A selection of fashion illustrations by Ann Thaden

Feb 2 2018 - Jun 10 2018

My work explores how we use fashion to communicate and connect with ourselves and the world around us. Fashion is intimately intertwined with identity, self-expression, personal values, and memory. Fashion helps define who we are. It is ancient: Mesopotamians wore ornate and highly decorative tunics, while Egyptian pharaohs adorned themselves with jewelry to honor their gods and goddesses.

In order to understand the role that fashion plays in modern lives, I interview and paint designers, stylists, models, actors, and everyday people. All of them use fashion to celebrate and cultivate their personal aesthetic. Clothing is worn habitually over a period of time, and it often comes to define people during a particular period in their lives. Fashion is a creative act with its own cultural biography, which celebrates how our external adornments define our personal history, our present, and our future.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website

  • Dame Zandra Rhodes

Exhibition Venues & Dates