Drawing With Scissors: Jonathan Kyle Farmer at FW

by Amanda Seagle, Fashion Publishing

Jonathan Kyle Farmer’s “5D” Fashion Sculptures Impress at His Debut

Click for Kyle Farmer exhibit video.

During a fashion week that Cathy Horyn had decried as, “flabby,” before even 2 days of shows had been waded through by blizzard defying, Celine-clad feet, Jonathan Kyle Farmer’s opening at the Hudson Bond on Saturday night was an innovative and surprising ray of light. Farmer is known well by his students and colleagues at Parsons to be an innovator, not just in terms of new ways to teach creative practice (I have a distinct memory of him dropping in on my construction class Sophomore year and nearly jumping up and down with excitement about the thousands of ways to deconstruct a shirt, while ripping pages out of a book he had created in dedication to the subject), but in his personal work as well. This innovation and obsession with what fashion can be and where it can go was on clear display at Drawing With Scissors last Saturday, an exhibit of fashion sculptures Farmer had created from humble printer paper. If printer paper sculptures sound less than impressive to you, please take note, even in paper, the brilliance of the work was clear. Imagine relentlessly detailed, paper dolls in-the-round, only these dolls had mohawks and were outfitted in Farmer’s designs, their bodies beginning and ending in unity with armor-like shields that became dresses, or sleeves, or something indescribable that seemed so far into the future of fashion, yet made so much sense right now. There were only two unfortunate aspects of this show: One, that there was only one real garment on display (although it was modeled by the ethereal club legend Sofia Lamar, a perfect fit for the otherworldly futurism of Farmer’s designs), and two, that this show was one night only, and will not be on display at the Hudson Bond in the following weeks. Despite this, I’m sure that the fashion world will be seeing a lot from Jonathan Kyle Farmer in the future.

Jonathan Kyle Farmer’s work can be found online at www.Fashionfarming.com