Rihanna’s Essence cover paired the singer with collage artist Laura Simpson.Courtesy of manufacturer
When Rihanna graced the cover of Essence in January, the image was a major departure from what we’ve come to expect of a celebrity magazine spread. Instead of the usual glossy photoshoot, the vanguard pop star, fashion designer and beauty mogul collaborated with artist Laura Simpson on a series of moody and ethereal photographic collages. Rihanna summed them up in one word: “magic.”
The pandemic has taken fashion’s longstanding love affair with the art world to the next level. As physical distancing has mostly cancelled elaborate runway shows and photoshoots, the industry has turned to artists, illustrators and filmmakers to spark the magic that fashion is known for. For the spring 2021 collections, these creative collaborations took on many delightful forms, like the marionette runway show produced by Jim Henson’s Creature Shop for Moschino and the seven-part miniseries Gucci creative director Alessandro Michele created with Oscar-nominated director Gus Van Sant.
Spring 2021 marionette runway show produced by Jim Henson’s Creature Shop for Moschino.Courtesy of manufacturer
In the history of fashion, these partnerships tend to arise during tumultuous eras as artists use their perspective to interpret challenging times like what we’re living through today. Elsa Schiaparelli and Salvador Dali joined forces to make his surrealist fantasies sartorial in the 1930s, an interwar period of widespread depression. In the 1960s, another decade known for its revolutionary spirit, Yves Saint Laurent designed cocktail dresses that paid homage to the De Stijl works of artist Piet Mondrian.
Read the full Style Advisor March 2021 edition: Spring floral fashions, home decor and beauty trends
In 2021, the motivation many brands and designers feel to work with artists goes beyond aesthetic considerations. “Before, it seemed like art would come back ever so often as something very popular in fashion magazines,” says Laura Gulshani, a Canadian artist based in Paris who illustrated a look from the Dries Van Noten spring collection for this story. “Now, because of social media, I think there’s a very consistent audience and demand for that.”
Artist Laura Gulshani’s colourful interpretation of a Dries Van Noten dress brings fashion to life with paint.Illustration by Laura Gulshani
Gulshani has worked with the likes of Escada, Le Bon Marché and British Vogue. It’s her view that artistic collaborations in fashion have gone from being a cyclical fad to occupying a permanent place at the table. “It’s a very powerful way to be unique, I think, in a content-driven world because you can literally create anything you want in any way.”
It’s not just the brands that stand to benefit from these partnerships. “Collaborations are a chance to learn and expand one’s creative language. To work alongside other creative people always presents an opportunity to learn new perspectives,” says Andy Dixon. Now based in Los Angeles, the Canadian artist has worked with Versace, first for a Milan Design Week collaboration in 2019 and then on the label’s spring 2020 collection.
Perhaps no contemporary fashion house has a greater legacy of collaborating with artists than Louis Vuitton. In 2001, its then-designer Marc Jacobs tapped artist Stephen Sprouse to revamp Vuitton’s monogram in his signature graffiti. This led to products featuring the work of Jeff Koons, Richard Prince and Takashi Murakami, who brought his playful Japanese Pop Art to the runway.
Louis Vuitton and Urs Fischer collaboration.Courtesy of manufacturer
Earlier this year, Louis Vuitton partnered with Swiss artist Urs Fischer on a collection that once again reworked the house’s signature monogram into a distorted, hand-drawn motif. “Ultimately, I have always liked the idea that Louis Vuitton artist collaborations travel around the world, beyond the walls of a gallery or museum,” Fischer says of his collection. “They’re a means of communicating, of enjoying shared experiences, of having good fun.”
Travelling and sharing experiences in person is next to impossible right now, and filmmaking has emerged alongside visual art as a way to bring the vision of a fashion collection to life. When the pandemic hit ahead of Indigenous Fashion Week Toronto, which was scheduled to take place last May, artistic director Sage Paul pivoted to an online edition that included four runway films featuring 16 Indigenous designers. “It was really a coming together of all of our collaborators with all of our different experiences and working together as a group to understand, ‘how does this all come together as one to present fashion,’” she says. “It’s a completely different experience of seeing the clothing – of understanding the movement of the clothing.”
Indigenous Fashion Week Toronto’s runway films featured labels such as Hand of Solomon.Courtesy of manufacturer
With the future of in-person gatherings remaining uncertain, fashion’s mode of communication will almost certainly continue to be a balance between technology and one-of-a-kind artistry. “I love painting because you can see the brush strokes,” says Gulshani. “You know there was a human hand behind it.” With such a lack of human connection off screen, art reminds audiences that behind the garments and advertising campaigns of even the biggest brands are creative people expressing themselves through fashion.
