It seems a few designers took a page from this book when it came to inspiration, this season.
Prabal Gurung's avant-garden dress was one of my faves this season.
Loved the graphic print and the ribbon of red.
I am really loving the angles of Kallol Dutta's perspective lately, too.
Berardi is no stranger to bold - and impeccable tailoring.
Urvashi Kaur had soft asymmetry all tied up.
Images: Vogue.com, Elle.com and WLIFW.
Shakespeare’s Ophelia:
O, what a noble mind is here o’erthrown!
The courtier’s, scholar’s, soldier’s, eye, tongue, sword,
Th’ expectancy and rose of the fair state,
The glass of fashion and the mould of form,
Th’ observ’d of all observers- quite, quite down!
And I, of ladies most deject and wretched,
That suck’d the honey of his music vows,
Now see that noble and most sovereign reason,
Like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh;
That unmatch’d form and feature of blown youth
Blasted with ecstasy. O, woe is me
T’ have seen what I have seen, see what I see!
-Hamlet, Act III, Scene I
Waterhouse’s Ophelia:
Ophelia by John William Waterhouse, 1889.
Vogue’s Ophelia:
Rooney Mara in Vogue, November 2011, photographed by Mert and Marcus.
Ophelia, through the brush of Sir John Everett Millais:
I must go and look at this 1852 version of Ophelia by Sir John Everett Millais at the Tate Britain, on each London visit.
Ophelia, through the lens of Mert and Marcus:
Mert and Marcus take Mara on a Pre-Raphaelite journey.
Inspiration never fades…
Image sources: Wikipedia, Vogue.com.
Much has been made recently of whether fashion can be construed as art.
The true answer is within your own eyes, my dears.
The eyes don’t disguise the heart’s sentiments.
Does your heart ask the same question or does it just react to what it is taking in?
While we are having a heart to heart, can I just say that what art is, also varies from art to art and from soul to soul.
Does it matter where art starts and where it ends?
What is clear in this muddle of semantics is that we are all, clearly, romantics - in love with the visual – in one form or another.
What is also clear: given the recent success of McQueen’s Savage Beauty show at the MET (and its planned second coming in London); given that Jean Paul Gaultier took back his words of showing his pieces in a museum by launching a living retrospective in Montreal recently (another show that will be moving on – this one, to Dallas, San Francisco, then Madrid); given the current exhibit at the Museum at FIT, featuring couture and other curiosities from the closet of Ms. Daphne Guinness; what is clear – is our obsession with the ongoing conversation of fashion.
This is an important time in the history of fashion. I’m not talking about revolutionary design – there is some of that – although, which of it filters through the sieve of time to be calculated as actually being revolutionary, it will be interesting to note. The revolution, if you haven’t already been told via tweet, blog, Facebook, txt or carrier pigeon, is because of social media.
We discussed this during Social Media Week Toronto in early 2010 – an annual week of events which I co-organize and co-curate, as part of my other life. In a session I curated, called Having @Style, Social Media and Seismic Shifts in Fashion, Alexandra Palmer, fashion curator at the Royal Ontario Museum talked about the technological shifts that fashion has experienced in history – including groundbreaking ‘apps’ such as the zipper and the button. While the audience looked perplexed as to what these things had to do with social media, I remember thinking that it was only just the beginning.
The fashion industry as we know it, has been completely overhauled with the advent of social media (as it was with the button and the zipper). Or, it is at least, in the process of overhauling, because of social media. It has disrupted, changed, altered-to-fit an otherwise comfortable garment on a straightforward runway. That runway is slippery now, and the heels, along with the stakes, are high.
We have heard of (and are Friends with) designers that would have remained nameless. We have seen style, globalized and Follow that cool kid in Tokyo, along with the luxury label on Bond Street with equal affection – our bonds with both are boundless. We have fashion companies who now need to be media companies. We have media companies that have become fashion empires, and alas, household names from suburbia to the world’s lesser-known fashion capitals. We have millions of new, international fashion enthusiasts – we have consumers of fashion information, not just consumers of fashion products. We have a thousand icons to go with our thousand Followers (who, incidentally, also have icons).
