Nice Outfit, Issue 2

Nice Outfit is an exhibition catalogue and theoretical journal. Issue 2 archives Knock Knock an exhibition of fashion and textiles curated by Felix Choong at Season Gallery in London, December 2022.

The show took Peter Galassi’s seminal exhibition Pleasures and Terrors of Domestic Comfort held at MoMA, New York in 1991 as its starting point that used photography to explore the home, its affluent surfaces and the undertones of disquiet and tension as its starting point and localised its own exploration through garments. The exhibition themes become the framework for the accompanying written commissions.

Philippa Snow explores Andrej Zulawski’s Possession and Ari Aster’s Hereditary naturalistic depictions of marital conflict in the home and the ensuing hysteria when these are pushed to the precipice of no return. Experimental fiction is penned by Charlie Fox and Ethan Price. Fox’s from the perspective of a girl’s dress, and Price’s where a love and loathing for England motivates a girl’s hedonism, delusion and decline in her seaside bedsit.

Liara Roux reflects on her experiences as a sex worker in the upper echelons of society, creating comfort by emulating her client’s mothers. Asa Seresin explores the biblical act of cutting up clothes from antiquity into the present day rendering pain in three dimensions. The artist Sin Wai Kin provides preliminary writing and materials to their art practice whose knack for world-building uses speculative fiction to dissolve reality and fantasy.

Elise By Olsen reflects on the opening of the International Library of Fashion Research in Oslo and her relationship with seed donor and long-term mentor Steven Mark Klein, alongside scans of designer’s domestic spaces and branded interior accessories from the library’s permanent collection. Artworks by Julien Ceccaldi, which grace the front and back covers are profiled whose vision of the world is one of hyperbole, pumped-up or withered down, where every character is at the edge of (unrequited) love and utter breakdown.

Zach Langley Chi Chi has provided excerpts from his diary that revel in the sublime anguish of love and lust. Lastly, an interview with auctioneer and vintage fashion, fine antique costume and textiles specialist Kerry Taylor discussing the emotional history of clothing and estate sales.