Aesthetic Presence

As I am writing the final post for this blog, and trying to sum it up, I am struck by a few things. One, when it comes to discussing art, good visuals are critical, and I believe witnessing the creative process is perhaps more instructive than reading about it. As a result, the sources I chose were initially more “show” than “tell”. The James Jean video he produced for Prada’s collection is a brilliant illustration of the intersection between art and fashion—but it did not give me much to quote or argue with.

Designer John Galliano’s discussion of some of his favorite dresses and their inspirations was right from the horse’s mouth; but again there wasn’t much in the way of controversy there. As I tried to move into more print based resources, I fell into the next hole, which was that current fashion design and academia do not overlap much at all. Most anything written about fashion is written at a safe historical distance of about 50-60 years and falls under costume history, or under the business mechanics of merchandising. So most of the useful sources were not considered credible, and the credible ones were not particularly useful! (Add to that I was accessing the wrong databases, which kept shutting me out, until Allison kindly pointed me in the right direction. For the record, I was using the Library Resources tab right above the Online Databases link because I assumed they went to the same place.) You can see the result in my third post, where the O’Keeffe inspired dress was really what I found interesting, and I added an “official” source oninspiration boards from a library website. (There is a piece from the AtlanticMonthly that I snuck into this post to strengthen it and act as the 3^rd official reference, but it doesn’t change the fact that this is more of an exploratory topic than a controversial one.)

For my fourth post I chose to go with controversy. I found a respectable article written by a legal scholar on the issue of copying designs and how designers can protect their intellectual property rights. Again, because I believe a picture is worth a thousand words, I included a few from an article discussing a current lawsuit alleging Yoko Ono’s new menswear collection is a complete rip off of an unknown designer’s existing collection.

For this last post, I found the Holy Grail—an academic article that actually discusses my topic, albeit in a sideways fashion. This study was designed to examine the inspirations for the design process for a number of design professionals and students in Hong Kong. They found that the main motivator is “aesthetic presence”, though there were other factors that went into the design process as well. They found that fashion has often worked in tandem with current art movements; that the rich visual history of art provides a lot of material from which one can create something new; and that pieces of art often inspired designers on their purely aesthetic merits.

John Galliano talked about that directly when he told the tale of his Venetian inspired collection. Prada used James Jean’s art to both capture a current mood and directly influence the colors and shapes of their collection. The Georgia O’Keeffe inspired dress was a purely aesthetic inspiration. And 80+ year old Yoko One, it would appear, tried to capture a hip mood she could no longer tap into by stealing the designs of someone younger who could, inciting a legal battle in a very grey area of copyright law.

When I started this research I was really curious about the nuts and bolts of how designers worked and what other examples I could find of the links between fine art and their designs. I was really pleased to find the inspiration boards, as I feel like those answer my questions better than any of the articles. In reviewing the creative process in this visual form, I feel like I have learned a lot, and will continue to learn more now that I know how to find them. The issues of copyright are less interesting to me, though I appreciate the tightrope of intellectual property rights and freedom to innovate that everyone seems to be walking. I would love to see more written about the design process as it applies to fashion, but I can see that the Hong Kong research study used design models from other fields like architecture, presumably because they couldn’t find enough literature in their own field.

Since my interests focus mostly on the creative process, I think looking forward I would be more inclined to broaden my topic to focus on the creative process in a number of fields, preferably those which have a more robust literature to draw on. I might work with some questions around innovation in the workplace and how to balance the need to produce for profit without stifling the output with unreasonable and unhelpful expectations. Or perhaps I could look into the actual neuropsychology of creativity, and what are some of the conditions that seem to consistently help artists produce good creative work.

Thanks for reading!

Inspired By? Or Stealing From?

