From Victor (Vasarely) to Victoria (Beckham) or the Marriage of Reason and Squalor

The main inspirations behind Victoria Beckham's S/S 15 collection, showcased during New York Fashion Week, were uniforms and military rigour, themes that quite often resulted in safari-style dresses with clean lines that didn't add any new notes to the history of fashion. Beckham added feminine touches with floral prints and also included a few pieces that hinted at a sort of feminine graphic minimalism.

One of them – a knitted black, white and taupe all-in-one – was characterised by a geometric motif borrowed from Op Art that called to mind Victor Vasarely's "Vonal KSZ", a work inspired by his studies on kinetic elements, spatial dimensions and the power of the grid.

As seen in a previous post, the same motif – that Op Art lovers may remember scattered around the sets of Elio Petri's The Tenth Victim – more or less reappeared also in a top from Lacoste's S/S 2011 collection.

In a way this specific piece also seemed a remix of some of the designs in Marc Jacobs' Spring/Summer 13 collection that also borrowed from Germana Marucelli's Op Art creations.

Call it fine gauge ribbed tube dress with geometric stripes, call it bold graphic minimalism or optically dynamic knitwear, but this design by Victoria Beckham is not revolutionary in any fashionable way. This could indeed be described as Vasarely in his Vonal period meets Frank Stella's "The Marriage of Reason and Squalor, II".

There is no reason to get angry with Vicky, though: you can bet that, soon, we will see another design derived by these Op Art works gracing the runways of some fashion capital.