Many fashion designers consider art as an infinite source of inspiration for their fashion collections and, in many cases, the starting point for a collection is a painting or a sculpture.
Throughout the history of fashion there have been fashion collections that successfully moved from specific art movements or works of art, but there have also been designs that somehow didn't manage to show a convincing derivation of a specific garment from the works of a particular artist.
Take Oscar de la Renta’s resort 2012 collection: the designs moved in this case from Picasso and Cubism, two themes that were mainly translated as printed and embroidered motifs but also (with occasional necklaces that seemed to show a derivation from Cubism).
While the arty reference seemed to work well in some cases (View this photo), the actual catwalk presentation was somehow ruined by unnecessary paper sombreros and flamenco hats in schizoid prints that could have been definitely avoided since they attracted the attention in a rather detrimental way.
Rather than to art, Erdem Moralioglu turned in his Autumn/Winter 2011-12 collection to the muse behind a work of art, being inspired by Jackson Pollock’s wife, abstract expressionist painter Lee Krasner.
The designer must have imagined her intent on splashing colours and paint on fabric rather than on canvases or maybe ripping up canvases and wearing them herself.
This inspiration allowed Erdem – also known as a master in surface elaboration – to play with different effects.
While he splashed colours on his dresses via digital abstract prints, Erdem also employed lace, embroideries and sequins to create elaborate effects on his shift dresses matched with opera-length gloves made from the material used for girdles.
The designer seemed to employ a lot of interesting details and strong vivid yet blurred colours that hinted maybe at a sort of psychological unrest and turmoil (and this was good since it allowed him to get away from his more romantic inspirations), though he should have maybe worked a bit more on the silhouettes of his designs that at times didn’t seem to display much variation.
Apart from the connections with Lee Krasner, the splashes of colours and the palette of Erdem’s collection somehow made me think a lot about a painter who comes from the same Italian region I'm from, Giuseppe Misticoni.
Born on Christmas Day 1907, Misticoni studied in Rome but mainly worked in my hometown, Pescara, where he kept on developing his style and his interests in avant-garde movements.
His work was interrupted by the Second World War, but, at the end of the conflict, he started painting again focusing on abstract shapes and figures (the three paintings matched in this post with designs from Erdem's A/W 2011-12 collection are all from the '60s).
In the early '70s Misticoni developed instead works based on studies on architectural elements and geometric figures and on their relation with the concept of interspace.
This is actually a part of Misticoni’s work that not many people have so far explored and that I think could lead to interesting experiments in both art and design.
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