“Fashion
is not an art, but to work on it you must be an artist”
Yves
Saint-Laurent
Many will wonder
what a fashion post replies in a blog about art.
Maybe we have surrendered to its world
of banality and exhibition?
We would like to steer a debate to our readers
about the facets of fashion and
the different views of it, a debate started long
ago as seen in the words of the
aforementioned French couturier: Is fashion a matter for which art is
required or is in fact an art in itself?
To answer these
questions we must begin by asking
what we call a
work of art or an artist's
productions: does any difference a marked and visible style along a path of productions? Do
we ask for any retail development
and almost unique? For a final result of artistic aesthetics and clear
visual effects? Are we in search of a captivating personality? And finally for any expression of the soul of the artist? Let’s consider if we can find in the productions of haute couture these features
and even more, all in a relaxed way through the vision of the
latest floral trends in the spring-summer
season, where flowers are combine with transparencies
and spring bright color. Let’s see
how each designer adapts these
features to their own style:
Let's start with Valentino, whose parade was the finishing touch to the
Haute Couture’s Week in Paris. After the great couturier retired from the world of fashion, Maria Grazia
and Pier Paolo Piccioli Chiuri are directing now the brand designs, this season filled with romantic floral blend
and pastel textures.
Giambattista Valli proposes a
design mostly sober colours and bases on lace. The flowers Valli recreates are
scattered over the bodice in a sculptural form, like
a field dotted with roses, in a degradation of transparencies.
Dior, a paradigm of the French "ateliers" and the
production of its "maisons", returns to the sobriety of French charm thanks to Hill
Gaytten, the new artistic director
after the fall of the popular John Galliano. In that
collection flowers do not take
the power and are reduced to
an option, treated on discrete embroidered in strategic
locations of the dress.
Elie Saab, instead, notes his own style by showing dresses the main
element are the transparencies made with
sheer delicate lace pieces.
These pieces are embroidered with flowers, but these flowers are carved on
beads, stones and crystals: making their productions a jewel-dress that seems to float around
the woman.
George Hobeika's productions for this summer are inspired by the aesthetics of the orchid, implemented mostly on cocktail dresses, dotted
with flowers accompanied by beads
and pearls in a more discrete amount.
Finally, allowing us a break to the
previous autumn / winter season,
we show you the striking productions of Zuhair Murad.
This Lebanese designer’s dresses - in
chiffon, tulle and
silk - are built on the pitch "nude" and on the ambiguity that this allows: a game in which
the line between the dress and the real skin is blurred.
The cherry blossoms are what he proposes to
cover this female transparency, thanks
to a sculptural and pictorial
elaboration on the
basic tones of Oriental art: red
and black.
As we have seen, each one of
the designers displayed and
developed his own style, which gives a unique and easily recognizable to each of the brands they
manage. Haute couture is the
ultimate expression of fashion design, a field in which designers can express their creativity freely,creativity
without limits of budget or
style. According to that, does fashion responds to any of the characteristics of art? Which has and which
rejected? Can we say that each of these dresses are works of art whose exhibition takes place in a different area of the sculpture or
painting? Or is it another example of the decline of a fashion crisis? ...
We encourage you to let your opinions in order to start an interesting debate that will continue
in the next post, looking at the Pret-à-Porter.