Art and art movements have always been inspirational for fashion – and vice versa. Most of this season’s Pre-Fall collections take art as a message, which gives their collection a certain power and in some cases not only through decorative means but almost political as for example Grazia Chiuri for Christian Dior.
We liked the link of Chiuri’s influence by artist Claude Cahun, a contributor to the Surrealist movement. Claude Cahun was the pseudonym of Lucy Schwob, who was openly homosexual and wore more men’s clothes than women’s clothes like her contemporaries Meret Oppenheim and Elsa Schiaparelli. One could compare Claude Cahun’s art form with artist Cindy Sherman today, as she photographed herself expressing her transgenderness with her clothes and the way she wore them. Chiuri thinks that could be the birth of the modern woman.
You can take that as an artistic inspiration or a political message. One way or the other, art and art history in comparison to our times make things more interesting and also make some of us think.
But that is what art is all about sending messages to their audience. Sometimes it is purely decorative or says something which is interpretable in different ways but like this clothes and the way you wear them get a much stronger meaning (read our article about #WhyWeWearBlack)
If you can use fashion as a tool of communication, start using it wisely without loosing its chic and fun side of it.
Christian Dior’s Pre-Fall Look 2018, a portrait of surrealist artist Claude Cahun aka Lucy Schwob, art work Homothetic by German Artist Imi Knoebel and a Pre-Fall look by Gucci, Photo by Peter Schlesinger – Courtesy of Gucci