Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama teamed up with French luxury house Louis Vuitton for a collection of bags and apparel.
Since Andy Warhol, the Pop alchemist who mixed celebrity, fashion and culture as a scientist combines chemicals in a beaker, the lines between those worlds have been blurred. Fashion designers borrowing from art, artists collaborating with design houses, and museums - beacons of fine art - staging exhibitions that celebrate designers' works. It's all become a big jumble.
In recent years, there have been Louis Vuitton's string of collaborations with Pop artists, and - most recently - has splattered the polka-dot technique of the Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama on its leather goods, timed perfectly with the Kusama retrospective at the Whitney Museum. Then there's American abstract-expressionist painter James Nares, who worked with Coach on five limited-edition tote bags.
A poster for Yoko Ono and threeASFOUR for the exhibition, Portrait of A Generation.
In a recent exhibition in New York, called Portrait of a Generation, where artists were paired up to create portraits of each other, pop-culture icon Yoko Ono worked with avant-garde fashion designers threeASFOUR. The trio manipulated a photograph of Ono using cut-outs and fractal elements (integral parts of their fashion collections). The result was a black-and-white picture that plays with perception and illusion, in relation to the image one often associates with Ono. More importantly, however, it illustrates how the art world seamlessly integrates itself in fashion.
The Yves Saint Laurent Mondrian dress
To look back at the history of fashion, one could cite many stellar confluences of fashion and art - Chanel and ballet impressario Serge Diaghilev, Elsa Schiaparelli and Salvador Dali, Yves Saint Laurent and Piet Mondrian. These artists were part of the popular culture of their times.
Robert Diro in Taxi Driver
Pop-cultural movements like 1960s Mod are always mentioned whenever the graphic black-and-white trend surfaces. Neon, this summer's raging colour choice, is also attributed to the same era. Dr Martens boots, camo and wife-beaters under leather biker jackets bring to mind the punk movement and the influence of the 1976 Robert DeNiro movie, Taxi Driver. The alternative music of Kurt Cobain and Nirvana gave rise to grunge style: Slouchy, unkempt, plaid galore and overall cool.
