MAGAZINE
The Pouch, the Wing, the Scale: Inside a Wardrobe Built by Evolution
A shirt cut like the pouch of a red kangaroo, offering warmth and shelter. A corset that inflates like the body of a pufferfish bracing for danger. A headpiece born from the crescent-caped lophorina’s courtship display. Fashioning Animals, a new exhibition at the Museum of Man and the Living, invites twelve Israeli fashion designers to look past fur and feathers as mere pattern, and into the deeper logic nature has spent millions of years perfecting – structure, movement, protection, survival.
We spoke with curators Yoav Meir and Gili Sivan-Cohen and co-curator Alex Kaplan about what happens when fashion looks beyond the human body, how biological knowledge can become a design tool, and what happens when a scientific collection and a runway ask the same question: what is design actually for?
Yoav, Gili, you’ve been working together for years on projects that explore fashion not merely as clothing, but as a language of identity, body and society. What happened when you brought that perspective into a natural history museum – into a space filled with taxidermy specimens and a scientific collection?
For us, this exhibition is a natural continuation of our curatorial journey. We’ve always believed that fashion is a cultural language, one that reflects identity, values, politics and emotion. When we brought that language into a natural history museum, the conversation shifted from culture to nature. Instead of asking what fashion tells us about human beings, we asked what nature could teach the world of fashion.
The scientific collection became much more than visual inspiration. Each animal tells a story of evolution, adaptation, survival and beauty. The museum became a space for dialogue between science and creation, where the designers translated biological knowledge into a contemporary fashion language. In this way, both fashion and the scientific collection take on new meaning for the visitors.
What drew you to this shift: from the human, social world to the zoological and ancient one?
Fashion has drawn inspiration from nature for centuries, but usually on a purely visual level: a print, a texture, a silhouette. We wanted to go deeper. We weren’t satisfied with patterns of fur or feathers. Instead, we invited the designers to explore behavior, anatomy, movement, relationships and survival strategies in the animal world.
This shift also reminds us that human beings are part of nature. Emotions we tend to think of as distinctly human – love, protection, transformation, courtship, communication – exist in the animal world too. The exhibition explores these connections through fashion.
From a design perspective, what happens when a designer works in relation to a non-human body: a wing, scales, fur, a beak, a skeleton, an animal's particular way of moving?
This encounter completely changes the design process. The designers were required to move beyond the conventional way of thinking about the human body, and to examine how nature solves problems of structure and function. Wings are not only beautiful – they generate movement. Fur regulates temperature. Scales provide protection and flexibility. In nature, every detail has a purpose.
This intelligence became a source of inspiration. Rather than copying the animal’s appearance, the designers translated its internal logic into a fashion language. This gave rise to garments with new proportions, unexpected volumes and innovative combinations of materials.
How did you choose the twelve pairings between designer and animal? Was it an intuitive match with each designer's visual language, or did you deliberately look for surprising connections?
It was a combination of both. We know each designer’s creative language very well, so in some cases the match with a particular animal felt almost natural. In other cases, we deliberately looked for unexpected connections, ones that would push the designers out of their comfort zone.
Our goal was never to create fashionable illustrations of animals, but to encourage each designer into a genuine dialogue with the animal they were given. It was precisely in the places where the connection wasn’t obvious that some of the most interesting work emerged.
If you had to choose one thing fashion could learn from animals, what would it be?
Purpose.
In nature, nothing exists merely as decoration. Every color, texture, movement or structure has a reason: protection, courtship, communication, survival, adaptation. The world of fashion sometimes separates beauty from function, while in nature the two always exist together.
That’s one of the central insights of the exhibition: the most meaningful design happens when aesthetics and purpose become one.
Placing contemporary fashion designers inside the Museum of Man and the Living also changes how we look at the scientific collection. Did you want fashion to “reactivate” the collection or to challenge it?
Both. Natural history museums preserve knowledge, while fashion constantly reinvents it. We wanted to create a dialogue between these two worlds, rather than keep them apart.
Fashion gives the scientific collection new life by inviting visitors to look beyond scientific definitions and discover emotion, symbolism and beauty in each animal. At the same time, the collection challenges the world of fashion to become more curious, deeper, more connected to the natural world.
Ultimately, Fashioning Animals isn’t only an exhibition about the animals that inspired fashion. It’s an exhibition about how fashion can change the way we look at nature — and perhaps also the way we look at ourselves.
Participating fashion designers: Yaron Minkowski, Kaye Long, Asaf Peran, Rotem Pinci, Aviad Arik Herman, Ravid Haken, Eden Ben Ami, Ada Hefetz, Itay Bar, Shai Mor, Meirav Peleg and Maor Zabar.
Photography: Ran Yehezkel
The exhibition “Animal Fashion” at The Museum of Man and the Living, will be on view until October 30 at Ahad Ha’Am St 10, Ramat Gan.
Opening hours:
Sunday–Thursday: 10:00–18:00
Friday: 10:00–14:00
Saturday: 10:00–18:00
Registration: https://adamvechai.org.il/shop
