Is it fashion or is it art? A question asked by many, but with rarely a clear and  satisfactory answer to it.

 

Over the decades, fashion designers and fine artists have collaborated numerously and variously to create elaborate pieces that merge art and fashion. These have ranged from Louis Vuitton and Takashi Murakami, Elsa Schiaparelli and Salvador Dalí, to the current crop of art influenced Spring/Summer shows displayed on the Paris catwalks and curated by stylists, editors and designers to produce collections that aimed to bridge a gap between the two disciplines.

 

For his menswear show, Dries Van Noten included three artists that were working on an exuberant mural throughout the show, and for his womenswear outing, he digitally printed Korean, Japanese and Chinese costumes from London’s Victoria & Albert Museum. Jean Paul Gaultier and Manish Arora referenced the graffiti and street art scene with tags and bricolage imagery printed on their garments. 

 

In a celebration of arts and fashion, the British Fashion Council and the Bazaar Fashion Arts Foundation creatively paired contemporary artists with some of the leading British designers to create the concept of Britain Creates 2012: Fashion & Art Collusion in partnership with London Mayor, Boris Johnson. The project is part of the London 2012 Festival, which is on from June to September this year, and gives the opportunity to iconic names in fashion and arts to collaborate and create unique designs that will be revealed on 27 June at a VIP Gala fundraising event at the Old Royal Naval College. 

 

These exclusive creations will also be displayed to the public at the V&A during July and will also feature sketches and proposals, images of work in progress and specially commissioned portraits.  Following this, they will be displayed as part of the Selfridges Wonder Windows programme.  British designers and contemporary artists pairings include – Nicholas Kirkwood and Simon Periton, Hussein Chalayan and Gavin Turk, Paul Smith and Charming Baker, Peter Pilotto and Francis Upritchard, Mary Katrantzou and Mark Titchner, Giles Deacon and Jeremy Deller, Matthew Williamson and Mat Collishaw and Jonathan Saunders and Jess Flood-Paddock.

 

Once these creative collaborations are revealed, the fascinating and tantalising tension between the worlds of art and fashion can be explored even further.

 

 

For more information on Britain Creates 2012  click here