The exhibition 'Balencia: Shaping Fashion' is looking really in depth at what made Balenciaga's designs so special
The project with Nick has been about trying to find those details
Which you can't see with the naked eye – through the mode of X-Ray – and particularly the making and craftsmanship
This dress looks really loose-fitting from the front, but when you look inside
there is actually quite a bit of structure going on underneath
And there is this myth that Balenciaga didn't use boning in his dresses
So we hope that the X-ray will show up this boned bodice and dress weights.
In a nutshell X-rays are
a spectrum of light, invisible to the human eye, and the clever thing about them – you can see through stuff!
What I really like about it is the fact that it's a combination between science and art – and it's surprising
Initially I thought that the Victoria and Albert Museum could send the dresses to my studio in Kent and I could X-ray them
In reality of course you can't – the dresses are invaluable and irreplaceable, and they have to be kept within the Museum constraints
So I decided to build a mobile X-ray facility
So you enter the trailer in the middle in the central working area, and if you come in here, you can see
That the X-ray machine is high, it's in the roof and we put the objects on the floor
Well, I must say I feel very privileged to be given access to the national collection at the V&A
I know that what we're doing is special. When I first told my X-ray machine provider
I was going to do it, they said "don't be stupid, it's impossible". Here we are – we've done it!
It's been really nice working with Nick and it really makes you look at the dresses through a different lens
Looking at weights and the density of fabric. So for the Balenciaga project
We X-rayed the 'tulip' dress which is very minimal, it's one constant material which has got folds and folds of fabric
And you need more radiation for a thicker dress then you do for a thinner dress
We bring the dress into the X-ray chamber which is a lead-lined box. We centre the x-ray beam and put the film behind the dress
Position the dress very carefully which takes a long time. We decided we needed the tail of the dress to curve, to flare
So we suspended some taught cotton between two heavy weights and then rested the bottom of the gown on that piece of cotton
And when we're stumbling around in the dark, as we do, under a red light – it's quite challenging
With a Balenciaga dress – a lot of them have got folds – you can't see what's inside those folds
That's the thing about X-rays. It's revealing – nothing gets hidden from it
The X-rays have to pass through the dress, create an impression on the film – It's an analogue process
Nick's enthusiasm for his craft comes out in every stage of the process
He still seems to get such a joy from what you find in each object, and the kind of surprise of X-Ray
which sometimes reveals things that you just had no idea were there
What's been so nice about this is seeing the objects in a different way, for example this dress weight
It really shines out – these are really crucial in the dress, they create this wave of fabric and if they weren't there it would fall
completely differently
With this one it's great to be able to show all the structure going on underneath the dress, which looks fairly plain from the front
but there's all sorts of things going on underneath.
These really help to show those details which you can't see when you're looking at a dress on a mannequin
With the X-rays we found some boning and flexible hoops
that hark back to dresses from the 1800s.
I'm not a fashion expert
And that's what I find really interesting working with the Fashion Curators – their knowledge is so strong
And they're pulling out my technical skills. And together we create something beautiful, something unique.
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