In my last post I showed you some designer inspiration boards to illustrate the how the creative process is evolves through time, often beginning with an initial image or theme and metamorphosing into three dimensional collections of clothing. Just being able to see the photographs side by side helps me understand where their ideas come from and I have found it fascinating to see the choices they make in what to include and what isn’t important enough to make it into the final product. It truly seems like a very personal, creative journey, and one that would be hard to fake. Yet accusations of design fraud are rampant in the industry. Of course, some copying is expected. As soon as the top designer shows are broadcast, there are knock-offs being constructed to sell at much lower price points. Since most couture outfits you see on the runway are priced in the range of thousands of dollars, the twenty dollar knock-offs certainly aren’t impacting the designer’s sales figures—their customers are in radically different spheres. Yet designers are pushing for greater protections for their creations. In such a creative industry, where inspiration is essentially reinterpreting existing work (i.e. copying) and design is such a fluid and often arbitrary process, this is a tricky proposition.

Fashion legal scholar Katelyn N. Andrews of New York University School of Law, has proposed a theory that the legal safeguarding of fashion creations should be viewed as more of a moral rights issue than a copyright one. She argues that the fashion designers who are hurt by cheap copies of their work are injured more on a moral level than an economic one. Essentially, their creations are art and it hurts their feelings when other people take credit for them. Is this sufficient reason to sue someone though? It seems to me that it would be the source of more trouble than it is worth to pursue such lawsuits.

Of course, in the case of unknown designers who have their designs stolen by more famous designers, the impact is much greater—their reputation, future earnings, and potentially entire careers are at stake.This type of dispute is at the heart of a recent lawsuit involving Yoko Ono, who has been accused of stealing a Brooklyn woman's distinctive designs.

Compare the photographs from the New York Post article below:

Designer Haleh Nematzadeh sporting her original designs

From Yoko Ono's new menswear collection

To me it seems pretty clear that the two collections are related, and if it is true that Yoko Ono's team visited Nematzadeh's studio before Ono designed her (first) menswear line, it would be hard to argue that her designs are original, especially given the unique nature of the strategically placed handprint! It actually seems like such blatant theft that I am surprised she would have the audacity to do it. Did she really think she could get away with it? Is design theft so rampant that that well known designers wouldn't bat an eye at taking advantage of a lesser known design artist? If that is the case, are better copyright laws a good idea? How would that affect the way the entire fashion industry functions, when so much of it is run on the idea of trends and designer knock-offs? Is it possible to foster creativity and innovation while also respecting the rights of the original creators?

I guess I'd like to see Yoko Ono's inspiration board before I make any decisions.

Inspiration Boards: High Brow, Low Brow

One of the recurring themes in my research is the lack of academic writing on the current fashion scene. If you want to review costume history, you might be able to find something from the 1960s or earlier, but anything newer than that seems to be covered mostly in newspaper fashion reviews. Even the Library of Congress directed me to Women’s Wear Daily, the industry standard. The Artstor database is not accessible, nor is JStor, nor is Ebsco (referred to me by my fashion professor who looked at me funny when I asked her for academic resources for fashion). I just read my last free article on the New York Times website. Where’s a fashion researcher to turn?

Fortunately the internet is full of primary sources in the form of designers and their own websites, many of which track their own design process and even post their inspiration boards. The whole idea of finding inspiring images, collecting them, and creating a design off of them seems to be pretty standard in the fashion industry. The question of the impact of fine art on designers is actually missing the point a bit, because all designers seem to use visual inspiration, regardless of its pedigree.

I did however find a beautiful interpretation of a painting by Georgia O’Keeffe, by an emerging designer named Jessie Jie Liu. Here is an image that chronicles her process, from painting to sketch to final runway design:

Designer Jessie Jie Liu's inspiration board for her Georgia O'Keeffe inspired dress.

The rest of her page is great and I can see that she has often turned to fine artists for her inspiration, including the Cubists, which she has turned into quite a strikingly shaped jacket design. I love that her page really shows the design process at work.

The New York Times asked 100 designers to sum up their current collections in one image, which you can see in this slideshow. Some of them give obvious clues to the process, and others are quite obscure, but I find the range of inspirations fascinating. Clearly these designers see art in so many places, not just in museums! 

It makes sense that designers would take their inspiration from visual sources--but what about non-visual sources? I'm still curious to see how music, current events, and other more ephemeral elements inform the design process.

