Fashion as Art .... or.... I love his shoes

Fashion as Art ....  or.... I love his shoes

Salvador Dali.  His name evokes images of weird moustaches, outrageous outfits and an erratic, bizarre and eclectic lifestyle.

Google some of his art work (or ask me to send you an amazing slide show of his work via email) and be horrified, fascinated and amazed.  Some of his work makes me shudder with the graphic violence depicted; other pieces make me smile with the whimsical and delicate images of dreams and fantasies.  A man of many faces; a split personality of beautiful and ugly.

After seeing this painting of his a few months ago, his name also belongs up there in the world of high end fashion.  

I would wear them.  I really would.  Those of you who know me know I am not up there with the high fashionistas.  Love the looking, but can’t even come close to the wearing.  But these shoes just look amazing.  The poison green with the watermelon skin patterning and seeds in the insole.  What a statement they make.

Fashion is what you adopt when you don't know who you are. (Quentin Crisp)

Fashions, after all, are only induced epidemics. (George Bernard Shaw)

Fashion is transient, it changes with the whims of those who need to keep up their sales.  It morphs and borrows from the past without revealing anything fresh and new.

Style is different in that it revolves around the classic pieces that never go ‘out of fashion’.  Blue jeans, blazers, black tights. 

Art defies description.  It is all encompassing, individual, introspective. Too many mediums and styles to pigeon hole. 

High end fashion?  Pure art.  No one is honestly expected to wear high end fashion.  That is why designers have a range of different wardrobes and shows.

                                                       Alexander McQueen

There are 5 different categories in clothing design.

Directional: forecasting trends for the following year ie. everyone in fur vests for winter (and hopefully not men in jodhpur camouflage! Hmmm... not sexy).

                                                                                                                          Jean Paul Gaultier

                                                                                                                                                                             

                                                                                                                         

Thematic : can be kitschy but builds on and around a theme;  ie. flounces and frills

Christian Dior

Commercial: sell, sell, sell, ie. easy to wear jumpers and tailored pants. This encompasses the ready to wear.

 Country Road

Derivative: harks back to past fashion ie. the Grace Kelly era, the Grace Jones era (aren't they both gorgeous!).

Grace J.

Grace K .

Technical: this is the pure couture, pure art.  And this is where Salvador Dali nestles.  The dream that is art, using the mediums of cloth, colour and texture and pure inspiration.  The art that is watermelon shoes.

                                                                                         Viktor and Rolf