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 Lauren Invasion What's behind Ralph's move into Europe?
07/29/2002
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TIME for Fashion The art — and business — of fashion
04/2002
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Clothes
That Say It All
Europe's first intelligent garments aren't cheap Jan.
7, 2001
Battle
of the Boring
Haute couture's old guard holds sway. Who cares? Jul.
23, 2001
Belgium's
Fashion Fete
Antwerp throws a $5 million party Jul. 2, 2001
Made
to Measure
Popular Spanish fashion group Inditex targets a new market May.
14, 2001
Putting
Sparks in Marks
British fashion brand M&S loses touch Apr. 15,
2001
Clothes
Vs. Fashion
Should it be art or commerce? Apr. 5, 2001
In
the Bag
Gucci's acquisitions create a stable of haute labels Apr.
2, 2001
With
Family Like This...
The strange tale of the Gucci dynasty Apr. 2, 2001
Born-Again
Christians
Is there room in the house of Dior for two designers? Feb.
12, 2001
Frock
Wars
If sales are an afterthought, how do you know who wins Feb.
5, 2001
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Polo.com
Ralph Lauren's online fashion and home design store
fashion.net
Features a fashion-specific search engine, news, message boards, chat, job listings
fashionwiredaily
Fashion news-wire, updated daily. Requires free registration.
The Fashion Page
Viewpoint on fashion styles, and trends, by Lynda Stretton |
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ELLEN LABENSKI/SOLOMON R. GUGGENHEIM FOUNDATION, NEW YORK
CONTROVERSY: A 1998 Guggenheim exhibition drew attention to the beauty of Giorgio Armani's work as well as his $15 million gift to the museum.
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A growing club of crossover artists can attest to fashion's differing demands. There's painter Gary Hume, who has collaborated with Stella McCartney on prints and limited- edition T shirts. There's illustrator Tanya Ling, whose own husband describes her eponymous fashion line as "museum chic." There's installation artist Jessica Ogden, who said her artwork "didn't promise to make me a living, so more and more I switched my artistic sense into fashion" and now designs for the French label APC.
And there's Julie Verhoeven. Marc Jacobs commissioned her to do some fanciful sketches for Louis Vuitton's Spring- Summer 2002 handbags. Then Italian fashion firm Gibo asked her to design a ready-to-wear collection for Spring- Summer 2003. To Verhoeven, who used to work for John Galliano and Martine Sitbon but says drawing is her "main passion," art and fashion are near-opposites. "Art is complete self-indulgence. You have no consideration for anyone else," she says. "Fashion is different. You can't be completely ridiculous. If you did that with your clothes, the business would go under."
To bring art and fashion together, whether in one person, as Verhoeven is experiencing, or in a show, as the Florence Biennale has done and as a number of other curators and institutions will be doing in coming months, generates dialogue, stirs interest and produces creative tension. For fashion, art is currently creative sandpaper. "Any sort of friction like that is good," says Verhoeven. "You don't want either camp to sit too comfortably or smugly in their fields."
With the exhibitions on tap, that's not likely. First up is "Rapture: Art's Seduction by Fashion," which opens at London's Barbican Gallery on Oct. 10. The show, curated by Chris Townsend of the University of London, looks at how fashion-world figures — designers, photographers, models — have appeared in and influenced art — images, iconography, society — since 1970. (For the hard core and those with a tolerance for academic-artsy jargon, there's an accompanying book, published by Thames & Hudson.) In January, Belgian designer Raf Simons takes a shot at the subject, curating an as-yet-untitled fashion-and-art show in Florence that focuses on youth and adolescence. And the new Mode Museum (MoMu) in Antwerp is planning an exhibition for Spring 2003 to explore the relationship between garments and the body, in both two dimensions (art) and three (fashion). Loppa, MoMu's director, says she'll work with an as-yet-unnamed artist on the show, which takes advantage of the current ethos. "The history of fashion is common knowledge," she says. "We're looking for new visions."
Look at the meeting point between art and fashion, and you'll certainly find new visions. We're not talking about how successful fashion entrepreneurs turn themselves into something more, at least in their own minds, as Armani did when he said in 1998 that his work could "stand alongside the work of the most influential artists of the 20th century." Or how some fashion folk become art collectors, though Versace did buy Warhols and Lichtensteins, and Tom Ford waxed lyrical in I-D magazine about his Ellsworth Kelly, saying, "To create that is so difficult. I don't know I have the soul for it." No, if you need real proof of the recent "special" relations between fashion and art, look to their love children: fashion-art photographers. You've heard the names: Wolfgang Tillmans, Jessica Craig-Martin, maybe even Tracey Emin, who has that much-displayed grainy Polaroid shot of herself with Kate Moss. (We never said the standards were high.) "Art is art, and fashion is fashion," says Ingrid Sischy. "But fashion is a visual language with the kind of history and identity that art has. Fashion too deals with issues." Indeed. Both like to look at the world and each other, but, as the work of fashion-art photographers demonstrates, fashion likes nothing more than looking at itself.
Which leads us to ask: If you are, above all, in love with yourself, how long can affairs with others last? Art and fashion get along like the couples whom nobody expects to stay together. We don't want to pooh-pooh what has been a fascinating, aesthetically pleasing and already surprisingly long affair, so we'll let art dealer and fashion-scene habitué Tim Jeffries help do it. "We've got a slew of very well-known, very talented artists," he said recently. "Which means it's cool to be associated with the art world at the moment." At the moment. So enjoy this while it lasts.
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