Fashion is generally embodied in three definitions: fashion as an action, fashion as a time and fashion as a system, an industry. In its discourse, we often refer to the fashion industry, but when considering it as a cultural point of review, it engages with all definitions and can serve as a mirror to the socio-economic and political footprint of a time period. It is a lived-in version of culture.
Hendrickje Schimmel, known as ‘Tenant of Culture’, is a Dutch artist working out of the fashion capital of London. Her practice combines fashion objects and making techniques with sculpture to create enigmatic works of demi-couture that hint at the existence of a fashion object which can be adorned in its materiality but often serves to create a wider discourse around the convoluted history and production of fashion garments.