states of dress

There’s been a growing voice within local creative circles – one that talks about fashion not so much in terms of runway trends, aesthetic or GDP, but as a part of art, culture and the social fabric. Keng Yang Shuen spotlights the people who are broadening how we see and understand fashion and, in turn, are helping to shape Singapore into the truest and most sophisticated kind of fashion city.

- Keng Yang Shuen

THE DUO RECONTEXTUALISING FASHION WITHIN THE ART WORLD

Over a series of February weekends this year, friends Sarah Isabelle Tan and Josh Tirados Suarez presented a series of diaphanous, delicately embellished garments alongside experimental concrete objects in Tan’s studio in an industrial building in Tanah Merah. The set-up was cosy and tranquil with billowy curtains crafted from the same crinkled cotton viscose as the clothes – all the work of Suarez; Tan was behind the sculptures – enclosing a space in which the former would perform butoh (an avant-garde Japanese dance form) nightly. Providing the audio was electronic producer and sound artist Mervin Wong who created a live listening experience in response to the environment.

It’s hard to categorise what the whole affair, dubbed Breath, was exactly. A fashion-meets-lifestyle showcase (all the pieces were for sale)? An art installation? Both? To attempt to though might be missing its point altogether. The duo have a background in fashion – both Temasek Polytechnic alumni, Tan majored in retail and visual merchandising; Suarez design – but they’re not bound by any one medium, says Tan, who’s better known in the art circle for her photography work. Or as Suarez puts it: “Breath came about simply because we wanted a timestamp. This is us as artists at this point in time.”