Idea Stores.

The American conceptual and minimalist artist, Sol Lewitt, published his Sentences on Conceptual Art in 1969, which outlined the role of the modern artist as conceiver of ideas rather than maker of things. Where concept is privileged over materiality, the idea is the artwork.

His thinking was instrumental to the transition from the modern to the postmodern era, and the principal objective of the Conceptual art movement to engage the mind of the viewer. Lewitt, and other conceptualists, challenged a long-held notion that the making, physicality or material presence was the central focus of any artwork. He considered that even colour, surface, texture, or shape emphasized the physical prominence of a work, and which would serve as an obstacle to the understanding of an idea.

As per Lewitt’s Sentence Number 10, which stipulated that “All ideas need not be made physical,” can we understand fashion as a medium in which all clothing need not be made physical, nor indeed digital? Can we imagine a scenario where an idea is the garment; where it is made in the mind; where a store or outlet trades in idealism; and where the physical garment itself proves an obstacle to a perception of fashion?