With this consumption habit, there is a new rock star in town: the fashion curator. So, is it any wonder that I will be attending three information ‘rock concerts’ in a span of as many weeks?
The first – is put on by the Museum at FIT in New York, in the form of their annual symposium. This year, the topic is Fashion Icons and Insiders. The agenda includes discussions by The Honorable Daphne Guinness, in conversation with Dr. Valerie Steele, curator at the Museum at FIT. Both women co-curated the current show. Dr. Caroline Weber will discuss fashion icons from Marie Antoinette to Ms. Guinness, and other talks will cover everything from Italian fashion icons to vampire dandies. To me, this is better than being able to sit front row at any current fashion show. I’ll have full coverage of the symposium (which is to be held in early November), after the event.
Ms. Guinness and Dr. Steele strike a pose at the opening reception for the exhibition. Photo by Patrick McMullan.
The Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto will also be hosting a talk with Harold Koda, Curator in Charge at The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute. Koda, who has co-written 19 books and organized a dozen exhibitions at the MET will be speaking for the first time in Toronto, on The Arrangement: Fashion and the Art Museum.
Harold Koda
Staying in Toronto, but going Otherworldly, there is a talk at TIFF by Oscar-nominated costume designer Monique Prudhomme, who will talk about creating costumes that translate elements from contemporary and vintage fashion, alike in The Reality of Fantasy. It’s part of the programming for the Otherworldly: The Art of Canadian Costume Design exhibit at the TIFF Lightbox, which also includes a guided tour by Sylvia Frank, Director of TIFF’s Film Reference Library, who curated the show.
Lily Cole in The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, in a costume by Prudhomme.
Curator is a word I have always related to. While it has become a buzzword du jour, it still has meaning for me. I have always respected the work of curators and try to do some of that in this space. I think the role of curators is even more poignant now – to help us decipher the bits, the bytes, the jeggings, the tights, the wrong, the right, the worthy and the slight.
Look for a curation of the ideas presented at these events, in duration, in this fashion playground.
Images (in order): by Patrick McMullan, courtesy of the Museum at FIT; Koda, courtesy of the Bata Shoe Museum; film still, courtesy of Clothes on Film.
Burberry checks? Check.
A Burberry women's coat for FW11.
Lumberjack track? Check.
Glam lumberjacks in their lumberjackets, at the Burberry FW11 menswear show.
Expressionist impressions? Check.
Portrait of the Journalist Sylvia von Harden, 1926 by German Expressionist painter, Otto Dix.
See other posts on Fashion and Art.
See more Otto Dix.
See more Burberry.
Top two images courtesy of Burberry. Otto Dix image courtesy of Wikipedia.
The Fall campaigns are hitting my consciousness, despite the sultry August heat.
It’s at this time of year – when the Fall looks we saw months ago actually begin to relate to our own fashion reality. You start to think about how that shade of green would look with your charcoal pants from last season, how the width of the new pants (which are really the old pants you loved) will work with your vintage cashmere cropped sweater…
As you sit amongst air conditioning and feed yourself frozen treats (my current obsession is freezing everything in sight), you can imagine wearing cozy things. You can imagine the surreality of Fall fashion – that far-fetched season only a chilled breeze or two away, really.
Never a brand to shy from the surreal, the FW11 campaign from Alexander McQueen, shot by David Sims plays on Magritte’s clouds, darkens them ever so and then adds the light of Sarah Burton’s designs for the season to illuminate just whom we might want to be in a few weeks time.
Raquel Zimmermann shouldered the tough conditions for the shoot. Note the rock solid heels.
A ray of sun amongst the rainbow clouds.
Little goth riding hood.
Sea of clouds. See clearly.
Looking in. From within.
I told you, all bets were off come August. I’ve started to fall…
Images courtesy of Alexander McQueen.
The Motherland is a study in stark contrasts.
It is often colourful.
Old Bollywood.
