Viscose Journal #6: Text

Viscose is one of several magazines—think Vestoj, Novella— addressing the theoretical rather than commercial side of fashion.

This sixth issue is themed Text, exploring ‘fashion as constructed through words, language and writing, and the immense conceptual scope (for exploration, experimentation, and critique) of such a practice.’ Typically format-bending, this edition may be more traditionally bookish but is beautifully produced nonetheless. A scanned and hand-annotated copy of the introduction makes for the front cover, while the back reads as an imaginary facsimile of this issue’s covers and spine (were it a beaten up leather book).

This interplay between reproduction and the aesthetics of writing continues inside, with a number of previously published texts from fashion designers and writers—Elizabeth Hawe’s I Say its Spinach (1938); Yohji Yamamoto’s My Dear Bomb (2010); Liane Keen’s diagrammatic rules for dressing from 1965—scanned and sitting alongside contributions by Dal Chodha, Jamaica Kincaid, Julie Peeters (editor of BILL), Bruno Zhou and more; ‘a milieu of of experimental, fictocritical, and poetic approaches that widen the horizons of fashion and style.’