Last night at Legendary, the Dallas Contemporary's annual fundraising event, hundreds of arts patrons gathered for an unconventional fashion experience. Fort Worth-turned-Brooklyn artist, K8 Hardy, sent a parade of heavily pansticked models down a concrete runway. Each was dressed in haphazard apparel -- dresses made of bras, pairs of jeans Frankensteined together vertically and other strikingly disparate combinations. Hardy's work mashes up unconventional aesthetic with issues surrounding branding and female societal roles, and in this show she wanted to explore what's taken from a fashion show when the possibility of commerce is removed.
Models staggered and buckled as they walked sideways, angular and in slow motion. They resembled blank-eyed women lost in a dark forest, trying to escape in high heels with low visibility. Hardy put on a similar show earlier this year at the Whitney Biennial.
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Artist K8 Hardy Returns To Dallas, Converts Runway Into Living Sculpture