It is sometimes black and white.
I can get lost in the positive impact of the negative space in this image.
It is as rich in its poverty as it is in its wealth.
Stark-itecture.
It is well adorned in its history of embellishment.
Pomp and circumstance, exemplified.
It has always conversed with its lush past and argued with its glitzy future.
Where does one look first: at the flawless finger waves, the anticipated movement and imagined clink of those bangles, or within the soul of that child's eyes? There are so many gleaming gems captured here.
This surreality is exemplified in a new exhibit at Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum entitled, Embellished Reality: Indian Painted Photographs, which opens today.
The 60 works from the ROM’s own collection, dating from the 1860s to the Noughties, take what was a relatively new technology at their inception – photography – and blend it with an intricate tradition of painting.
The images depict notable figures, travelling through the markers that a well-lived life brings: marriage, coronation, pilgrimage, travel and status.
A royal couple from another era.
The enhancement of black and white photos with colour is not unique to India. What is unique, however, is the way in which paint was used in the embellishment of these photographs. Sometimes, it is hard to see the photograph through the paint that covers it. The ornamentation, the technique does not speak with an ordinary vocabulary. It speaks poetry.
Speaking to an intimate group prior to the exhibition’s opening, the ROM’s Curator of South Asian Visual Culture, Dr. Deepali Dewan explained that the paint was used to elevate the figure depicted within the photographs, to represent them as a higher being, beyond their reality.
These photographs were meant to embellish their worldly self, and make them other-worldly.
Lost in another world...
The exhibit runs through March, 2012. It will significantly enhance your own visual reality.
Drop by the South Asian gallery while you are there – the ROM has 6,000 South Asian artifacts, spanning 5,000 years – a portion of which can be found in the gallery.
All images courtesy of the Royal Ontario Museum.
When I was at the AGO recently, taking in the last bit of Maharajas and their many baubles, I had a déjà vu of a déjà vu.
When I first visited the exhibition in the Fall, I had seen this wonderful western-style portrait in oil paint, of an elaborately adorned Sadiq Muhammad Abbasi.
Sadiq Muhammad Abbasi IV of Bahawalpur, around 1880.
I couldn’t help but think of another prince when I saw it – a Bachchan. Mumbai nobility.
Abhishek Bachchan in character, and in similar embellishment.
Take another glance…
A stare to remember...
...and a stare to recall
Is it chance that brought us from Bahawalpur to Bombay?
I dare say it was a visual dance – a romance – of adornment.
Images of portrait courtesy of Victoria & Albert Museum. Bachchan images courtesy of Wikipedia.
That blue is back again.
You know the one – you wore it years ago, for that pop of colour – back when pop music was heard on the spirit of radio?
I opted for electric blue when fluorescent colours were all the rage back then. It was under the radar, over ultra-glow, neon yellows, pinks, oranges and greens. I had electric blue socks and an over-sized, handknit mohair cardi in the same hue. I always wore it with black.
Call it brilliant blue, electric blue, cerulean, azure or phthalo - it’s back with a vibrant vengeance.
I’ve been collecting these images for several seasons now. At first, there were random outbursts of colour…but collections for Spring and Fall 2011 are saturated in blue notes – from couture to common, everyday fashion.
These are not your mother’s blues, my dears. These are make-an-entrance, knock-em-dead outfits that will have reds blushing.
Pimp and Circums-dance: Gucci's decked out '70s disco ladies for FW11. Love the deep red, glossy lip as a contrast to the blue - a new view for my eyes.
Look what the wind blue in – can you imagine these next two on a breezy day? (Note, I didn’t say windy – a subtle breeze is all we want.)
You'd be nothing short of electrifying in this pant/gown combination from Stéphane Rolland, from his Fall 2010 Couture collection. Je need.
Fringin' Fabulous: Emily Blunt, wearing Tom Ford SS11 in the January 2011 issue of Harper's Bazaar UK.
Or you can create your own movement and express yourself…
Debbie Harry spins circles in electric blue in Blondie's Call Me video, 1980.
