fashion from the perspective of making is to confront the tension between material reality and symbolic construction and to refuse their seamless alignment.

Making as Position

In my practice, making is not only production; it is a stance.

By foregrounding process, dependency and construction, making functions as a method of demystification. This is not an act of exposure for its own sake, nor a return to authenticity. It is a refusal to accept fashion’s tendency to conceal its own conditions.

Insisting on process means insisting on accountability.

Beyond Demystification

The aim is not to reveal fashion as deception. It is to understand how value is assembled and to intervene in that assembly.

the emperor’s new clothes reframes making as a site where authorship, labour, material and myth collide. Fashion is neither illusion nor truth; it is a negotiated construction that can be reorganised from within.