Post script: I have found an article in the Atlantic Monthly that gives more detail on the process of developing a collection from inspiration boards. The designers talk in depth about it, even mentioning details about how they bookended their show with red dresses in honor of Dorothy's ruby slippers in the Wizard of Oz. I'm a bit curious how they balance the need to create a coherent collection with remaining true to their inspirations--do the red dresses fit in with the rest of the collection or do they feel a bit awkward? It would be interesting to read some reviews about the show.

Literal Interpretations vs. Genuine Inspiration

When it comes to artists inspiring fashion designers, there does not seem to be much written in academic journals. Most of what I’ve seen discussing designers and their inspirations is more current and straight out of the reviews. I did find a few interesting tidbits which will give me enough material to investigate the difference between literal interpretation and genuine inspiration.

The first (useful) article I found is 5 Famous Artists Who Influenced Fashion Designers. Scrolling through the pictures I found what I would call literal interpretations. The Versace pieces that take after Andy Warhol’s Marilyn pictures are literally just screenprinted with the same image. There is not much of the designer’s own filter showing up there. It would be hard to create anything inspired more literally than that. The same goes for Rodarte’s Starry Night dress. That one doesn’t even attempt to have the shape of the dress match the mood of the painting—it pretty literally just uses fabric with the painting printed on it, once again. At least Yves St. Laurent made something new and compelling out of his Mondrian painting—the dress stands on its own and creates a new fashion aesthetic—though it is still quite literal in its interpretation. Dali’s lobster dress never quite makes it past being a dress with a picture of a lobster on it.

Contrast those designs with some by master couturier John Galliano, who has designed for both Givenchy and Christian Dior. He works with his inspirations in an entirely different way. He is influenced by them and, critically, reinterprets them. His dresses are both unmistakably his own, and unmistakably inspired by the art of others. As you can see in this video of Galliano discussing some of the landmark dresses of the House of Dior, he designed two of the dresses after recognizable art—in this case, Venetian masquerades (at 2:50) and artist Egon Schiele (at 3:15).  Both creations embody the essence of his inspirations and are beautiful and amazing in their own right.

It seems to me that the difference in these two approaches is what separates the hacks from the true design artists. How can someone take inspiration from outside and still create something truly in his or her own voice? Is it personality traits at work? Confidence? Extensive experience? I’m excited to delve further into this topic as we move forward.

Artist Collaborations: James Jean and Prada

Lately in my Fashion Illustration class we have been discussing the process of designing collections. One of the most fascinating parts of the process is how to move through the process of starting from points of inspiration on through to the final product. 

The video that inspired this blog is a work by artist James Jean, and was created by him as part of a marketing campaign for the fashion design house Prada in 2007. He initially created a huge mural that the designers worked with as the basis for their collection, seen below.

Prada models pose in front of the oversize mural by comic book artist James Jean.

As you can see, sometimes the ideas were transferred literally, as in the case of the accessories, and sometimes the inspiration was more gently applied.

Floral shoes inspired by James Jean's artwork, by Prada.

I love this video because it really shows one interpretation of how to turn visual art into clothing, shoes and bags—wearable art suitable for three dimensional life on the human form. As the little blue critters climb onto her feet and metamorphose into shoes, it is easy to imagine a designer’s imagination doing exactly that with so many other influences.

I’ve always been intrigued by the creative collaborations of artists. I’d like to explore this idea more while focusing specifically on the fashion industry, because these magnificent creations are generated at a furious pace, with many people working together to create at least two big collections a year. The fashion world takes its inspiration from so many sources, and often acts as a voice for our culture, with its constant evolution continuing the conversation. It is a dynamic collaborative process worthy of a closer look.

How do fashion artists inspire each other? What makes for a successful collaboration? How is fashion inspired by current artists? Or by artists in other media? What are some important historical collaborations? Have any artists been inspired by fashion creations, perhaps filmmakers? These are some of the questions I am interested in exploring.

I’m excited to research these ideas more, and I promise to include lots of gorgeous pictures to go along with them!