…the Expressionists certainly did.
Five Women in the Street by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, 1913.
This Christian Siriano ruffled dress from FW10 belongs in a painting, no?
Whether in a painting or at a dance, these rich shades and fabrics will have you panting for more.
1950s dance dress from Shrimpton Couture - you make me feel like dancing, I wanna dance the night away...
The shades from season to season vary slightly, but there is a boldness in each blue.
What a tangled blue web we weave - Gaultier Spring 2010 Couture.
Mabille showed a split personality for his Spring 2010 Couture show - part of which was blue.
I was obsessed with phthalo blue in my art school years – it had a depth and transparency all at once. Currently, I am obsessed with this gorgeous gown from Bibhu Mohapatra, which to me, exhibits the same qualities – it’s just frothy enough and yet solid in that impeccable neckline and romantic in that empire waistline. I would love to wear this to an art opening, to bring the phthalo full circle.
Frothy, without the frou at Bibhu Mohapatra, SS11.
Even if it’s a darker blue like navy or midnight, it’s a change from the LBD for evening.
Sweetheart, I'm yours - Armani Cruise 2011.
Wayne Clark - a true blue Canadian couturier - did this perfect layered dress in the '80s. This one is sold on Shrimpton Couture - sorry darlings.
It’s also a great way to add a little flair to your day.
Blue-accented grey, tailored glen plaid gets a soft, billowy blue jacket at Pringle, FW11.
The opposite sich at Stella SS10 - a crisp jacket covers looser pants.
I love how the suit has returned, but in what I call Suit 2.0 – the more social, interactive suit – it allows a girl to move. This shade will also make you stand out in the corporate hierarchy.
Slant twist on a classic blue suit at Costume National SS11.
And quite frankly, also at fashion fêtes the world over – because everyone else will be wearing buh-lack.
It looks just as great in "real life" - front-row-seaters Stafania Rocca and Fabio Novembre at the Costume show.
Imagine this on a dreary and rainy day.
Military or Mod? A coat from the Burberry FW10 show.
In this Rachel Roy, you can slink just about anywhere…but might need your own soundtrack to accompany you.
Rachel Roy shows how sexy a suit can be - from her SS10 collection.
You can toy with your multiple personalities.
Viktor and Rolf - always playing around with how to present their clothes. This suit comes in life-size versions, aussi.
The men can play this game, too.
A colour-blocked coat at Dries Menswear FW11.
Jonathan Saunders had a similar thought - only he was seeing double blue for FW11.
Flirt with as much – or as little colour as you can handle. And be sure to coordinate it with your landscape du jour.
I loved this image by Garance Doré, taken on Ipanema Beach last summer – the play of sunlight, the Louboutin sole against the patent blue, against the straw and sand.
It perfectly captures the energy of Rio as I imagine it to be. “Tall and tan and young and lovely…the girl from Ipanema goes walking and when she passes, each one she passes goes Ahhhhh…”
They know how to do colour on Ipanema Beach. Not sure which I love more in this photo by Garance Doré.
You might have to change your tune and give a nod to Mod with these on.
1960s Carnaby Street strutters, according to Pierre Cardin - part of the Bata Shoe Museum collection. I photographed these on a visit last Spring.
And really, could a post like this be complete without a couple of pairs of Blue Suede Shoes?
Strapped and ready to stroll. Hermès SS10 sandals.
Punk prancers by YSL for FW10.
My head is now exploding with musical references from punk days (mohawk heels, anyone?) to the glitz and groove of glam rock. Perfect boots to Do the Strand in?
These Givenchy Spring 2010 Couture boots are not only glam, they are glam rock, baby.
These had me taking steps a few hundred years back.
Velvet crush: Alberta Ferretti goes medieval mod for FW11.
If you can’t walk a mile in those shoes, perhaps you can add a not so subtle bauble to your otherwise neutral ensemble?
