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Selected free content on fashion and art.
Whilst fashion and art have always been intertwined, they are often reluctant siblings, apt to squabble. Fashion can inject ‘coolness’ and ‘relevance’ into antiquated art pieces or institutions, whilst incorporating artistic techniques and practices can serve to dilute the sometimes glaring commerciality of fashion.
The Louvre, arguably the epicentre of the Western art world, is currently holding its first exhibition dedicated to fashion, with the museum’s president remarking: “It’s very important for the Louvre to continue to open itself up to new generations and to make its own small contribution to understanding today’s world” (CNN: 2025). Fashion and art sharing a canvas enriches both, with the fusion paving a way for future genres and directions.
Fashion and Art
. Portrait paintings are invaluable resources for dress historians, informing dress and societal conventions. Gilhong Min notes that the genre paintings from 1800 to 1820 by Shin Yunbok (신윤복 申潤福, 1758–?) facilitate studying traditional dresses and cultural activities. For example, the shorter length top (jeogori), narrow sleeves, voluminous wigs (gachae 가체), and longer, larger skirts mark a key trend shift in the early 1800s.
It is also important to consider what artworks ‘paint’ over. Susan Hiner traces the formidable work of fashion illustrators Héloïse Leloir (1819–1873) and Anaïs Toudouze (1822–1899), and surmises: “fashion illustration would be dominated by the Colin sisters, who were... mostly invisible in the world of official art”. Although marginalized by the male-dominated art world, their etchings and watercolours, which captured the shade, shadow and texture of clothing, were instrumental in drawing middle-class women into shops.
The gauzy fabrics of a painting come to life in the Bloomsbury Historical Dress and Detail video, examining the clothing worn by Dido Elizabeth Belle and Lady Elizabeth Murray (subscription-only) in their joint portrait by David Martin. Artistic fabrications, for maximum aesthetic and cultural impact, are also noted.
Clothes are the embellishments of portraiture language, conveying meaning regarding both the sitter and the artist. Shari Sims observes that the Paris Salon of 1884 could not cope with the implications of the naked shoulder of Virginie Amélie Avegno (wife of the Parisian banker Pierre Gautreau) in the infamous Madame X (John Singer Sargent). Societal expectations of ‘respectable’ womanhood led to Sargent repainting the strap to appear secure. This later inspired the Cuban-American fashion designer Luis Estévez to create a black dress based on the famous portrait, modelled by society icon Dina Merrill in the January 11, 1960 edition of Life magazine. Art uses fashion to evoke, and often that which is evoked becomes fashion itself.
Wearable Art
The lines between fashion and art are faint sketches: as Peter McNeil notes, many artists saw dress as an integral part of their work, including Gustav Klimt.
Bonnie English and Nazanin Hedayat Munroe assert that fashion is never created in a vacuum – it takes inspiration from the art world, transforming art into clothing, which is then incorporated into new art forms. Designers have long been influenced by the sculptures and artefacts of Hellenistic Greece and Ancient Rome. In 1912, French Designer Madeleine Vionnet, inspired by exhibitions at the Louvre and other venues, was the first known couturière to cut whole garments on the bias in Grecian style. Adopted by Hollywood, stars including Jean Harlow and Marlene Dietrich were swiftly pictured in bias-cut gowns.
In New Zealand, Natalie Smith traces The New Zealand Wearable Art Awards, which aim to take art “off the wall and out of static display”. Myles Ethan Lascity, drawing on the research of Angela McRobbie, notes that conceptual fashion – fashion that is intended to be creative rather than commercial — is a key way that fashion moves into the realm of art, as well as by creating a pastiche of art aesthetics within garment collections.
Displaying Fashion as Art
Whether fashion designers are artists who create art is a long-threaded debate. Claim to the ‘artist’ title can be made through adopting artistic techniques in runway design. Marissa Lindquist unravels how Yohji Yamamoto, Prada and Marc Jacobs employ staging techniques in their shows that evoke the works of artists from the Primary Structure exhibition, such as Dan Flavin and Michael Heizer. This 1966 exhibition focused on the properties of materials, and immaterial matter in and of themselves, displaying geometric architectonic forms.
Adam Geczy and Vicki Karaminas examine fashion as a form of Gesamtkunstwerk (“total work of art”), with performance, image, space and sound coalescing. Crediting Alexander McQueen for pioneering this artification in fashion, each art garment has its own effect, but in the better interests of the “Gesamt,” their impetus accelerates as a collective. Voss (S/S01), an extreme McQueen performance art runway (subscription-only), may be watched on the Bloomsbury Fashion Video Archive. A mirrored box lingers on the runway, reflecting the audience, in a sequence now widely accepted as commentary on the vanity of the fashion world. With a now ruffled audience, the box illuminates, revealing models observing their own movements through the two-way mirror.
Fashion can also achieve art status through collaboration. McQueen frequently partnered with artists to produce his moving canvases: his ‘The Hunger’ collection (S/S96) (subscription-only) incorporated a clear acrylic bodice with blood-like red ink, by sculptor Emily Ticehurst.
Ingrid E. Mida argues the ‘Mondrian’ dresses by French designer Yves Saint Laurent potentially transform the wearer into a walking readymade, the garment fulfilling the requisites of this art form. Arguing that museum display enhances the thingness of fashion, she suggests that museum spaces and rituals sensitize us to experience art and fashion differently.
Fashion is an industry with business imperatives, but possesses the potential to bring art to daily life.
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