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Fashion and Art
For at least two centuries, fashion and art have maintained a competitive love-hate relationship. Both fashion and art construct imaginary worlds, and use a language of style to invigorate beliefs, perceptions and ideas.
Until now the crossovers of fashion and art have received only scattered treatment and suffered from a dearth of theorization. As an attempt to theorize the area, this collection of new and updated essays is the most well-rounded and authoritative to date. Some of the world's foremost scholars in the field are assembled here to explore the art-fashion nexus in numerous from aesthetics and performance to masquerade and media.
Original and inspiring, this book will not only secure 'art-fashion' as a discrete area of study, but also suggest new critical pathways for exploring their continuing cross-pollination. Fashion and Art is essential reading for students and scholars of fashion, art history and theory, cultural studies and related fields.
Until now the crossovers of fashion and art have received only scattered treatment and suffered from a dearth of theorization. As an attempt to theorize the area, this collection of new and updated essays is the most well-rounded and authoritative to date. Some of the world's foremost scholars in the field are assembled here to explore the art-fashion nexus in numerous from aesthetics and performance to masquerade and media.
Original and inspiring, this book will not only secure 'art-fashion' as a discrete area of study, but also suggest new critical pathways for exploring their continuing cross-pollination. Fashion and Art is essential reading for students and scholars of fashion, art history and theory, cultural studies and related fields.
- GenresFashion
224 pages, Paperback
First published March 13, 2012
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
April 17, 2021
Fashion and Art: Critical Crossovers
p.1 – It was the direct relationship between the body and the creative expression that was to fascinate artists and draw them into the sphere of the couturier’s salon. As Adorno wrote in his Aesthetic Theory (1970), “great artists since Baudelaire were in conspiracy with fashion,” thereby establishing the emergence of fashion as part of the modernist project of the late nineteenth century.
p.6 – Fashion studies arose from three disciplines: anthropology, namely, ethnography and the study of dress as a marker of class, gender, and kinship; sociology, which was to branch off into the rather nebulous term cultural studies; and art history.
p.9 – In 2006, Cindy Sherman created a series of fashion advertisements for designer Marc Jacobs. Two years later, as creative director of Louis Vuitton, Jacobs would collaborate with Japanese artist Takashi Marakami on a handbag and accessories collection that recreated the famous Vuitton monogram in thirty-three colors, followed by the iconic LV cherry print, a cerise pattern and the self-explanatory monogramoflage.
1 – Fashion, by Valerie Steele, pp.13-27
p.14 – Many women made their own clothes at home, while men patronized tailors or bought ready-to-wear clothes. Within a few years, Worth had begun to transform both the structure and the image of what came to be known as the haute couture. Although couture involves more handwork than industrially produced fashion, the popular belief that a couture dress is a one-of-a-kind object, like a work of art, is much too simplistic. Worth’s innovation was to produce a series of predesigned models, which would be presented to clients, whether individual women, for whom the clothes would be adapted, or the developing made-to-order and ready-to-wear trade in department stores. Worth’s couture house ultimately became a big, international business with more than 1,000 workers.
p.17 – As a modernist, Chanel was committed to fashion as an aspect of contemporary life. By contrast, both Poiret and Schiaparelli saw fashion as a form of theater or performance – and hence, by extension, an art form. All of them, however, worked within a fashion system based in Paris and centered on the couture – and fashion has traditionally been taken more seriously as an art form in Paris than elsewhere.
p.18 – Designers such as Balenciaga, Dior, Madame Grès, Charles James, and Saint Laurent, in particular, were singled out by their peers as artists.
p.25 – Fashion is a cannibalistic business. It assimilates everything that is visually interesting – high art, graffiti, photography, even pornography. The contemporary art world sometimes draws on fashion, but usually on aspects that the fashion world would rather not address – like pathological consumerism, labelitis, and eating disorders.
