Fashion & Surrealism

by Richard Martin

The love affair between fashion and Surrealism began in the Paris of the 1920s when Surrealist artists plundered fashion's imagery for their art, raising fashion beyond the level of mere style to an important expression of culture. This text reveals the extravagent and ingenious creations resulting from this collaboration. It ranges from the shocking Surrealist dresses of Schiaparelli and Dali, and photographic experiments with Surrealist techniques by Horst P. Horst, Cecil Beaton and George Hoyningen-Huene to the work of younger fashion designers, including Olivier Guillemin and Vivienne Westwood, who have all brought Surrealist imagery into clothing and accessories.

Genres: Fashion, Art, Nonfiction

240 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1988

Reviews

[Kerfe]

A visual feast. Lavishly illustrated with both surrealist art (Magritte, Dali, Man Ray, de Chirico, Breton, Cocteau, Ernst) and artist-designer collaborations and inspirations, the borders between genres become very blurred.

Schiaparelli, the first and foremost practitioner of surrealist visionary dress design, worked frequently with artists, including Dali and Jean Cocteau. Surrealist artists took on fashion advertisements, Vogue covers, fashion shoots, and window displays in stores like Saks and Bonwit Teller. They designed jewelry, hats. and furniture.

And their obsessions with body parts, the transition between the real and the artificial, and the theatrical abstraction and ambiguity of forms and symbols are still strong influences for designers, magazines, photographers, and writers.

Fashion feeds on illusion after all.