Tout Nouveau Blog

When French artisit Jean Cocteau mused, ‘Art produces ugly things which frequently become beautiful with time. Fashion, on the other hand, produces beautiful things which always become ugly with time’ it stimulated a debate that has long been on he lips of the creative industry. Is fashion art?

For the next four months the Design Museum presents the exhibition ‘Drawing Fashion’, honoring some of the most remarkable fashion illustrations of the latter Centuries. Showcasing illustrators at their creative heights; celebrating artists whose exquisite images not only capture the essence of the decade but also evoke the spirits of elegance and glamour long associated with the world of couture and high fashion.

The Museum’s website stated, “These original works define the fine art of illustrating fashion”. However, on reading that the illustration would sit alongside films, music and photography in order for visitors to reflect on the wider social and cultural changes of the last century, one had to wonder if the illustration itself only accounts for a small proportion of the “art”.

Quite controversially, Alice Rawsthorn, director of the Design Musuem itself featured in a 2003 Guardian fashion/art debate opposing Zandra Rhodes and was quoted;

‘Quibbling over whether fashion is more or less important than art is just as pointless as questioning whether or not it is art. Of course it’s not, it’s fashion. That is not to say that fashion, at its best, is not a suitable subject for museums or that it cannot share some of the attributes of art. On the contrary, an exquisite haute couture dress – like the ones that Cristóbal Balenciaga created in his 1950s heyday – can look as perfect as a beautiful painting or sculpture.’

Branching into another fashion past-time, and spicing up the heat in the debate is the prestigious Art Basel in Miami, which holds a dedicated space given to fashion photography named ‘Art Expo’. Claiming to mark a new generation of buyers, who are snapping up pieces by living photographers whose names are relatively unknown to those outside of the fashion world.

Francois Trabelsi, founder of Art Photo Expo, believes that the previous omission of fashion photography from the art fair was a glaring anachronism:

“I felt very strongly that some of the world’s greatest living artists – and that’s really what they are – weren’t being represented here. It was a shame, not just for the photographers, but also for buyers. Certain collectors still view fashion photography as a little too ‘paillette’, too frothy…but it is the most accessible of the contemporary arts – ordinary people engage with it and enjoy it more readily than other art forms and that to me is one of its greatest strengths”

Perhaps echoing Trabelsi sentiment is Vogue itself…By collaborating with the Fashion Illustration Gallery, the publication is encouraging its readers to purchase what they have deemed art. The art industries response and praise has been monumental, despite ripples of grumble from the traditional fashion order. Indeed, in 2009 a lecture that marked the opening of the Art of Fashion Symposium, Dingerman Kuilman deconstructed the debate using YSL’s Ligne Mondrian collection. Interestingly he found that it might be style, rather than art that we should focus on.

Featuring collection pieces from Chanel, Dior, Poiret, Lepape, Lacroix, Comme des Garcons as well as Viktor & Rolf and McQueen; the exhibition has been 30 years in the making, and has no doubt awoken the debate that until late has remained dormant. In my opinion however, there is no definitive answer; what’s one mans trash is another mans treasure and what’s ones critics art is another critics fashion. It’s a matter of personal perception and, whilst one could be accused of sitting on the fence, surely that is what the creative industry is famed for?

By Victoria Loftus

Drawing Fashion: The Design Museum 03 November – 06 March 2011