This Rado Blue Fascination Jubilé timekeeper has an 18K gold bracelet with 206 diamonds, a scratch-resistant sapphire crystal face and hi-tech ceramic bracelet. Did your heart just skip a beat or few? It will set you back a cool 40K at Birks.
Oh, and let me borrow it? My cost per wear would be sky-high, since I only dabble in colour on occasion.
Keep Feeling Fascination: Rado's Blue Fascination watch.
So, really, this colour has you covered.
Peek-a-blue: I see you. JPG Spring 2010 Couture millinery at its finest.
It may be a cool tone, but its intensity will have you energized.
Clearly, I am taken with this Gucci topper - I'll add it to the list.
The trick to looking chic: a turquoise Treacy. Top marks.
It will leave you – electrified.
We're gonna rock down to Electric Avenue. Armani Privé Spring 2011.
I’ll have the remaining blue-hued images for you in part deux (yes, there are more if you can believe it).
Image Sources: 1. Vogue.com; 2. Elle.com; 3. Harper’s Bazaar UK; 4. You Tube; 5. Stegosauro; 6. NY Post; 7. Shrimpton Couture; 8, 9. Style.com; 10. Courtesy of Bibhu Mohapatra; 11. Style.com; 12. Shrimpton Couture; 13. Vogue.com; 14. WWD; 15. Elle.com; 16. Courtesy of Costume National; 17. Getty Images; 18. Style.com; 19. Courtesy of Viktor and Rolf; 20. Style.com; 21. Vogue.com; 22. Garance Dore; 23. Pierre Cardin Shoes at the Bata photographed by Me; 24-26 Style.com; 27. Vogue.com; 28. Courtesy of Rado; 29. Style.com; 30. Vogue.com; 31. Luxury Emporium; 32. Vogue.com.
Toronto, your Maharaja moment is almost up.
Patiala saab - everyone’s favourite royal mac daddy – is packing up his precious wares and leaving his residence of the past few months – the AGO.
The mac daddy Maharaja. I'll miss the large posters of his likeness amongst the Gehry curves.
The (in)famous Patiala necklace, made by Cartier in 1928, and worn by the above gentleman's successor. Those Burmese rubies are like the glowing red eyes of a black panther.
If you haven’t managed to pop by his place for tea, then you really must visit. Where else can you find colossal carats and kaam-valla (embroidered) kurtas amongst Beaton and Man Ray masterpieces?
I walked through the exhibit again late last week, after attending the opening party back in the Fall. I had forgotten the sublime hue of the Rolls, the perfect paisleys of my favourite necklace, the dull sheen of the silver thread in a true maharani’s sari.
A mangalmai - or mango shaped necklace for a woman, 1700-1800, South India. Mai mai, indeed.**
I loved the metallic thread saris of the time - they were very simple but spoke volumes. These two are from the collection of Molly of Pudukkottai - an Aussie who married the Raj of the region, and later lived on couture (and croissants?) in the South of France once her hubby abdicated the throne and gained a fortune. **
Net worth: a detail of a sari that would have been worn for a more formal occasion.**
I had forgotten art, and had gotten caught in the trap of everyday routine. And in a second or two, I was wrapped in lush velvet.
Detail of an embroidered velvet jacket...**
...as worn by Sadiq Muhammad Abbai IV of Bahawalpur, around 1880.
I was lost in the misty photograph of Indira Devi by Dorothy Wilding.
The poetic portrait of Indira Devi of Cooch Behar taken in 1928 - one of my favourite images from the period.
I was admiring the tailoring of the tails that Maharaja Yeshwant Rao of Indore wore in his Western dress painted portrait (he had another done in traditional garb but that portrait didn’t make it overseas as part of this show).
A man ahead of his time - a dandy-fied Yeshwant Rao - a true patron of the avant-garde in all its forms.
I was dreaming of sitting at that perfect Art Deco desk, listening to the jazz of another era. The era that created it.
