Art and fashion collaborations have turned in the last 10 years into the norm rather than the exception. As the years and seasons passed we have seen a few designers radically transforming the idea of a mere collaboration reduced to a product with a print of a painting, and trying to elevate the works of art to Haute Couture by adapting them with artisanal techniques and turning at the same time luxury made-to order fashion garments and accessories into unique works of art.
Kim Jones, Creative Director of the menswear collections at Dior, has so far enlisted a series of artists incarnating bright and bold pop visions, from Kaws and Daniel Arsham to Hajime Sorayama, Raymond Pettibon, Shawn Stussy and Amoako Boafo.
For Dior Pre-Fall 2021 men's collection, Jones selected Kenny Scharf as collaborator: part of the New York art scene, often mentioned in conjunction with Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat, Scharf has been an inspiration for many fashion designers since his early days when he had his first show in 1979 at New York's Fiorucci boutique (Isabel and Ruben Toledo met him there).
Throughout the years Scharf collaborated with brands such as Gap, Swatch, Levi's and Zara; he created mannequins for Ralph Pucci (the "Swirley" collection, 2000; with mannequins featuring quirky alien-like elements such as one or three eyes or bizarre cone heads) and also designed arty jewelry.
His works were often echoed in the vividly bright graphics of many contemporary collections (remember how Margiela's Artisanal Spring/Summer 19 collection was reminiscent of Kenny Scharf's "Cosmic Closet", the multimedia installation recreating the iconic Club 57 at New York's MoMa? View this photo).
Dior's collection should have been launched with an exclusive event in Beijing, but Coronavirus has reshifted the plans of many of us during this long year, so in the end it was unveiled online on December 8 on dior.com and on video-streaming service Twitch (a livestreamed video and a screening party also took place at Beijing's Phoenix International Media Center).
The online show featured models walking against a cosmic deep space backdrop vaguely inspired by Jones' favourite series, "The Mandalorian". The set was designed by French director Thomas Vanz and the show featured a soundtrack composed by Lady Miss Kier from Deee-Lite, so the mood was light and happy to bring some optimism in our times marked by the Covid-19 pandemic.
For Dior, Scharf created a universe of surreal creatures and cartoon characters, swirly one-eyed monsters in bold shades, reminiscent of his works included in the exhibition "Dystopian Painting" at Almine Rech Gallery in New York City or in "Moodz" at Jeffrey Deitch in Los Angeles (this event featured around 250 of Scharf's funny Pop Art faces, selected from 401 faces he had created, a sort of extended version of his show "Universalis" last summer at La Nave Salinas in Ibiza).
Jones also reused one of his most famous works, "When Worlds Collide" (1984) and more recent creations taken from the Instagram page of the artist.
There is uniqueness in Scharf's paintings and murals as the artist paints his works like his smiley faces each one by himself, so he doesn't employ any studio assistants as other artists do.
This uniqueness was replicated in some of the techniques employed for the Pre-Fall 2021 designs: Jones opted for processes mainly employed in Haute Couture in Dior's A/W 19 menswear collection, and he did the same here as well with hand embroidery and hand beading widely employed throughout this collection.
Scharf's paintings of cosmic backgrounds were recreated on a Jacquard loom and the resulting fabrics were employed for trousers and coats.
The artist's aliens and Pop Art cyclops and his Chinese zodiac signs (like the Ram and Tiger, mainly appearing during the runway on sweaters) were instead transformed into desirable belts that followed the shape of the cartoon characters or they were replicated on shirts and bags.
In these cases, rather than being printed on the garments and accessories, the characters were reproduced with a specific technique - seed stich embroidery.
Scharf often stated in interviews that he finds producing art as therapeutic, but stitching is also a therapeutic action, even though in the case of this collection it was mainly used to celebrate artisans and time-honoured techniques.
To pay tribute to China's cultural richness in a year in which Coronavirus contributed to spreading anti-Chinese sentiment, Jones enlisted exceptional Chinese craftspeople who recreated Scharf's happy, angry, sad or crazy monsters with dense textures and colourful embroideries.
Dating back to the Han dynasty, seed stitch embroidery was used to make Royal Court Garments. This technique is time-consuming because it takes more than just one step to make a little pearl and complete one stitch. There were other factors that proved time-consuming for what regards the embroidery in this collection: Scharf's works have a lot of degrade colours, so the artisans had to dye satin yarn in 300 different shades, something that allowed them to use their needles like a brush and create smooth movements of colours. The top with Scharf’s 1984 painting "When Worlds Collide" required 7,000 hours of work over 95 days.
For what regards the shapes and silhouettes, Jones combined military-inspired jackets with Dior's iconic Bar jacket (check out the cross closures, cigarette epaulettes and fabric-covered buttons), at times matched with Stephen Jones' berets (also covered in seed stitch embroideries).
The tailoring was softened by elegant and feminine touches like a moiré knot on the back of a jacket, borrowed from Dior's Oblique line (1950); jackets were also belted like robes and matched to pajama-style pants and printed mink slippers, a reference maybe to the lockdown and to the fact that most of us worked from the comfort of their homes rather than from the office because of Coronavirus.
While Jones keeps on focusing on a younger and wealthy clientele (the models looked like they may have been going clubbing with their brightly dyed hair and mini buns), small accessories like the bags, berets or embroidered sash belts, inspired by Scharf’s more recent paintings "LA Blobz" and "Koz", will prove popular also with women and, who knows, even with art collectors. In fact, you wonder if the belts from this collection should be worn or maybe framed and hung on a wall.
Who knows if one day these pieces will end up in a museum under the fashion or the art category. What's for sure for the time being is that, while not many of us may be able to afford a seed stitch embroidered shirt or jacket from this collection (but we can still enjoy Scharf's murals and paintings at exhibitions...), at least Scharf's cartoonish paintings integrated in this collection, rather than making us long for the proverbial galaxy far away, were optimistic enough to make us forget for a while the bleak times we have all been going through this year and they also gave us a glimpse of how to reinvent a traditional technique and bring it into the future.
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