Bananas are Cold, When They Come to the North

Are we not excited by the nakedness of fruits and vegetables? And are fruits and vegetables not naked, for when peeling them we are actually undressing them? These were the questions raised by Le Coco Fruitwear conceptual artistic action, in which clothes for fruit were offered to passers-by at Tromostovje in the centre of Ljubljana over a period of one week.
Vuk Ćosić, Matej Andraž Vogrinčič and friends, saw the fruit as naked, without the signals conveyed by garments. So they situated their tailoring stall next to a fruit and vegetable stand, and sold clothes. The fruit and vegetable vendors liked the supplementary offer provided by their neighbours, and gave them their first mannequins. Le Coco Fruitwear offered clothes tailored especially for fruits. Only the caps were reminiscent of human garments, and they suited almost every fruit, but the best models turned out to be bananas. Dresses became them perfectly, and as soon as they were dressed, the visitors to the stall did not want to see them naked any more. Even Matej Andraž Vogrinčič himself was surprised at how well some patterns, which otherwise would hardly be appropriate for garments, seemed to suit fruits. If clothes make the man, then they also make the fruit, or the vegetable. With these attractive clothes for fruits and vegetables, Le Coco Fruitwear wished to impart new associations to the people of Ljubljana. The sale of the clothes offered was quite successful, and thus it can be concluded that the buyers preferred their fruits to be dressed than naked. The nudity bothered them, though probably not because they found it exciting. On the contrary, the visitors to the stall were excited by a carrot dressed in lace - it reminded them of a penis. (Do Slovenes wear lace underwear?)
The artistic action by Vuk Ćosić, Matej Andraž Vogrinčič and friends, showed that the visitors to the stall were troubled by nudity, which is actually the absence of signals. At the moment when the fruits and vegetables were dressed, their natural covers - their peels - became their bodies, and buyers were even pleased by Le Coco Fruitwear’s offer to wrap the dressed fruits, even if it was only in the same paper previously used for wrapping fruits and vegetables. Thus the clothes did not represent merely an alternative form of packaging, but rather the definition of the individuality (and peculiarity) of fruits, and only the integrity thus composed then needed to be protected from harmful environmental influences. Only the dressed fruits became The Fruits, and even Le Coco Fruitwear’s offer to weigh them after dressing did not seem strange to the buyers, for character has its own body. In a not entirely serious manner, Le Coco Fruitwear thus demonstrated that art can add some character to the urban environment.

Lela B. Njatin
(translation B. C.)