UGELVIG, Jeppe; KOULIGAS, Bill; LAPRADE, Thomas; SKOLNIK, Stacy (eds.)
Viscose 08: Sound

This issue examines the myriad of music and sound cultures of fashion. Entirely untethered from materiality and image, sound is the proof that fashion operates just as vividly in the purely atmospheric. From the artfully curated musical narratives of the runway to the ambient sonic environment of shops, fashion both emits sounds and seeks to associate itself with it for its own advancement.

Music in particular asserts fashion’s existential relationship to time: it aesthetically time-keeps fashion media and confirms sartorial novelty by mirroring it rhythmically. To a public consciousness, the intimate relationship between fashion and music is obvious and at times even understood as one and the same. Sound glues material such as clothes to wider zeitgeists and mediated lifestyles, and as such, to cultural memory itself. As Mary E. Davis has illuminated, the alliance is profoundly historic: as far back as 1672, fashion periodicals have covered clothes and music as equally essential components of an elegant, fashionable lifestyle. Music, in fact, surrounds fashion: it enwraps makers, mediators, and consumers alike in ephemeral, yet intensely meaningful, signifiers of taste. Countless designers have come to fashion through musical subcultures, and labors in ateliers to particular playlists. Indeed, style most often has a soundtrack of its own, or dances to a specific tune. Fashion emits sounds before and after the musical. The clicking of heels, the rustling of a sweater, the hissing of a zipper. The ambient humming of a sewing machine; the conclusive “beep” from a store cashier.

Contributors: Max Alper, Arlette, Sigurd Bank, Lizzi Bougatsos, Ana Howe Bukowski, Upsana Das, Aisha Devi, Enantios Dromos, Ana Viktoria Dzinic, Dan Fox, Ryan Aguilar & Michel Gaubert, Theodore Jhang, Sowmya Krishnamurthy, Labour, Mark Leckey, Hanne Lippard, Project X Magazine, Chloé Maratta, Luis Manuel Garcia-Mispireta & Michael Meeuwis, Ellen Schafer & Nicholas Miller, Ashland Mines, Women’s History Museum, Cheuk Ng, Christian Alborz Oldham, Pilooski, Yat Pit, Seth Price, Frédéric Sanchez, Hyein Seo, Carrie Stacks, Danny Taylor, Terre Thaemlitz, Valentina Triet, Jeppe Ugelvig, Aran Atsuo, Charlot Abhors A Void, Marley Wendt, Skype Williams.

[publishers’ note]

Published by Viscose / Montez Press, 2025
Design by stanza
Periodicals / Fashion / Music & Sound