Wear your art

When we decided to dedicate an issue of YStyle to the arts, the first thing I had to ask myself was: How can you not make it suck? Seriously, how can you put the preening peacocks of fashion and the free spirits of the arts together without creating a bit of a bitter fizz?

Yet it’s undeniable that art is fashion’s ultimate muse. Look at the chunks of rhinestones in the designs of Marc Jacobs, Miu Miu and Chanel, and it’s hard not to see that they are inspired by the photographs of Man Ray with his doe-eyed muses weeping glass. The Mondrian-heavy bags of Fendi are also another clue to fashion’s hot rekindling of contemporary art.

Chanel’s newest symbol, of course, is the naughty little medical capsule, undoubtedly inspired by Damien Hirst through his medicine box installations. If you’re still doubtful, just think of every catwalk model who wishes herself to have Modigliani proportions. Sometimes, it is fashion that inspires art. 

Hirst’s ubiquitous skulls were actually the idea of his close friends and sometime collaborators from Libertine: a garment given to the artist by the fashion misfits inspired those very skulls that later fetched millions of dollars.

Erte sketches made fashion drawings into art. He worked in some of the biggest fashion houses and some of his work have already accrued a high demand. Marilyn Minter, visual artist, has used the irony of fashion as a constant subject in her work. She was the recent star of the Whitney Biennial where her fashion forward work was featured.

Then again you could say that paintings of the Renaissance period were actually the first fashion editorials. After a history of painting religious figures of importance, there came a fluffy time of portraiture of finely dressed people of high self-importance. The observant painter Toulouse Lautrec took it even further by creating atmospheric scenes of Café Society. His work in magazines such as Le Rire perhaps became a template for capturing "fashionable" moments when photography and fashion boomed during the turn of the century.

It’s totally a "chicken and egg" conundrum. No matter what, it’s one thing that inspires both art and fashion: man’s relationship with beauty.  In fashion, there is the same subjectivity that the art world is also familiar with. There are "hot" new artists and there are legends. Whatever the case may be, it can perhaps be summed up in the wise words of Cher in Clueless: "It’s like a Monet: from afar it’s okay but you look closer and it’s just a mess." It’s a fine world we live in.