Curatorial Exhibition Scholarship

Tiger's Leap: Fashion Past, Present, Future

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Abstract

Since the mid-nineteenth century, when a host of factors including industrialization, resource extraction, and colonial expansion enabled a quick succession of style and silhouette, the Euro-American fashion system has relentlessly pursued the “new.” However, to create new styles, fashion often turns to the past. The philosopher Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) used the image of a tiger leaping through time to capture the way fashion pulls from the past to create anew. Fashion offered a perfect metaphor for Benjamin’s critique of European modernity—that it is merely a repackaging of the past. The exhibition “Tiger’s Leap: Fashion Past, Present, Future,” organized by the Avenir Museum of Design and Merchandising at Colorado State University, adapted Benjamin’s concept of the tiger’s leap into a curatorial framework. Garments from disparate time periods were juxtaposed within thematic groupings to illustrate how fashionable dress exemplifies Benjamin’s critiques of modernity.

Keywords: fashion curating, exhibition, temporality, philosophy, Walter Benjamin, fashion cycles, history

How to Cite:

Alaszkiewicz, P., (2025) “Tiger's Leap: Fashion Past, Present, Future”, International Textile and Apparel Association Annual Conference Proceedings 82(1). doi: https://doi.org/10.31274/itaa.21885