The first one
I’ve been interested in fashion for a long time, but always wary of writing about it, largely because it is so often seen as a frivolous and superficial topic.
Many of my friends like clothes a lot, but any prolonged discussion of what we wear is quickly lampooned with an ironic exclamation about how we are being “sooo fahr-shion”: a useful piece of self aware mockery that indicates that we know how silly and vain our topic of conversation is. Similarly, while independent fashion designers receives some acknowledgement as artists, more established houses and the fashion industry as a whole is seen by many to have little artistic weight, and certainly very little intellectual value.
This isn’t particularly surprising. There is a lot about fashion, and the fashion industry in particular, to deride. Most fashion houses make their money off the back of cheap sunglasses prominently emblazoned with their logos, and tacky looking handbags. With some notable exceptions, fashion writing is overwhelmingly vapid – a rotating wheel of words like bohemian, structural and ethereal, depending on the tendency of the particular season. Despite recent exhibitions like the Met’s “Schiaparelli and Prada: Impossible Conversations”, there is little discussion of fashion’s engagement with broader artistic, political or social trends, or of fashion’s sociological or ethical implications.
And yet, there is a lot to discuss and think about within the concept of fashion. We all engage with it, whether in the consumption of “mainstream” fashion trends or by adopting the style of a particular subculture. In many ways our choice of clothing marks our position in particular social groups and hierarchies and signals our taste in music, literature and even politics. In some cases, personal clothing can also be a genuinely creative expression.
In turn, the fashion industry includes individuals whose work is on par with the best of contemporary sculpture, printmaking and visual art. Yet because clothing is functional, fashion isn’t protected by copyright. Instead designers find their work in Tophshop or Zara a few days after it appears on the runway – arguably turning objects of beauty and painstaking work into mass produced crap, and draining the creative process. But this diffusion also makes fashion available to be worn and reinvented across the world, and some of the reinvention of those very trends will feed back as inspiration for designers’ future work.
On top and because of this pressure, fashion is expected to be continuously fresh. Designers claim (and the PR of fashion houses claim for them) to follow a genuinely creative process, yet this creative output must adhere to a strict set schedule of four seasons a year – as well as increasing demands for resort collections, diffusion lines and collaborations, to boost profits. Considering this environment, it is understandable that many people are wary of calling fashion art.
In their constant quest for reinvention, fashion designers mine both the past and the corners of the globe, often “taking inspiration” from the traditional dress, arts and homes of other cultures, repackaging and selling them without any acknowledgement of their local meaning and context and without the permission of those whose culture has been appropriated (the controversy around “navajo fashion” is a good example of this). Racist appropriation is increasingly being called out for what it is, but there doesn’t yet seem to be a deeper discussion about what, if any, right designers have to use other cultures’ arts and how to differentiate legitimate artistic inspiration from offensive appropriation.
These are just some of things I think about when I think about fashion – I haven’t even mentioned the murky waters of feminism’s relationship with fashion – and to me anyway, they are at least as interesting as Anna dello Russo’s ever changing outfits. Although I’m partial to those too.
While I’ve never felt particularly invested in the question itself of whether fashion is art, I definitely think it holds some interesting implications. Namely, I think that when someone says that fashion is not art, by extension they mean to say that it is not worthy of conceptual/ intellectual consideration. Which is utter balls, of course.
Also I wonder whether architecture doesn’t serve as a more useful point of comparison than fine art, it being a functional medium whose place in intellectual discourse is never challenged.
I definitely agree – denying fashion status as an art is a way to trivialise it. I think there’s also a gendered element to this – fashion being traditionally seen as frippery and trivial because it is an interest of women (even though the majority of designers have historically been men – and perhaps still are). This point is made really well over at l’allure garconniere. I do think there are difficulties with equating fashion with art though, the commecialised environment being a big one. Your point on architecture is really interesting, I actually hadn’t thought about that. I’m not sure why I align fashion more with fine art – perhaps because its being increasingly being brought into museums (eg: Alexander McQueen exhibition) and fashion is claiming the mantle of art for itself? There are definitely parallels with architecture – I guess I see them as slightly different because architecture remains grounded in functionality, whereas fashion is in my mind quite clearly distinguished from clothing and as a concept/idea is not associated with function. But I will definitely think about this more!
On an unrelated note, thanks so much for commenting – this is all new to me, and its so fab to be able to have a conversation about these ideas! And I loved the post on your blog about the life cycle of clothing, super interesting.
I was only thinking about discourse but you’re so right about the significance of fashion/ fine art’s place in the museum. As an aside, it totally grinds me when people suggest that fine art is somehow untouched by commerce. Like, when has that EVER been the case?
And thank YOU for a very interesting read and discussion.
Great read Sienna. I think there are some issues with the argument of cultural appropriation through fashion trends. Does the trend of Tribal prints devalue the culture from which those prints come from? In my mind, no. Does it ignore historical and social context, probably, but I also don’t think that necessarily brings any harm in any real world sense.
This of course is separate to the issue of whether there should be any recognition of the original culture or society from which those designs were inspired, which I think there should be. But then again, when Zara and Top Shop copy the big designers, I also think they have an obligation to give due recognition, which of course wouldn’t happen.
Anyway great work on the blog, looking forward to reading more of it.