Edinburgh International Fashion Festival’s second coming is welcome return

By LINDSEY JOHNSTONE
Published on 17/08/2012 13:19

This month an animal of a very different kind will be seen prowling the labyrinthine halls of the Dick Vet, now Fringe venue Summerhall, as it plays host to the Edinburgh International Fashion Festival.

A similar event was last seen in 2006, when the inaugural Edinburgh Fashion Festival appeared, bringing with it Vivienne Westwood and a then little-known Jonathan Saunders, and subsequently disappeared without trace. So the 2012 incarnation is long overdue, finally giving fashion as an art form a platform among the myriad cultural fêtes that descend upon Edinburgh each summer.

Director Anna Freemantle’s considerable experience in the fashion industry, as both model and events producer, has no doubt helped secure what is frankly a stellar line-up, including Chanel muse Amanda Harlech, Scottish runway renegade Pam Hogg, and couturier and former Balmain creative director Aimee McWilliams, as well as contributions from Hussein Chalayan, Ryan McGinley, Tilda Swinton, and Juergen Teller, who shot the Festival’s campaign, with Stella Tennant as its face.

The Festival programme is impressively diverse, including runway shows (with the obligatory but always welcome
after-parties), talks, screenings, salon shows, exhibitions and workshops, and it aims to provide a cultural spectacle marrying the mediums of design, film, music, science and art all under the umbrella of fashion, thus giving this often rarefied world a wider appeal.

Highlights include a question and answer session by Harlech on her 30-year-career at Galliano, Chanel and Vogue; talks on Dressing the Self: Art, Fashion and Neuroscience and The Changing Rules of Fashion in the Digital Age; a runway show from Hogg; and a screening event at the Institut Français entitled Le jour d’avant, of three films exposing the controlled chaos of the day before runway shows at Fendi, Sonia Rykiel and Jean Paul Gaultier.

Free exhibitions including Fashion Revolution China, on the narrative of clothing in the country’s turbulent 20th century, and a sensory feast of video, photography, installations and couture pieces entitled Syn/Aesthesia, will run alongside the festival, remaining at Summerhall until September.

For full details and booking information go to the website edinburghinternationalfashionfestival.com