IS FASHION ART?
- Daisy Dodsworth
- Jan 25, 2022
- 3 min read
Updated: May 8, 2022
Is fashion art? The abrupt answer google gives you is YES (from 3 sources) but can you really call an industry which is rapidly slaughtering our planet art?
THE DEFINITIONS:
CLOTHING: Any of a wide variety of articles, usually made of fabrics, animal hair, animal skin, or some combination thereof, used to cover the human body for warmth, to preserve modesty, or for fashion.
FASHION: The make or form of anything; the style, shape, appearance, or mode of structure; pattern, model; as, the fashion of the ark, of a coat, of a house, of an altar, etc.; workmanship; execution.
Not all clothing is fashion, but all fashion is a form of art, and clothes are hardly art as clothing is a necessity for all humans in society for modesty (unfortunately). Yet fashion is one of the purest, hugest expressions of art because it is art lived out daily that many times clothes described as art is completely overlook. This is because we are over exposed and indoctrinated to all wear the same trends blending individuality together and muting its artistic effect. Individuality in clothing is a human art and a huge form of artistic communication anything can be said through fashion, the same with a piece of art.
Every design that is every made once starts as a vision of art but unfortunately is then mass produced online through fast “fashion”. But personality I would hardly class these pieces as fashion, but rather mass-produced slave laboured items of clothing, how can we link unethical capitalistic crimes to fashion which we link to art. That doesn’t sit right with me and is almost the opposite of what art is to me personally.
But is that unfair to not class huge micro trends as art? Surely the shire popularity and majority of consumers of these items would prove otherwise. These clothes are consumed and worn in mass daily in the streets, shared online and advertised. Does this not make it like art? And who am I to gatekeep the term art anyway and make it that only solely unique and limited numbered pieces are valid art. What about “The Great Wave” Japan’s most famous painting. That one painting has become extremely mainstream and is put on almost anything and can be recognised by anyone. But does its mass production make it any less a piece of art? No. So how is popular clothing any different, my only point would be, how fast these micros come in and out and how disregarded they soon become, and almost shamed if seen once out of its expiration date.
When researching I found a quote from Marc Jacobs and his take on is fashion art? "Fashion to me is not art because it is only valid if it is lived in and worn. I make clothes and bags and shoes for people to use, not to put up on a wall and look at. I think clothes in a museum are complete death” but I think this is extremely close minded of him firstly for him to be the once to class what is valid and secondly to describe art as something that is solely “put up on a wall”.
However, I feel I can expand with Marc too on his point as there is in some definition a difference between art and fashion. This is utility in concur to the difference between design, where we expect the object to fulfil a function; and art, where it largely can be for non-functional needs. Because if all design was art, everything would be classed as art. Cars, all transport, Ikea furniture, mobile phones, plumbing and all of the rest. Would the definition of art be special then? And would the art school I go to be full of engineers?
This never-ending question really speaks to an age-old hierarchy between 'fine art' and 'applied art’ and I believe there definitely isn’t just one answer. It really interested me to research this question as in the industry I will be taking an art over fashion path, but I want to know how I can push that binary of what art really is and how transferring onto a fine art course can push my mind out to think what art really is and how can I bring my love for cloth work into the art industry.
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