The art of fashion

Fashion and art are frequent bedfellows, sometimes foes, sometimes friends. Since the turn of the millennium, fashion and art collaborations have become almost ubiquitous in their frequency, a core part of the commercial fashion cycle. Luxury fashion brands have led the trend, but fast fashion brands have jumped on the band wagon too, seeking the approbation of consumers and critics. Simultaneously, fashion has finally found critical purchase in museums and galleries across the world — independent of decorative arts and crafts categories — through exhibitions and collection acquisition. The National Gallery’s holdings of fashion are an integral part of its rich collection, from the avant-garde Ballets Russes costumes through to the rebellious contemporary Australian designers behind DI$COUNT UNIVER$E. An art collection without fashion is perhaps unthinkable. But is fashion art? And conversely, is art sometimes fashionable? In short, yes.

To understand the complexity of the fashion and art dichotomy, we must consider them as coexisting cultural and economic systems. Any dialogue about art and fashion and their relationship to and with each other should begin with the recognition that, by any definition, not all art is in fact art with a capital ‘A’. This is a notion similarly applicable to fashion, which exists within complex orders of value, from haute couture to fast fashion. Within both disciplines, there has traditionally existed a hierarchy of high and low, hierarchies that have all but collapsed. Museums and galleries are reassessing their collection and acquisition strategies to address, among other issues, the disproportionate representation of minorities, such as women, and are seeking to rewrite the art historical canon to include the wider diaspora.

The distinctions between high and low fashion have become particularly complex. The high street now influences haute couture; consider the designer sneaker, which can retail for over $1000 — think Balenciaga under Demna Gvasalia’s creative direction. In art, this is not a new strategy. In the late 1950s Andy Warhol took inspiration from the supermarket, challenging audiences with his mass market subject matter, and Marcel Duchamp before him made readymade sculptures from repurposed everyday objects. It is useful to explore some of these historical precedents to better understand how, and perhaps more importantly why, fashion and art have contemporaneously come to be co-conspirators to what is ultimately their mutual benefit.

We might agree that in theory, art and fashion are traditionally philosophically opposed. Whereas fashion can be seen as fickle, transient and constantly in flux, art is understood to be more considered, intellectual, even elitist; less at the mercy of the vagaries and whims of popular attitudes. Art aspires to longevity, whereas fashion is designed to be redundant, to constantly create new desire. Art pays homage to those that came before: it ‘appropriates’. Fashion often pays no heed to history but steals wantonly, a criticism most often levelled in its direction.

While no one would deny a great designer’s creativity, the creativity of an artist has long been exalted as somehow purer — their genius untainted by commercial considerations. In his 1936 essay ‘The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction’ the German Jewish philosopher, cultural critic and essayist Walter Benjamin declared the pre-eminence of the original over its reproduction:

Benjamin’s assertion was for the supremacy of the inherent ‘aura’ of an artwork, that intangible thing that makes something art, arguing that the aura disappears in reproduction. While his argument might seem outmoded, it’s curiously timely: authenticity seems to be precisely what is missing in fast fashion. In Benjamin’s theory, haute couture — garments produced by hand for a specific body — would share the status of high art by virtue of its uniqueness.

Haute couture exists in direct opposition to fast, mainstream fashion. The former serves little practical purpose: this is not clothing made for the sole function of ‘clothing’ the body. It is most often associated with flights of fantasy, excess and theatre and is, as such, accompanied by exorbitant prices. The allure of haute couture resides in the folly it represents, but also — characterised as it is by its hand sewing and pattern cutting — in the ways in which it speaks to the idea of the handmade. Haute couture is a combination of exemplary craftsmanship that fulfils a deeply held humanistic desire for a haptic experience. These are clothes intimately imbued with a sense of touch: that of the couturier — the artist — and the wearer, for whom they are bespoke and whose body they adorn.

Given the small number of clients it caters to, and the expense associated with the creation of one-off garments, the death knell for couture has sounded since the 1960s and yet still it prevails. In fact, it has become almost supercharged in recent years. Despite the pandemic, economic hardship, wars and natural disasters there has been almost no slowdown in the sale of luxury items — rather, it’s the opposite. In this respect art and fashion have a great deal in common: both exist because they can and not because they serve a practical purpose. Art, like couture, does not exist by necessity but — quite literally — by design. The business of fashion is motivated by profit. Art, on the other hand, need not fulfil a function or operate in a certain way. When art and fashion collide, or collude, they can give one another what each of them needs. Art lends fashion longevity, provenance, serious intent and ultimately a different kind of value: a place in the art system; an entree into the white cube. Fashion lends art a commercial value and relevance outside the white cube and elevates art to the level of brand. Hence, exhibitions and galleries sponsored by fashion houses and artists dressed by fashion houses are selected as muses for designers in a reciprocal arrangement with economic and cultural outcomes.

