threeASFOUR re-interpreted Yoko Ono's "Cut Piece" performance to showcase their 2010 Spring/Summer collection.

NORTHWEST -- The Textile Museum sits on a quiet back street, just off Washington, D.C.'s historic Embassy Row. With a tasteful brick and stone facade, the exterior of the museum blends-in well with this elegant, yet understated, slice of the city (the Burmese, Latvian, and Costa Rican Embassies are all neighbors).

It might therefore come as a surprise to some that The Textile Museum became one of the area's premier destinations for innovative examples of avant-garde, modern art over the weekend, as the venue hosted a two-night event presented by INTERWOVEN -- a New York-based collaborative platform for artists that focuses on the intersection of film, performance, installation, and visual art.

With its focus on fashion, we were graciously invited to attend Friday night's program featuring Kansas City-based fashion designer and installation artist Peggy Noland and the New York fashion design team known enigmatically as threeASFOUR (otherwise individually known as Adi Gil, Gabriel Asfour, and Angela Donhauser).

With guests mingling throughout the museum's exhibition space, Peggy kicked-off the evening with a piece of performance art that playfully used bright colors and enlarged, corpulent shapes contrasted against the human body, in order to challenge her audience's thoughts on issues like art vs. commerce and what is considered high vs. low-brow art.

The Textile Museum's outdoor garden then took center-stage for the most anticipated portion of the evening: A re-creation of Yoko Ono's infamous 1964 "Cut Piece" of performance art as envisioned by threeASFOUR.




While Yoko's original performance had touched on issues as diverse as existentialism, love, loneliness, and human suffering, threeASFOUR has re-interpreted it (with Yoko's blessing) as a vehicle through which the design team could demonstrate its ethereal and sculptural approach to clothing construction, while at the same time showcasing its 2010 Spring/Summer collection (pieces of which were worn by the models as they cut away the garment adorning the performance's lead character).

An intimate question-and-answer session then followed the performance, during which threeASFOUR explained how Yoko's son, Sean Lennon, initially encouraged the trio to collaborate with his mother by basing a collection of clothing designs on some of her drawings.

This was only the second time threeASFOUR has ever performed this work of art (the first being during Spring Fashion Week this year in New York City). The profile of the Washington, D.C. fashion scene is clearly on the rise!