The originator of Edinburgh's Psychomoda clothing business, fashion designer Alison Harm, is showcasing her own collection of pieces in a solo exhibition titled Vengefully Changed Allegiance. Alison combines various tartan patterns with vintage fabric, broken jewellery, and industry leftovers to make clothes that subvert conventional ideas about what is appropriate to wear.
This exhibition of sustainable fashion, which was specially curated for the Pomegranates festival of international traditional dance (April 25–30), also looks at the history of tartan material, which is still used by Highland dancers and for kilts, reported The North Edinburg News.
Tartans are often chosen based on a person's clan, but Alison's clothing combines several tartan patterns to create modern looks that call into question the necessity of preserving our intangible cultural past at the expense of creativity and style.
"Fashion is cyclical; nothing is new," stated fashion designer Alison Harm. The Victorians dressed in historical clothing to demonstrate their loyalty to a bygone age, much as we might do now.
In 1886, a political movement known as the Jacobite revivalist movement swept the UK, reinvigorating interest in all things Scottish in the fields of fashion and art. Tartan fabric started playing a big role in that movement.
Nearly a century later, in the midst of political and cultural unrest, young people in the UK once more choose tartan as a component of their tribal attire, adopting a crude aesthetic that emphasized a makeshift,'make do' mentality.
"A declaration by the wearer opposing capitalism. The fashion business is now focusing on sustainability as the wheel has turned once more. People want to voice how they feel about the fast fashion industry, which is destroying the environment.
"I've gone back to using tartan fabric to convey this meaning. In the punk tradition, by combining discarded objects and industry leftovers with irreverent tartan pattern mixing, the artist challenges the viewer's conception of who can wear what and where, implying that they can defy social norms./BGNES