The grandfather of the Op Art movement Victor Vasarely is definitely not a new inspiration in the world of fashion. There have often been indeed fashion collections inspired by his Op Art motifs and illusory manipulations. So, moving from Vasarely for Paco Rabanne's S/S 22 collection may have turned into a disaster for the fashion house's creative director Julien Dossena. Yet, it was the complete opposite.
The collection was launched with a film shot at the Hexa Grace in Monaco, the sun-kissed multicoloured hexagonal tiled roof designed in 1979 by Vasarely himself, inspired by the colours of the sky, the sea and earth.
The joys of being in the open air and the happiness provided by the sea and the sun, something we were denied during this long pandemic year (and something we will keep on being denied if we forget masks, social distancing and disinfectant, even when we are vaccinated…) were the main inspirations for Dossena.
Usually Vasarely's art is translated as prints in fashion collections and Dossena opted in some cases for this solution which sounds like the easiest one. Yet the best renditions of Vasarely's optical illusions were actually reproduced on intarsia knits and jacquards.
The opening look with the cropped short sleeved sweater featuring around the breast area a motif reminiscent of Victor Vasarely's "Feny" actually called to mind other collections that used similar optical patterns with questionable results.
Yet, the fact that Dossena tried to recreate the optical motifs on knits gave more structure to some of the designs, providing fresher interpretations of Vasarely's artworks. Layering sarongs and scarf belts over trousers also helped the designer to create more optical effects.
To rebalance all this softness (Dossena, has actually been trying to introduce these contrasts between hard and soft surfaces and materials since 2013, the year he became the brand's creative director) that was definitely not very Paco Rabanne, also known as the metallurgist of fashion for his chainmail creations, Dossena reduced some of Vasarely's artworks to squarish or rhombus mosaic tesserae with blue, turquoise or red circles, then chainmailed them together to form kinetic skirts, scarves and tunics matched with intarsia trousers.
This trick looked inventive as it allowed the designer to disassemble Vasarely's artworks, reducing them to small parts and then recombining them together to produce an entirely new vocabulary for Rabanne, based on optical illusions and richly textured mathematically graduated geometrical grids that flattered the body narrowing the waist.
The idea was intriguing as, rather than moving from an artist and merely get their works printed on the clothes, Dossena tried to physically break the works and reassemble them into a fashion collection.
In other cases Dossena got what looked like Versace's pliable oroton and printed on it Vaserely's "Alom Violet/Yellow" (1975) or motifs that called to mind his "Planetary Folklore Participations No. 2" (1971) and then used these printed metallic pieces as mesh scarves or waist bands wrapped around the hips.
Vasarely the romantic inspired instead allover sequin looks like the skirts with extra large sequins along the edge and a cropped top reproducing Vasarely's "Amour" (1942).
Metallic elements usually point at armours, but in these cases they assumed an almost bohemian vibe, especially when combined with crop tops, '70s clogs and wooden platform gladiator sandals, tassled caps and bucket hats.
It is worth mentioning that the collection was developed in collaboration with the Victor Vasarely Foundation, something that reminds us that asking for an official collaboration with artists or their estates, is always much better than simply stealing or borrowing.
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