Where the big thinking happened - Rao's Deco desk**
I also attended a lecture that same evening, by one of the original curators of Maharaja: The Splendour of India’s Royal Courts, which was first shown at the Victoria and Albert Museum (a building I could linger in for hours) before coming to Toronto. Dr. Amin Jaffer, Director of Asian Art at Christie’s in London, had some fascinating tales of the maharajas and their luxury habits and I’ll share some of those stories in future posts – because, now of course, I need to know more…
In the meantime, get thee to the AGO before April 3rd, get lost in luscious luxury for an afternoon, and be dazzled…
Who needs shoes when you can prance aroung the palace with these ankle bracelets?**
The Rolls was one mode of transportation. A silver carriage was another. As in solid silver.**
…before it rolls back into the various vaults and vistas beyond.
Silver carriage by the Fort Coach Factory Bombay (Mumbai), 1915.**
Images: All photos marked with ** are by moi. Bhupinder Singh image courtesy of AGO; Rao portrait image detail courtesy of thedogster; Indira Devi image via The National Portrait Gallery, London; all others courtesy of the V&A Museum, London.
Erdem Moralioglu is an expressionist, impressing us with his imprint on fashion over the past few seasons.
The Ryerson grad has gradually won this un-printed girl’s heart over with his patterns and colours.
Seeing his latest collection for FW11, I couldn’t help but think…if Monet and Van Gogh joined forces and painted silk and velvet canvases today…
…the results would look a little something like this…
The delight is in the details - Erdem's painted trench coat for FW11.
You really have to get your hands covered in paint and feel the canvas.
I have a crush on this velvet splatter.
A painterly party frock.
Like wearing a masterpiece.
As with any fine painting, you must get up close to see the brushstrokes!
Exshoesme, but do these elevators come in my size?
Whether it’s Impressionism, Post-Impressionism or a blur into Expressionism…Erdem’s penchant for painted masterpieces is evident.
Each hem, each sleeve is a brushstroke on this artist’s very human canvas.
All images courtesy of Vogue.com.
Art and fashion often intersect. Sometimes, as I flip through images in my fashion life, my art life calls out.
An image in front of your eyes recalls another, filed in the microfiche of your mind.
Like a scrolling blue-violet and white blur, it goes forward, then back, up, down, until it settles and you remember where you had seen something similar.
This Leonardo was recalled…
La Belle Ferronière by Leonardo da Vinci
…when I saw this mag cover…
Georgina Stojiljkovic by Jean-François Campos, Flair December 2010
There is a stoic softness to the face in both images.
da Vinci detail
But the colouring of the portrait and length of the nose is from another da Vinci masterpiece.
Leonardo da Vinci's The Virgin and Child with St. Anne
Look at St. Anne’s face closely and look at the soft blue eyes of The Virgin.
da Vinci's heavenly women.
Same eyes and nose to my eyes.
Art, in any form, is so powerful, isn’t it? Once it makes an imprint, it’s not likely to leave you…
“As for your loving me, you don’t, not really.
You don’t. It’s only as something else.
As something you own. A painting, a Leonardo.
I don’t want to be a Leonardo,
I want to be myself.”
-Lucy, to Cecil in Merchant Ivory’s Room With A View
When I saw the cover of the June issue of Vanity Fair, Spain, I had another déjà vu.
Salma, amongst jewel tones on the cover of Vanity Fair Spain, June 2010.
It reminded me so much of a favourite photo of Frida Kahlo that has graced my bookshelf for years.
Frida watches over me as I type this.
Frida, Coyoacán, 1939. Photographed by Nickolas Muray.
Given Ms. Hayek’s obsession with all things Frida, this is no coincidence.
The same hues of turquoise and fuchsia appear in both images, albeit reversed. The constant dance between head and heart are suggested with each woman’s hand placement. While Salma wears a modern dress vs. Ms. Kahlo’s traditional Mexican robes, the drapery is echoed and the rosettes in Kahlo’s hair show up around Hayek’s neckline.
And the parrot? An homage to another one of Frida’s famous paintings…
Me and My Parrots by Frida Kahlo 1941
Vibrant.
Frida painting from About.com. VF cover courtesy of magxone. Postcard image by Nickolas Muray, scanned by me.
