Coexisting, complementary and over-lapping relations between fashion and Arts. Chad Wys, Giles Deacon, Prabal Gurung and a small Polish project will show you how beautiful this unions can be.
Being influenced by culture, fashion gets along with arts. Paintings, sculptures, architecture and all visual arts give endless inspirations for designers. Starting with simple T-shirt prints up to sculpturally shaped dresses (for example Marchesa’s fall/winter 2008 collection). If you’ve ever seen Campbell Soup shopping bag or hoodie, you know what we mean. But now – let us present some real pieces.
English brand Lulu & Co presented their Winter/Fall prêt-à-porter collection in cooperation with an artist and designer Chad Wys.
He has reinterpreted classical paintings with colours and textures giving them an abstract touch. If you check his artworks, that is exactly what he’s doing, collages, ready-mades, modifications. As Chad said: “If I was a girl I’d totally wear that blue dress”. The collection includes dresses, as well as pullovers.
Photos: Courtesy of Chad Wys, http://chadwys.tumblr.com/post/81993315780/the-lulu-co-autumn-winter-2014-15-ready-to-wear
Giles Deacon. Also British and also a fashion designer. After founding his own label in 2003 he became known from pop-cultural references and multiple references to art. At one of London Fashion Weeks he presented a collection based on Pac-Man theme. In 2013 Giles used motives from the classical statues at North Yorkshire’s Castle Howard to make printings on spring dresses and trousers.
Photos: www.fashionising.com/runway/b–giles-resort-13-25136.html
Coming from classical sculpture to contemporary we meet Aaron Moran, Canadian artist assembling found wood scraps into abstract geometric works. Variety of structures and colours gave the inspiration for designer Prabal Gurung. 
Photos: http://aaronsmoran.com/aaron-s-moran
It’s not difficult to see the link between Gurung and Moran. The garment collection borrows the shapes, colours and origami folds to make a dynamic, fresh compositions.
Photos: www.fashionising.com/runway/b–prabal-gurung-resort-13-25056.html
So now, can we go one step ahead, looking for inspirations in virtual reality? Using programmed data as a design? Krzysztof Syruć, Polish architect and a street artist (Proembrion) invented his own mathematical-based method to generate graphic patterns. They were used, for example, in a project Syruć started together with Asia Borowska – DataAura augmented clothing design. Observing new technologies and the influence we get from living “online” brought the idea of clothes that have their performative, virtual boost.
“We will be collecting ideas of augmented clothing believing that in the near future people will need customization of their appearance in data-filled urbanspace. Fashion will be revolutionised more than ever before because programmed data is the most editable material ever worn”. With a special app you can see the patterns moving and changing.
To see how it works, see the video http://vimeo.com/77460269 and follow the project here http://dataaura.tumblr.com.
Cover Photo: www.wmagazine.com/fashion/features/2013/01/op-art-inspired-fashion-ss/photos/