In Linz, Austria, a new exhibition explores the darker side of fashion since the 1980s, when the likes of Alexander McQueen, Martin Margiela, and Rei Kawakubo started following melancholic tendencies that had hitherto been reserved for the other visual arts and literature. It was an altogether new aesthetic that saw the rise of post-punk deconstruction and destruction, animalism and naturalism, aging and decay, and a morbid fascination with mortality. Continuing to this day, the look “emphasizes the traces of time, praises transience, and flirts with death,” says curator Ursula Guttmann.

The show presents designers — who, in addition to the above, include Walter Van Beirendonck, Viktor & Rolf, Bless, Iris van Herpen, Bernhard Willhelm, Jean Paul Gaultier, Carol Christian Poell, and Barbara í Gongini — alongside photographers and other artists, totaling 160 works by over 50 creatives.

Love and Loss: Fashion and Mortality, March 13 – June 7, 2015, Lentos Kunstmuseum, Linz, Austria

Alexander McQueen

Fantich & Young

Martin Margiela

Una Burke

Iris van Herpen

Kathe Wenzel

Viktor & Rolf

NOKI (aka Dr NOKI)

photo Juergen Teller

Coop Himme(l)blau