Lars Wallin Atelier – 35 Years of Fashion Stories at Artipelag.

Lars Wallin is a Swedish fashion designer who mostly designs unique dresses for celebrities, royalty, and presenters of shows such as Eurovision. Artipelag exhibits dresses that Lars Wallin has created for various people and now asked to borrow from the owners for this show.

There was an introductory section with sketches and toiles, and some background info about Lars Wallin and his approach to design.

The rest of the exhibition rooms were dedicated to showcasing the dresses.

It all looked very shiny, but that was about it. I had been hoping for more. Insight into his creative process, for example, or how the dresses had been designed or made. Now it was just “dress made for this and this for the Cannes film festival” or “dress worn by this and this at the Melodifestivalen final 1994”. After a few signs like that, I just stopped reading them.

The dresses were also, frankly, kind of boring. I’m sure that the wearer felt glamorous, and Lars Wallin probably had fun designing them, but there was nothing interesting about them. Nothing that made me think “oh that’s clever” or “wow, I hadn’t realized you could do that”. No, it was just “wow, that’s a lot of sequins” and “well, that sure is very red” and even more “that looks expensive”.

This last photo of the red section is out of focus but it gets to be here anyway because it really illustrates my thoughts so well. When he makes a red dress, he makes it the reddest red, and that’s it. The next dress is equally red. There is no nuance, no subtlety. Just a lot of sameness.