When Does Fashion Become Art?

Alexander McQueen Jungle 1997-1998

This is the abstract for my Keynote Address at the Costume Society of America Mid-West Conference presented on October 14, 2011 at 4 pm at the University of Northern Iowa:

When Does Fashion Become Art?  by Ingrid Mida

Clothing can be a visual mirror of our inner selves. We each get dressed in the morning and make choices how to present ourselves to the world. We construct our identity with our choice of clothing and accessories and signal our belonging or not. This expression of identity through dress makes it a ready subject for artistic practices and interpretation and both artists and designers have considered notions of the body and identity as articulated through fashion. 

There has been much debate about whether fashion is art. Fashion scholars such as Sung Bok Kim, Sandra Miller, Anne Hollander and Elizabeth Wilson have considered the question. In my interviews with four museum directors/scholars, including Matthew Teitelbaum of the Art Gallery of Ontario, Nathalie Bondil of the MMFA, Valerie Steele of FIT and Harold Koda of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, there was no consensus. This was not surprising given that fashion designers themselves do not agree on whether fashion is art.

It was an instinct – as a result of my work as an artist - that led me to frame the question in a different way. Instead of asking “Is fashion art” it seemed to make more sense to ask “When does fashion become art?” After all, both fashion and art require the translation of an idea into another form. Both disciplines share a visual vocabulary and process-oriented development. Both fashion and art also have commercial aspects driving their conception and both can include multiples in a series or collection.

But, not all fashion is art. What falls into the realm of fashion is just too broad for that statement to be true, especially when fashion can include both garments of haute couture and trendy mass-produced items.

When is Fashion Art?

In the book, "When Clothes Become Fashion, Design and Innovation Systems" by Ingrid Loschek, there is a chapter called "When is Fashion Art?" This is a topic close to my heart and one that is rarely given the attention of scholars.

Ingrid Loschek was a well-known and respected fashion historian and theorist who taught at the School of Design, University Pforzheim, Germany. This was her last book before she passed away earlier this year.

Although the book is dense with fashion theory and rigourous analysis, it is accessible to a general reader. But for artists whose work references clothing, the body, or fashion, this book is well worth the investment in time because it offers a thoughtful analysis of contemporary fashion designers and artists whose work exists on the boundary between fashion and art.

Loschek begins the chapter with a quote by Jeff Koons:  "The art is in the viewer" and goes on to review the definition of art as it has changed over the course of history. She continues with a differentiation of the systems of art and fashion as "a matter of context of observation".  In other words, the manner and place of presentation can affect whether clothing is considered fashion or art. For example, Viktor & Rolf's dresses with masses of bows and flounces from Flowerbomb 2005 "display more of a theatrical pretension: they are dresses that pay no account to the demands of everyday life and, apart from their impact as advertising and to attract attention, they lack purpose to the extent that art also claims for itself." (page 171) It is almost as if these spectacular dresses were made with forethought that they would one day be presented in a museum -- just as they were when I saw them at the Barbicon Gallery in London in 2008.

Flowerbomb 2005 by Viktor & Rolf, Photo by Ingrid Mida 2008

Fashion designers whose designs approach works of art include: Hussein Chalayan, Vivienne Westwood, Rei Kawakubo, Alexander McQueen, John Galliano and Victor & Rolf. Some of the artists whose work references fashion and are mentioned in this chapter include: Salvador Dali, Joesph Beuys, Andy Warhol, Jana Sterbak, Oskar Schlemmer, and Cindy Sherman.

"One shared aspect of art and fashion is that both create an artificial image of the human being; in addition, clothing represents an extension of the self." (pg. 169) (To me, art is also an extension of the self, but perhaps that depends on the artist.)

This is a book that I probably will read more than once because it is so dense with analysis. Buried deep in the chapter is the key to understanding why designers who use artistic concepts to create their works are so important. "When no artistic demand is made of fashion, our visual language becomes impoverished to the lowest common denominator -- which is the cheapest, most efficient, and most functional....the language of art is opposite to this (utility), because it permits a vocabulary not bound by purpose and consequently permits freedom; it enjoys the free space to invent forms with the potential to stimulate our fantasies and dreams." (page 171)

In other words, art lifts fashion to a higher level of visual language.

Book: When Clothes Become Fashion, Design and Innovation Systems
Author: Ingrid Loschek
Translated by: Dietrich Reimer Vertag
Published by: Berg, New York, 2009
Category: Non-fiction, Fashion Theory
Number of Pages: 245
Cost: $29.95 paperback




P.S. This is a partial extract of a review I'm writing  for the Costume Society Journal.