Boran Verstraete &

Hannah Willems

10 March 2026

There you stand, in front of your mirror, closet, window, bed, wall. Nothing on but your

underwear that you bought 5 years ago. The seams of your underpants show signs of the years

and your socks have holes in them, which you desperately try to cover up when you take off

your shoes at your friends’ house. You try on different shirts, pants, skirts, belts.

Clothing as a narrative, dressing up as a performance. Clothing can tell both an intentional and

unintentional story. In a semiotic sense clothes can tell a narrative through the colors you chose,

the cut of your sweater, the material it is made out of,... But the way your body relates to your

clothing will give you away. As if the jeans you are wearing reveal your secret. It is through

your clothes that your movements are dictated, and where constraints take place. They show

the comfortable and uncomfortable. They become your second skin.

The act of putting on clothes and the movements that are made during this process carry

importance. The interaction between your skin and your clothing. Like the infrathin, which

Marcel Duchamp described as changes, discrepancies, distances that are almost impossible to

define, but still perceivable. Like ‘the warmth of a seat that has just been left’1. The way the

fabric brushes your skin, over the hairs on your arms. Like a snake shedding its’ skin.

Just as the interaction between the clothes and the body is infrathin, so is the display window.

‘Glass windows, the infrathin separation between inside and out.’1 The glass window separates

the performance (inside) and the public (outside). On the window, reflections are beamed.

Within fashion, clothing, and consuming, gender-constricted coding is always present.

Birthday Suit indulges in restriction in movement, space, and actions. Through interplay

between the passive body and active body, a dialogue is formed by the clothing that is chosen

and the pose that is presented.

Two piles of clothing, two pairs of heels, one paravent.

You gaze at us, we look at ourselves.