IT’S WEARABLE ART

Art and fashion rarely come together in the same frame. However, there’s one point where the two seem to meet, greet and even collaborate with each other—the human body, the quintessential canvas for designers. Artists, too, have used it to express their creative instincts. The result? Art-inspired fashion that makes us look at clothes beyond its texture, fabric and silhouettes.

David Lynch and Christian Louboutin

The color crimson seems to hold a special place in the mighty hearts of Lynch and Louboutin. While the former voraciously uses the color in his crazy, psychotic thrillers, the latter’s red heels have green as the color of envy. And when the two got together, the outcome was nothing short of unexpected, eerie and to some extent, impractical—in short, like art, it had a million interpretations. The resulting images (shot and directed by Lynch) form a peculiar concoction of timeless beauty and eternal tragedy.

“Art is Art. Fashion is Fashion. However, Andy Warhol proved that they can exist together.” – Karl Lagerfeld

Piet Mondrian and YSL

YSL defined a true genius, someone who has the ability to spot other genius people. In the autumn of 1965, YSL released the simple autumn dress. In tidy, A-line silhouette, typical of the 60s, the dress featured graphic black, white and primary color lines (running both horizontally and vertically). This structured and block use of Piet lines, gives the dress a sort of meaningful wearability and pays a beatiful homage to Mondrian’s legacy.

Yuko Kanatani and Nike

When Nike wanted an “intersection of atheletic performance and artistic design”, it turned to Japanese artist Yuko Kanatani, whose work has been described as playful and colorful. The artist was commisioned to provide designs for Nike’s three new tights on which she was required to create a sort of ‘body map’; a design which uses athlete-informed data to show the location of an individual’s muscles and heating and cooling zones. This challenging requirement lead Yuko to create something truly out of the Nike world, a never-before line that was guaranteed to nudge more people towards excercise just to slip into that ‘sporty ensemble’.

Jean-Paul Goude and Paul Smith

Paul Smith’s subtle but unmissable Goude inspiration can be seen in his 2013 collection where the ‘slashed up print’, cut-up colors, cut-up shapes and eccentric mixes, lend the showcase a Goude effect. The result—a clean, lean wear that’s high on wearable art.

The Singh Sisters and Tarun Tahiliani

Tarun Tahiliani is the AR Rehman of fashion – bringing new things to Indian fashion before others. Therefore, it’s not very surprising when he turned to art for some design inspiration and travelled all the way to London to rope in mega-artists for his 2015 Spring/Summer collection. He claims to have “responded fully” to their ‘Past-Modern’, a series of vibrant and detailed paintings with Asian and Western influence inspired by Indian miniature paintings. The result was a rich tapestry of colliding cultures that showed that unity is beauty and beauty is strength.