One of my readers (hope you are reading this, Mr. Z) asked for more posts about fashion and art inspiration. This one just clicked as soon as I saw the images.
The previous post included a series of photos of Ragnhild Jevne by Marcus Ohlsson for the April issue of Velvet Magazine. Shot in a sandy landscape, it did remind me of the Byron poem I referenced, but it also pulled up a familiar image in my mind’s database.
Compare a photo from the shoot…
Ragnhild Jevne photographed by Marcus Ohlsson for Velvet, April 2010
…with this painting by Dali. I bought the print a few years ago in Paris.
Female Figure with Head of Flowers by Salvador Dali, 1936
The composition is amazingly similar – the female figure in the foreground, a shadowy figure in the background amid a desert landscape. The afro wig in the current image reflects Dali’s head of flowers and the trail of fabric sings the same way in both.
The McQueen shoes in the photograph (from SS10) were labelled misogynistic – a major theme in surrealist art. Dali’s depictions of women do vary. The head of flowers moved me when I saw the original painting in Espace Dali Montmartre – with the moustached man (not so sublte, Mr. Dali!) at her mercy. This one seems to reverse roles from the usual commentary in surrealist art. I could look at that head of flowers for hours.
The gesture in another photo echoes the perfume bottle and box that Dali designed for Daliflor.
The Catalan painter and history-maker also created these landscapes – with butterflies.
Landscape with Butterflies by Salvador Dali
Dali dabbled in butterflies, but for a painting or few.
Notice the couture-clad woman in the last one. Well, the combination of the butterlies and fashion reminds me of a recent example of circling butterflies by Mr. McQueen, who was heavily influenced by art in its various forms for so many of his collections.
Amongst butterflies, at McQueen's SS 2008 collection.
The tilt of the torso in the runway shot brings me back to the same Dali flowered woman. Note the grey dress, cut to accent the shape of the body, similar to the figure in the painting.
You could say both Dali and McQueen had a head for details. They are probably having tea and discussing such divine details in the universe beyond, as we speak!
So there you have it – photographs that likely had their roots in painting which then fed fashion.
Art lives and breathes in so many iterations – it’s a circle of influence, completed and continuous.
See other art meets fashion meets art posts:
Déjà Vu: Zaha Hadid vs. Zaha Hadid
Déjà Vu: JPG vs. Marcel Duchamp
[Update May 17: forgot one] Inspiration: German Expressionism for Fall 09?
[Update April, 2011: Check the Fashion and Art History category for the latest posts.]
Art sometimes flirts with fashion.
Fashion, however, is often more overt in her advances towards art.
Such was the case with these Prada heels from FW08.
I had saved this image for my archives ages ago, but couldn’t think of why I was so obsessed with these shoes.
Unique Forms of Leather in Milan, Prada FW08.
I don’t generally prefer Prada or have a soft spot for chunky, clunky shoes.
Then I realized that they emulate one of my favourite pieces of sculpture – futurist Umberto Boccioni’s Unique Forms of Continuity in Space.
Unique Forms of Continuity in Space by Boccioni. Movement, mastered.
The dynamic flow of movement is captured in both objects so eloquently.
The Boccioni satiates my soul, however, like only art can.
Prada image courtesy of style.com. Boccioni image source.
One turn, or in this case, curve of genius deserves another.
Playing on a curve at Alexander McQueen FW09
When I saw this look from Alexander McQueen’s Fall 09 collection last year, I couldn’t help but think that it reminded me of the work of another man who likes to play with curves – Frank Gehry.
Hotel Marques de Riscal, Spain by Gehry
Gehry's Wiggle Chair
McQueen, who shaped and drew and cut fabric as his artist’s material of choice, cannot be replaced in this life.
His works may not have the physical solidity of a building or structure, but they will certainly be housed in museums for thousands of years to come – maybe even those museums designed by Mr. Gehry.
McQueen image courtesy of NYMag. Gehry buidling photo source. Chair photo source.