Of course, in the twenty-first century, art is a commodity too, bought and sold as an investment by the ‘one percenters’. To put it more plainly, art has become, like fashion, popular. Many successful artists are essentially brands. The reclusive, octogenarian Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama found her practice elevated to mainstream recognition when she collaborated with Marc Jacobs, then designer of Louis Vuitton in 2012. So successful and collectable was that first collaboration, the house worked with Kusama again in 2023. This time a huge media campaign placed Kusama front and centre, with Kusama animated ‘robots’ in store and giant inflatable versions of the artist affixed to buildings. Louis Vuitton under Jacobs led the way with art and fashion collaborations, from Takashi Murakami who was relatively unknown outside art circles before his work with the French house, to Richard Prince and Jeff Koons. Louis Vuitton forms part of the LVMH conglomerate owned by billionaire Bernard Arnault, the richest man in the world until June 2023 and, perhaps unsurprisingly, one of the biggest art collectors. Louis Vuitton, too, has its own not-for-profit Frank Gehry designed gallery, the Louis Vuitton Foundation, in Paris. Other fashion houses have similar foundation spaces — Prada in Venice and Milan, Cartier in Paris and Trussardi in Milan, just to mention a few — in which to show their significant collections.

Key to an artwork’s value is provenance: its origin story that accords it meaning and ultimately financial worth. Fashion, too, is fond of myth making, revelling in the often-humble beginnings of its key creatives. The myth of the artist as creator, however, is central to an artwork’s authenticity. The death of Andy Warhol meant the end of Andy Warhol artworks, which is not the case with fashion. Fashion brands frequently continue long after the demise of their eponymous founders — for example Christian Dior, Alexander McQueen or Vivienne Westwood. There is sometimes a concession to change: Yves Saint Laurent became Saint Laurent under the creative direction of Anthony Vaccerello and Pierre Balmain, Balmain, under Olivier Rousteing. This speaks to the legacy and provenance of the brand as it heralds a new direction. The 88-year-old Spanish designer Paco Rabanne died in January 2023, but his brand continues to trade. Indeed, in recent times it has experienced something of a moment, racing to the top of fashion ‘must have’ lists worldwide. The discerning eye would notice that the label sticks closely to the vision of its founder: you can buy, for instance, a contemporary iteration of Rabanne’s iconic 1969 metal chainmail disc Nano shoulder bag. The label is trading on the authenticity of the original brand and a nostalgia for the past.

Rabanne’s vision was unique for its prefiguring of the future, his declaration of modernity expressed via metals and plastics. His Armour dress 1967–68, one is held in the national collection, challenged fashion conventions: it embodied the attitude of the high street even as it challenged its form. Rabanne took the mini dress’ silhouette and reimagined it as a garment for an otherworldly goddess who was the very embodiment of the future. Like Warhol’s art, his designs were referenced and copied innumerable times to evoke the space age. He is perhaps most synonymous with the costumes he created for Jane Fonda in Roger Vadim’s 1968 sci-fi film Barbarella.

Rabanne was nothing if not a provocateur. Constructed from nickel-plated glass, the Armour dress transforms the wearer into a sculpture; it was part of a collection playfully titled Twelve unwearable dresses. An early adopter of experimental materials, Rabanne explored the potential of plastic and different metals, juxtaposing the rigidity of the mechanical with the softness of feminine flesh, questioning the role and function of clothing. He embodied the times in which he lived with his spirit of experimentation, his consideration of ‘nowness’, that still looks surprisingly contemporary. What is it about Rabanne’s work that speaks to the idea of the new, in an age in which comfort is king and athleisure has all but taken over? Perhaps it’s because Rabanne designed what we wish the future did look like.

Australian designer Jordan Gogos shares something of Rabanne’s rebellious spirit. He is indicative of a new generation of designers, ‘slashies’ who work seamlessly across art, fashion and object design. Represented by Gallery Sally Dan-Cuthbert in Sydney, Gogos is not easily classified by virtue of his work’s eclectic nature and serendipitous spirit. He’s the ultimate collaborator, a ring master as it were, working with a vast team of creative collaborators, each of whom he credits and celebrates. For Gogos, these creative opportunities present design possibilities. For his Iordanes Spyridon Gogos runway show at Sydney’s Powerhouse Museum in 2022 (a selection of objects from which now form part of the national collection) — which took as its starting point, salvaged materials, deadstock threads and fabrics and donated clothing — Gogos collaborated with Jenny Kee, upcycling pieces from the Powerhouse Museum’s 2019–20 retrospective Jenny Key and Linda Jackson: step into paradise. Gogos’ collection — presented, like haute couture, in a spectacular theatrical performance — defied convention and asked questions about wearability and commercial and environmental sustainability, while breaking down gender stereotypes and exploding the myth of the solo creative genius. Exemplary of its cut through and criticality, the show garnered a rare combination of fashion and art reviews. Gogos might well be a unicorn.

Of course, fashion and art share an ability to encapsulate the era in which they were created, even as they look back to earlier periods for inspiration. The collaborative works made by the late Australian designer Peter Tully and the artist David McDiarmid through the 1970s and 1980s are so much more than the sum of their parts; they speak to the evolving LGBTQI communities in Australia and the devastation of the AIDS pandemic. They are treasures that keenly reflect the era in which they were made; their resonance lasts beyond their wearability. Worn at the early Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, Tully was artistic director of it from 1982–86, many of these pieces are imbued with personal and shared memories; coveted now, held in private and public collections or given to the artist’s friends. That a selection of Tully’s pieces form part of the national collection is testament to their cultural and historical significance. They sit alongside the most significant art, film and performance of the era in which they were made, and — like all good art — speak to both the past, the present and the future.

In late 2022, four looks by Jordan Gogos for Iordanes Spyridon Gogos were acquired for the national collection.

This story was first published in The Annual 2023.