This is a hybrid form of style / fashion performance and concept art where Andrea Crews is trying to break the boundaries between several things in the age of social media where everything gets instantaneously swapped, blended, shared – all at the same time.

The setting of the IMMORTAL show (a reference to martial arts and its sport club logo obsessions) is a sports school (in our case the racket ball courts) where behind glass walls style and fashion performance art – the flyer calls it ‘living paintings’ – are taking place. And each difference ‘style performance’ is supposed to indicate a different form of style (and hence identity) blending, the idea behind it being that in the age of social media identities no longer really exists, but that identity has the power to bend, blend and shapeshift across several spectrums at the same time.

Trans-culturalism

The style-concept-art in the first racketball court – according to the press release – is meant to describe what Andrea Crews calls ‘trans-culturalism’  by presenting to us a group of black asians. The idea may be here that the oriental dojo sports school logo styles and fashion for men can break cultural barriers and that identities can thus merge, blend, or shift.

Trans-estheticism

In court number two we witness young men and women laying on the floor as dead under the logo sign IMMORTAL as a contradiction in terms. There is an element of transgenderism here in that – by their style – it is difficult to distinguish the men from the women but reading the press release it becomes clear that what we are dealing here with nothing less than models selected on social media for this event because they all have the same ‘singular beauty’.

You see, on the internet and in the virtual world, EVERYONE is pretty – as everyone can as if by whim and want always manipulate their selfies in the latest photoshop or instagram application. Beauty is blending and shifting all the time and has nothing to do with whether you are male or female, black or white, or old or young anymore. Beauty is for everyone and in a virtual utopia it has become the great equalizer, the mother of all democracy. And thus style is starting to bend and shape towards technology, and no longer to our gender, our culture, or our beliefs and values.

Transtylism?

To put a stamp on this conceptual style-morphism the press release freely admits that indeed the show and presentation is trying to break free from what it calls ‘classical codes’ of style and fashion. But you really have to wonder about to where such type of deliberate iconoclasm will eventually lead. Should all culture, gender, and other forms of identity always be subject to continuous change of shape, blending, and sharing – or plagiarism and copying perhaps?  It’s the world of personal style for copy and paste.

And thus in court number three we actually get to admire some real different styles. And they are cool. They have a sporty look and pattern to them but by now we are seriously wondering if the idea here is that all style gets blended always so that it can be swapped and shared immediately. Such ‘transtylism’ would not be out of order for Andrea Crews we think.

Blending cultures and styles

The moral of this men’s fashion story may be that we all better only do our fashion shopping online. For this way we can never buy the wrong thing – and this way noone can ever challenge our gender, our beauty, our identity, or our pride. You see it’s very safe to always be your own avatar. And thus life in 2015 has become like something out of SimCity while we are slowly creating and constructing a virtual world which is perfect and according to all our specifications.  Our style is not just only for sale – as if it were luxury, but actually has become swappable, tradable, instantly changeable, sharable, and of course expendable – which allows identities to fudge, blend, bend, shapeshift, and mill around in ever stranger ways.  The global derivatives market of personal indentity is not far off in the future.  And it is a market which Andrea Crews has begun to tap into.

The first style bender

Posted by Sandro and photos by Mous.