Greetings from the Festival State, South Australia. If you were in Adelaide for the Fringe Festival and/or the Adelaide Festival, here is another must see while in our humble yet beautiful City of Churches.
In a tribute to the ‘creative spirit’ behind the brands and designers amidst times of change, the David Roche Museum Foundation in partnership with SAMESH presents ‘Silhouettes: Fashion in the Shadow of HIV/AIDS’ from the 29 January to the 18 June. Bringing together art and design by artists, fashion visionaries and activists from the UK, Australia and the USA whom the world had lost to HIV/AIDS, this is a pivotal exhibition and retrospective about ‘changing hemlines, changing worlds and changing attitudes’.
I was lucky enough to attend the captivating official launch event on the 28th of February to open an exciting collection of artworks, couture looks and rarefied wearable artifacts created by designers and artisans affected by the AIDS epidemic. Over 100 vintage designer pieces are on display encapsulated and intricately sourced from institutional bodies and private collections from the United Kingdom, Australia, France and the USA. The designers represented include changemakers from Australia, Scotland and England, France, Italy, Japan, Canada, the USA, and Argentina. Exhibition curator and fashion historian Skye Bartlett shared some insights about the featured designers.
Skye: Silhouettes started with the personal discovery of the life and works of Chester Weinberg, an incredibly influential American designer who was almost eradicated from fashion history, due to the stigma of being the first fashion designer to die of AIDS related illness. I then started researching other designers who had lived with HIV and died of AIDS related illness; big names like Halston, Peter Tully, Perry Ellis, Willi Smith and Franco Moschino, and lesser known, but equally important names like Patrick Kelly, Fabrice Simon and Ian & Marcel among others.

Read the full article in Q News