SEE PHOTOS & WATCH A VIDEO: Mixing up fashion, art, performance and shopping, the recent Outside Fashion Art Festival was held in a hypermart and featured over 60 works of fashion and art by innovative, emerging designers, performers, models and artists … We loved it.
If you’re still all excited about the recent Singapore Fashion Week 2017, and you’re looking for more fashion-related things to know about, check out these photos and video from the inaugural Outsider Fashion Art Festival that ran from October 20-22.
The organisers of Outsider, Zachary Goh and Toby Hsu from Untitled Collective, have over 17 years in brand-building and design experience working in fashion, retail, lifestyle and the arts in the creative scenes in Singapore and China. Zachary says that for him, “… both fashion and art have a profound cause and effect on present society, often mirroring or even shaping pop culture, yet current fashion and arts festivals can come off as highbrow and ostracise the wider community. What Outsider sets out to achieve is an open presentation that everyone can identify with, pulling visitors into the minds of these creative leaders from across the region.”
The Outsider Fashion Art Festival was open to everyone
What this basically means is that Outsider was a combined exhibition-installation-fashion trade show held in the BigBox Hypermarket, open to public and featured a range of young emerging fashion brands from Singapore, Malaysia, China, Taiwan and Thailand. Also featured were 10 Singapore artists who created visual art installations, plus 45 works created by fashion graduates from the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts (NAFA). That’s total of 65 young Singaporean and Asian creatives being given a public platform to show off their talents.
Another very cool, kind of underground aspect of Outsider was the use of the Bigbox space for the exhibition. Zachary and Toby say that this is part of their ‘mission’ for Outsider; to bring fashion and art that’s not mainstream to a more mainstream audience. To create interesting conversations in the Heartlands of Singapore. They also say that this first Outsider event is only the first of many they are planning and they’re not concerned with whether or not Outsider makes any money, for them it’s a passion project that allows them to be as creative as possible and to ‘spread the love’ so to speak to young artists and designers in Singapore and around Asia.
This is a great sentiment, right? Doing something for love and not money is always a nice thing to hear about. Check out the super cool Outsider video from the event below. As you can see, trekking all the way out to Jurong East for some fashion and art didn’t deter some of Singapore’s top fashion influencers and industry supporters. Over 1,500 people visited the pop-up event over its three-day run; not bad for a city that’s often described as loving shopping more than fashion.
The Outsider Fashion Art Festival featured lots of original art & fashion
Visitors got a kick out of seeing the interactive art performance by NAFA students entitled Dream Market – which included people actually sleeping in trolleys and on shelves – and the runway show featuring all 13 designers at the event. The brands included Singapore labels Faculty and Voltaire.Visions, plus Lanneret, Alias, Ms Yeeyee, 1=X and Mimblanche from China; Makin Jan Ma, Methodology and Absurd Laboratory from Hong Kong, Batice from Taiwan, Man Chien from Malaysia and Q Design and Play from Thailand. The models then became their very own installation as they set up themselves as live mannequins in the various fashion brands’ booths. Iconic footwear brand Converse also celebrated its Chuck Taylor All Stars’ 100th year anniversary with an art installation space.
Overall the Outsider Fashion Art Festival was a really interesting way to bring fashion and art to the public. These sorts of interactive events are fresh and different and what people are really looking for – you just have to see the massive response to events like Artbox, Boutiques or the Chanel Coco Cafe to understand that what many people want now are interactive experiences, not just passive viewing opportunities.
Toby and Zachary are already planning their next Outsider event and I, for one, can’t wait to go.
Watch this cool video from the Outsider Fashion Art Festival …
Check out some cool photos from the Outsider Fashion Art Festival …
Looking for more exciting and interesting stuff to do in Singapore? Check out our Singapore events Calendar, and our story on 30 things to do in Singapore November 2017: exhibits, events, festivals and parties.
