Art of the XX century in the spring-summer collections
IN A CONSTANT WONDERZINE HEAD talks about trends from the podium that can be adapted for your wardrobe for the next six months. In this issue we deal with the brightest trend of the season - art, which appeared in the spring-summer collections of designers from Prada to Prabal Gurung.
How it all began
The ideas of the art world have always influenced the design of clothes and fabrics. In the 1920s, avant-garde and Fauvists, led by Henri Matisse, influenced fashion, which can be traced in the clothes of Paul Poiret. Madeleine Vionne was fond of cubism and used geometric shapes and lines in clothes, and the futurist artist Ernesto Tayat designed the logo for her house Vionnet. In the 30s came the passion for surrealism. Elsa Schiaparelli created buttons in the form of candies and peanuts and was friends with Salvador Dali and Jean Cocteau, showing the silk dress with lobsters, the jacket, which depicted a woman whose long hair ran down the sleeve and arms wrapped around the waist. These and other ideas will arise more than once in modern designers, including Russian (think of the collection of Alexander Terekhov Autumn-Winter - 2013).
The 50s and 60s became a time when fashion, music and art intertwined, and the emergence of color television completed the breakthrough of visual culture. At the same time, a culture of consumption, replication and a mass market have emerged - everything that has not lost its position so far. Young people poured into creative colleges and universities, and in London and New York it became fashionable to be a designer, photographer, model, graphic or fashion designer (and never ceased). Designers retrained to rock stars (for example, Pete Townsend from The Who or Keith Richards from The Rolling Stones), and artists created posters for concerts and album covers, as art appeared on every lamppost.
The names of pop art artists know everything: Richard Hamilton, Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol - they were the first to reflect consumer society and popular culture, depicting what interests people here and now (advertising, television, goods from stores). The father of pop art is considered to be the Briton Richard Hamilton, who created the very first and most famous collage "So what makes our homes today so different, so attractive?" in 1956. Roy Lichtenstein experimented with images of comics and cartoons. Andy Warhol, before becoming an artist, worked as an illustrator, it seems, in all the fashionable editorial offices in New York, got the right connections and gave the green light to the mix of genres. John Cale of Warhol's sponsored The Velvet Underground was married to fashion designer Betsy Johnson, who recently resumed clothing production at the age of 72. At that time, Betsy created funny T-shirts under the Youthquake label and worked in one of the main New York stores of the time - Paraphernalia on Madison Avenue, which collaborated with Edie Sedgwick and Warhol, who, in turn, painted paper for the store. mini dresses and shopper bags (disposable clothes came into fashion then).
It was during the heyday of pop art in the 60s that there was a need for cheap and fast design - the stores quickly responded to people's requests. For example, the Biba store on Abingdon Road updated its collections every week - this is a technique that is now successfully operating the mass market. Twiggy wrote: "Everything went out of fashion just as quickly as it came. However, it was only the modern that attracted, it pushed away everything old."
Ignoring pop art was impossible. Yves Saint Laurent invented in response knitted dresses with applications in the form of hearts, female profiles, as well as lips, which recently interpreted Edie Slimane. After the Saint-Laurent collection "Mondrian" in 1965, Stephen Willats created a similar dress "Changing Sheets", but only from new-fashioned vinyl. Pierre Cardin experimented with vinyl, and Roy Halston created dresses with Warhol's “Flowers” of 1964, which Miuccia Prada quoted in the 2013 spring-summer collection.
In the 1980s, artist Keith Haring, known for his pop art graffiti, will open the Pop Shop in New York, where he will sell T-shirts with his works. Vivienne Westwood will also work with Haring in the 80s in the Witches collection, where the Briton will reproduce the artist’s works with luminous colors, and today Haring’s works on T-shirts are applied by the Uniqlo brand, which also released a collaboration with the New York Museum of Modern Art. In 1991, pop art will once again prove itself: the Italian Gianni Versace will create a tight-fitting dress with a print of stencil acid faces Marilyn Monroe and James Dean, paying tribute to Andy Warhol. A complement to the incompatible colors of the dress will be a showgirl-style bustier, decorated with rhinestones and fabric applications. Young Naomi Campbell will appear in this dress, and Condé Nast President Nicholas Coleridge will note that the Versace client is not burdened with "high morality."
How to wear things inspired by art, now
Designers are not the first season to look at art, then putting on clothes prints, reproductions of famous artists (Bosch and Gauguin are often quoted here), then collaborating with contemporary artists. However, this season a noticeable emphasis was placed on pop art, although it didn’t do without Gauguin (we saw his reproductions at the Aquilano.Rimondi show and in the couture collection Maison Martin Margiela). With the 60s and pop art, modern fashion is related and the commercialization of fashion and art. The most striking manifestation of pop art was the Prada collection - Miuccia Prada rethought the work of contemporary and street artists: Pierre Morne, Jeanne Detallante, Stinkfish, Gabriel Spectra and others. In addition, several brands that produce elegant clutches have become popular: Sarah's Bag features works by Roy Lichtenstein, Yazbukey creates bright clutches in the form of a pack of cigarettes or toothpaste, the British Lulu Guinness - in the form of lips. Jean-Charles de Castelbajac, Jeremy Scott and Ashish on pop art, the dog ate: here you and Coca-Cola, and a print in the form of prevention on television.
In addition, Jeremy Scott, in the collection of the next season for Moschino, showing wrapper dresses, quotes the first things created for advertising in 1956, namely dresses and skirts of the midi Martini Label length, adorned fully with the brand logos worn by the first fans roll for free festival drinks. Christopher Kane creates skirts with a print in the form of replicated colors, recalling the work of the 60s. Raf Simons for Christian Dior uses the technique of pop art - logomania. Missoni is inspired by Japanese comics. Kenzo cites modern graphics and sketching with pencils. Prabal Gurung create Marilyn Monroe homage. Preen is applied to the dress abstraction.
Several brands were immediately inspired by abstract expressionism, primarily by the works of Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko. In the Chanel collection, Lagerfeld applied prints on clothes in the form of bright splashes of paint, and decorated the show space with 75 works of art with symbols of the Chanel house; paintings, sculptures and installations after the show were moved to the Grand Palais in Paris. Before leaving Jil Sander, Gilles Zander also included several bows with abstract prints in her latest monochrome spring-summer collection. Phoebe Failo has released the collection Сéline, it seems, to be matched by Fauvism and a big exhibition. "Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs, which goes to Tate Modern until September. Even Calvin Klein includes one bow with abstract prints.
As British designer Jonathan Anderson says, showing non-profit collections that critics have been thinking about for a long time: “For me, fashion has never been an art form. You cannot compare an artist and a designer. Both fashion and art are commercialized today.” The difference is that art does not fall on sales, but on the contrary, over the years it has been increasing in price, but a rare dress gets into the fashion museum.
BEWARE!
Small democratic brands have long loved to use art for commercial purposes, but they usually do it in a frontal way. Beware of dubious sweatshirts or bags with reproductions of Bosch, Van Gogh or a can of Campbell soup. If you are not ready to pay for the work of a great artist on an expensive skirt, it is better to choose things with abstract prints - there are such, for example, in the Zara collection. A good purchase will be a thing from a collaboration with contemporary artists. And remember the main thing - unusual things require careful operation: combine them with something minimalistic, and leave the hypertrophied eccentricity to Joan Aguzarova and Andrei Bartenev.
Photo: Tate Modern, Getty Images (4)