From Bella Hadid’s spray on Coperni dress to Kanye's attention seeking stunts, this year’s fashion season was more sensational than ever. As Paris Fashion Week came to a controversial close yesterday (4th Oct, 2022), marking the end of the show season, we look at three times the fashion world collided with contemporary art with iconic results.
Salvador Dalí X Elsa Schiaparelli
Considered the first ever fashion collaboration between an artist and a designer, when Salvador Dalí and Elsa Schiaparelli worked together in the mid 1930s, it was a groundbreaking partnership. Dalí was a prominent Surrealist working in Paris and Elsa Schiaparelli was a haute couture fashion designer moving in similar circles. Both creatives were fascinated by the use of the everyday object in fashion and art and both visionaries pushed the boundaries of their medium.
Throughout their careers Schiaparelli and Dalí collaborated countless times, creating a range of iconic couture, each project more daring than the last. Most notable was Schiaparelli's Women’s Dinner Dress, also known as the Lobster Dress. The cream silk A-line gown had a red lobster motif designed by Dalí printed across the skirt. Inspired by the artist’s fascination with lobsters and their representation of sexual freedom, the dress was originally made for Wallis Simpson who wore it for a Vogue photoshoot shortly before she married the abdicated Edward VIII. This fashion moment went down in history with author Ann Shen describing the dress as “charged with erotic flippancy” and giving the British public “even more reason to hate Wallace”. The innovative dress was completed with sprinkles of parsley to garnish and originally was going to also have mayonnaise as the finishing touch but Schiaparelli insisted that this was too far. Despite Dalí’s original idea being slightly modified by the designer, the pair went on to create other iconic projects such as the Upside Down Shoe Hat and the Skeleton Dress.
Damien Hirst X Alexander McQueen
In 2013, Alexander McQueen teamed up with renowned contemporary artist Damien Hirst to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the designer’s celebrated skull scarf. Both McQueen and Hirst were known for their fascination with the natural world and they shared a strong aesthetic vision which focused upon symmetry and repetition.
Their existing similarities made the partnership as seamless as it was successful. Damien Hirst’s ‘Entomology’ paintings, kaleidoscopic arrangements of multiplying insects and butterflies, naturally lent themselves to McQueen’s designs and so the artist re-designed these various arrangements into McQueen’s iconic skull motif. Creating 30 unique scarfs, the collaboration became an instant hit and is still fondly remembered nearly a decade later.
Takashi Murakami X Louis Vuitton
Louis Vuitton is well known for its support and patronage of the arts with artists like Richard Prince, Yayoi Kusama and Jeff Koons all working with the fashion house to varying degrees of success. However, the French luxury brand’s most iconic artist partnership was undoubtedly with Takashi Murakami back in 2003. The collaboration defined fashion in the noughts and with Y2K style making a comeback, the Louis Vuitton X Murakami Speedy bag is as popular as it's ever been.
The artist’s take on the brand’s muted monogram bags saw the signature collection transformed into a vibrant rainbow of colour that mirrored the artist’s own palette. The partnership between Murakami and Louis Vuitton lasted twelve years and during that time the Multicolore monogram line became a highly sought-after status symbol. Everyone from Paris Hilton to Lindsay Lohan owned the It bag and even today celebrities like Kendall Jenner, Rihanna and Madonna still can be seen sporting the collaboration.
