Is fashion art?

Valerie McPhail
MSMU Class of 2015

(4/2019) The last two months have been abundantly filled with things that I love. February brought fashion week: a whirlwind of time spent running around downtown Manhattan to attend fashion shows, speaking with designers and experiencing the fleeting moment of a new collection. It is in these facets where fashion's charm dwells. Only a few weeks later, March ushered New York Art Week. During the second week of March, artists, curators and gallerists gather together across a variety of shows in the City - Spring Break, NADA, and The Armory Show, naming a few - to share their work by the confines of a booth, and sometimes a theme. For example, the Spring Break Art Show's Theme was "Fact and Fiction." From one month to the next, one week to the following, creative expression buzzed around me. New York has offered a blur of inspiration.

To many, the succession of these events does not correlate. However, my imagination understands differently. It demands answers upon contemplation of the relationship between two moments in time owned by two forces in culture. What is the relationship between fashion and art? Perhaps the most significant debate to fashion academics in modern teaching, ponder: is fashion art, and art fashion? The answer cannot be simply, or directly returned. Definitively, art is a human form of creative expression, while fashion is explained as clothing designed in a popularly declared tasteful manner. When both unite, their identities in relation to one another become fuzzy. For with attempt to rationalize, an influx of follow-up questions persist.

Can fashion, marked in the functional term, be considered art? How is couture explained or vintage shopping defined? Often the Chanel Boy Bag is referenced as an iconic piece, collected by aficionados in the same way a Banksy is coveted. Furthermore, how are the museum's interest, exploration, and display of fashion reasoned? The manipulation of clothing design, fabric, and outfits by the underrated, Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT), and the infamous Metropolitan Museum of Art (MET) present exhibitions that showcase fashion on display not for consumer or press, but for public consideration. All of these contemplations are an offset in the quest for a definite conclusion.

Haute Couture fashion

The style of Haute Couture is a unique form of fashion. Translating from the French to define fashion as high [end] dressmaking, this particular style of fashion must mark specific requirements to fulfill its definition. After all, it wouldn’t be fashion without its rules. The Business of Fashion clarifies a defining attribute, "Haute Couture houses must present a collection of no less than 50 original designs — both day and evening garments — to the public every season, in January and July." Leading questions to fashion regulations inspire. What is couture fashion, custom made designs, if it is showing on a runway? For the meaning of this custom made dress, detailed for one specific client in mind, becomes accessible to a broader audience on the runway, where it becomes a product to showcase the art of skillful handwork design. Decades later, the life of this garment may live in another’s wardrobe. Snagged from an estate cleanout or donation, I imagine the past of beautiful but off-fitting Sonia Rykiel pieces discovered in my favorite fantastical shop, Narnia, in my neighborhood in Brooklyn. With disappointment, I have denied purchases, after experiencing the strange beauty of a beautifully aged garment, not made for me. No, I did not experience the look from a bench seat on the runway, but then again there are other ways to admire the craft of fashion.

Garments in the museum

Fashion in the museums is experienced just as a guest would gaze upon a painting hanging on the wall. The manipulation of fashion for museum consideration, at the FIT School Museum or the MET collection that brings about showy first Monday in May, is more than the social media posts that attend to the dresses worn by celebrities, when viewers are focusing on a particular outfit as they enter the Gala. The museum collections become a learning experience. In the same way, fashion can be taught in text and seminar, and the museums bring book reading into being. The FIT Museum’s current exhibition, "Fabric to Fashion," showcases mannequins dressed in timeless pieces made of velvet, silk, and jacquard to explain the history of fashion is in its fabrication. The Museum released a concluding statement: "Fabric In Fashion invites visitors to examine the objects on display, taking particular note of the materials, their complexities, and their changing roles throughout history. Within high fashion, fabrics are explicitly and carefully chosen. They illuminate their moments in fashion and culture." History informs that fashion has been utilized to project an outward message; this can be considered fashion for show.

Everyday fashion

In the day-to-day, cultural understanding of fashion revolves around expressions of personal style. The way a person matches the details on his or her outfit – mixing prints, pairing a jumpsuit with a fedora, or pairing a denim button down to a jean – are stylistic decisions people follow in suit. This is the new definition of fashion. With a grain of salt, it is fashion experienced by artful appreciation. With opposition, clothing regarded by a non-fashion crowd is purely functional. Clothing, whether or not it is defined as fashionable, is worn out of practical necessity within society. On the contrary, an artistic mind desires fashion with creation and intention. This approach to fashion is personal, because it understands fashion as an expression of self, and yet, acknowledges the possibility that certain fashion and designers will attract attention from the world around. This possibility keeps fashion in the conversation of art form. Why would anyone dress for the attention of others? The same exclamation can be addressed to the reality where celebrity outfits have become fashion news.

Perhaps we need fashion in museums. Museums places that urge us to gaze, observe, and reflect. It is upon discovery that we reason something new about our existence; in the world of fashion this means that clothing is more than superficial. Similarly, as a painting exudes appreciation for its beauty and mastermind creation, fashion can ignite the same fire. Without concluding whether fashion is art, and contrariwise, both industries continue to play with the idea that fuels the fire. Graphic tee shirts subsists in vogue and the FIT exhibit will close in May, passing the torch to the MET just in time for the first Monday in May, when the MET Gala opens their fashion expo. Their magnetism is apparent and speaks for itself.