8 – Boundaries: Using Cultural Theory to Unravel the Complex Relationship between Fashion and Art, by Diana Crane, pp.99-110
p.99 – “Fashion is not quite an art but requires an artist on order to exist.” (Yves Saint Laurent)
p.102 – Fashion designers use a number of strategies to challenge the traditional meanings of conventions of haute couture and luxury fashion design:
1. Use of conventional materials (Paco Raballe’s 1968 metal dress)
2. Transgression – violation of norms and conventions underlying couture clothing and Western clothing in general (Rei Kawakubo’s 1984 dresses with asymmetrical hems)
3. Subversion – satirizing norms and conventions underlying couture clothing (Jean-Paul Gaultier’s 1990 corset as outerwear)
4. Surrealism – creating unexpected and unconventional associations between different types of clothing or between clothing and other objects (Schiaparelli’s 1937 shoe hat)
5. Pastiche – combining styles from different periods (John Galliano’s 1992 Dior musketeer jacket and boots with a miniskirt)
p.1 – It was the direct relationship between the body and the creative expression that was to fascinate artists and draw them into the sphere of the couturier’s salon. As Adorno wrote in his Aesthetic Theory (1970), “great artists since Baudelaire were in conspiracy with fashion,” thereby establishing the emergence of fashion as part of the modernist project of the late nineteenth century.
p.6 – Fashion studies arose from three disciplines: anthropology, namely, ethnography and the study of dress as a marker of class, gender, and kinship; sociology, which was to branch off into the rather nebulous term cultural studies; and art history.
p.9 – In 2006, Cindy Sherman created a series of fashion advertisements for designer Marc Jacobs. Two years later, as creative director of Louis Vuitton, Jacobs would collaborate with Japanese artist Takashi Marakami on a handbag and accessories collection that recreated the famous Vuitton monogram in thirty-three colors, followed by the iconic LV cherry print, a cerise pattern and the self-explanatory monogramoflage.
1 – Fashion, by Valerie Steele, pp.13-27
p.14 – Many women made their own clothes at home, while men patronized tailors or bought ready-to-wear clothes. Within a few years, Worth had begun to transform both the structure and the image of what came to be known as the haute couture. Although couture involves more handwork than industrially produced fashion, the popular belief that a couture dress is a one-of-a-kind object, like a work of art, is much too simplistic. Worth’s innovation was to produce a series of predesigned models, which would be presented to clients, whether individual women, for whom the clothes would be adapted, or the developing made-to-order and ready-to-wear trade in department stores. Worth’s couture house ultimately became a big, international business with more than 1,000 workers.
p.17 – As a modernist, Chanel was committed to fashion as an aspect of contemporary life. By contrast, both Poiret and Schiaparelli saw fashion as a form of theater or performance – and hence, by extension, an art form. All of them, however, worked within a fashion system based in Paris and centered on the couture – and fashion has traditionally been taken more seriously as an art form in Paris than elsewhere.
p.18 – Designers such as Balenciaga, Dior, Madame Grès, Charles James, and Saint Laurent, in particular, were singled out by their peers as artists.
p.25 – Fashion is a cannibalistic business. It assimilates everything that is visually interesting – high art, graffiti, photography, even pornography. The contemporary art world sometimes draws on fashion, but usually on aspects that the fashion world would rather not address – like pathological consumerism, labelitis, and eating disorders.
8 – Boundaries: Using Cultural Theory to Unravel the Complex Relationship between Fashion and Art, by Diana Crane, pp.99-110
p.99 – “Fashion is not quite an art but requires an artist on order to exist.” (Yves Saint Laurent)
p.102 – Fashion designers use a number of strategies to challenge the traditional meanings of conventions of haute couture and luxury fashion design:
1. Use of conventional materials (Paco Raballe’s 1968 metal dress)
2. Transgression – violation of norms and conventions underlying couture clothing and Western clothing in general (Rei Kawakubo’s 1984 dresses with asymmetrical hems)
3. Subversion – satirizing norms and conventions underlying couture clothing (Jean-Paul Gaultier’s 1990 corset as outerwear)
4. Surrealism – creating unexpected and unconventional associations between different types of clothing or between clothing and other objects (Schiaparelli’s 1937 shoe hat)
5. Pastiche – combining styles from different periods (John Galliano’s 1992 Dior musketeer jacket and boots with a miniskirt)
February 6, 2017
Nice investigation of museum exhibitions that have dealt with fashion for a subject, great article by Valerie Steele (natch). All the theory and formalist reviews and history coalesce into a great primer for anyone itching to dive into the "is fashion art?" discussion.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews