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[CS] Combining sculpture, fashion, and performance art - Concept Store - utilizes unconventional materials to create wearable art for purchase at eighteen-thirty.

Concept Store presents an examination of popular fashion design practices and the questions of functionality and commercial use. It explores the practice as an investigative art form that is both conceptual and unrestrained, while questioning the increasingly market-and-profit-driven understanding of fashion design.

COMMONLY, FASHION DESIGN IS UNDERSTOOD TO BE THE PRACTICE THAT SUPPLIES WEARABLE CLOTHING WITHIN TRENDS, WITH CONCEPTUAL EXPRESSION A PERFUNCTORY AFFAIR. Beholden to notions of functionality and marketability, fashion design has been rendered a practical and vulnerable discipline that conforms to the demands of the mass market. In this sense, it is a compliant art form through which one can track a culture's trends and aesthetics at any given time. As an item of everyday use, clothing is restricted within the practical realm, thus creating a gap between what is art is and what is fashion. One is pure adornment; the other utilitarian. Concept Store functions as a kind of intervention, disrupting this commonly accepted definition of fashion design. It intends to elevate fashion from the everyday and relocate it within the conceptual, within the imaginative and cerebral. With this objective, Concept Store looks beyond clothing design, beyond fashion, and beyond fashion art to create wearable art, and more specifically, wearable sculpture. Sculptural materials found in hardware stores and art studios are manipulated to clothe and adorn the body in textures and silhouettes located outside of the fashion house. THROUGH THE EXORCISM OF FUNCTION AND CONSUMER DEMAND, Concept Store CHALLENGES THE BOUNDARIES TRADITIONALLY ESTABLISHED WITHIN THE FASHION DESIGN INDUSTRY.

To highlight said boundaries, by means of paradox, Concept Store is itself a store, a physical space that implies product, retail, and exchange of capital. However, by locating this store inside eighteen-thirty, an alternative performance arts space free from window shopping, foot traffic, and public access, the project subverts the definition of a store, thus reacting against the commoditization of fashion design and questioning the traditional gallery space as the sole location of the art object.

By liberating fashion design from concerns of practicality and marketability, Concept Store places material and concept at a level of equal importance. Whereas commercial fashion houses allow the consumer’s desire and classic silhouettes to take precedence over conceptual concerns, Concept Store reflects the project’s point of conception in its end product.

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HIDE [verb] :
I to conceal from sight, knowledge or exposure I to prevent from being seen or discovered I to keep secret I to conceal oneself I to lie concealed I to seek refuge I to protect with a covering of leather I to shield something I

HIDE [noun]:
I the pelt or skin of one of the larger animals I raw or dressed tough animal or human material I safety or welfare I

HIDE emerges as the first project by Concept Store, an experiment in sculpture and design by S.S. Halajian. HIDE attempts to illustrate and reinvent the many definitions of the term, one that is intentionally left ambiguous.

HIDE replicates a paranoid narrative where one is driven to a heightened desire for security in an increasingly complicated and invasive world. Through the various interpretations of the word, HIDE embodies the need to protect through secrecy, to be protected through shelter, and to cover oneself in thick skin.

As an examination of the various interpretations of the word, HIDE consists of wearable sculptures in thick skin: threaded wire, pleather strips, synthetic hair, plaster, metal, and found materials. Through varying tones of whites and nudes, HIDE’s camouflage suggests an intensified instinct for protection and survival, while playing with militaristic notions of offense and defeat. With both passive and aggressive implications, the figures within HIDE shield themselves from the world while simultaneously confining movement and limiting comfort.