Last Friday the V&A’s Rafael Gallery was transformed to showcase the work of Frederik Tjærandsen as part of the museum's Fashion in Motion series.

The lights had been dimmed and the ‘catwalk’ demarcated with masking tape on the tiled floor. This boundary changed the space into a kind of theatre. There was a hushed anticipation as people crowded into the gallery to take their place around the runway.



It is this which makes the Fashion in Motion series so exciting: the ability to open fashion to the public not as inert and alienable runway photographs or garments hung on clothes rails, but rather as something that is relational and moving. It is where fashion meets performance.

The show on Friday built on Tjærandsen's collection Moments of Clarity which he presented at his graduate show last summer. In response to the question Central St Martins had proposed: “We know you can sew, what else can you do?”, the Norwegian designer crafted the garments from inflated natural rubber latex with minimal seams and no stitching.



In photographs the resultant ‘bubbles’ have a space-hopper quality, but in actuality they appear delicate, translucent, the internal structures like membranes. With their faces shrouded by latex and limbs distorted by the shadows cast by the narrow spotlights, the models seemed preternatural. There was collective delight when one of the ‘bubbles’ rose into the air, before descending over the model’s head transformed into a dress.



Tjærandsen has described his work as a progress of "experimental practice that explores the undefinable moment of human self-awareness."

Although the tape created a stage on which the show was performed, the otherworldly atmosphere breached this line, enveloping the audience and filling the gallery. The electronic orchestral music and the un-realness of the garments themselves engendered a sense of uncertainty and virtuality: like the in-between fantasy of play.



Remerging into the bustle of the V&A post-show felt the same as leaving the cinema, blinking as your eyes adjust to the light and reality of the everyday.