After a long stint in supporting roles, fashion illustration is back on the rise. For decades, illustration was supplanted by photography on magazine covers and advertising posters. The latter simply better met the needs of brands’ marketing and communications departments. Art directors, models and highly paid photographers created editorials and consumers bought magazines and clothes based on this image.
Fashion illustration had also become obsolete at fashion shows. Where Kenneth Paul Block once sketched the dresses that graced New York’s runways from his front-row seat, photographers caught every detail with their lenses and almost instantaneously sold the images to image services. Finally, the social media also removed these middlemen and women, the visitors of the shows simply published their snapshots themselves.
As a result, print media have also lost their importance. Almost anyone with a smartphone who happens to be in the right place at the right time can take beautiful photos of street styles or models. Fashion illustrations have therefore gained a lot of popularity on social media during the pandemic – an exquisite fashion illustration cannot be created with the latest Apple technology or filters. Also, fashion illustrators no longer have to compete with photographers. Both art forms have their own justification and can coexist. The latest developments in the industry reinforce this knowledge.
As part of his mission to push the boundaries of online fashion communication, Nick Knight regularly invites fashion illustrators to interpret the catwalks for his ShowStudio website. Recently, Knight projected in collaboration with the V magazines illustrators’ artworks on the bodies of models wearing haute couture creations by Schiaparelli and Viktor & Rolf, harmoniously blending the two- and three-dimensional aspects of haute couture. The Fida (Fashion Illustration and Design Awards) award has just concluded a competition in which industry leaders were invited to examine the artworks of Fida members, who sketched live the London collections of Simone Rocha, Halpern and Molly Goddard . Critics included Biba founder Barbara Hulanicki OBE, illustrator Richard Haines and experts from internationally renowned fashion schools such as Parsons New York, Central Saint Martins in London, the Mumbai School of Fashion and the Istituto Maragoni Florence.
Live sketching returns to the catwalks
Jack Irving invited a handful of illustrators to his recent London show to capture the inflatable theatrical creations that have made the designer a favorite of Lady Gaga, while elsewhere in the city an exhibition by fashion illustrator Gladys Perint Palmer brought the Londoners fashion week, including Suzy Menkes, distracted from her hectic runway calendar. During Paris Fashion Week, British designer Giles Deacon hosted in collaboration with the Perfect Magazine a live drawing class with models like Bimini, the star Ru Paul’s Drag Racewho wore make-up by Pat McGrath and clothes by Richard Quinn.
Influencers and editors leaning over drawing boards and earnestly sketching models posing in an art room wearing high fashion is not a common sight on social media. Deacon has led illustration workshops for brands such as Apple and Alexander McQueen’s Sarabande Foundation.
Connie Gray, co-founder of London-based gallery Gray MCA, which specializes in fashion illustration, told FashionUnited in January at the opening of her exhibition, entitled ‘Drawing on Style’, which took place as part of the ‘Masters of Drawing’ event in New York : “Fashion illustration was almost second rate until recently. They were looked down on a bit because it was illustrative art, commissioned work.” However, the tide seems to be turning.
‘Legends Only’ exhibition opens this week at London’s Claridges Hotel, showcasing the work of perhaps the leading fashion illustrator of our time, David Downton, who has been Artist in Residence there since 2011. Downton began his career in fashion as a backstage and front-of-house illustrator for John Galliano’s Dior shows. Last year, Bil Donovan, another artist in residence, in this case for Dior, wrote opposite WWD the enigmatic allure of fashion illustration: “The line between fine art and commercial illustration is almost blurring. Fashion illustration, at least in haute couture, isn’t just about selling a product, it’s about the essence of the product. Some of the works are so abstract.”
When designer Kim Jones contacted Antonio Lopez’s estate to use the late artist’s drawings for his Fendi Spring 2022 collection, which is now available in stores, he didn’t want to simply apply artwork to garments, as is the case with the by Lopez-inspired Kenzo 2017 collection was the case. Instead, Jones infused his fluid brushstrokes and bold style into the garments through inlays, jacquards and abstract motifs, incorporating the artist’s spirit into the design.
London illustrator Sue Dray recently posted on social media a film montage of her multiple appearances as a sketcher at London Fashion Week, a lone figure behind an easel – nestled against a wall of photographers. Guests seemed as intrigued by what she created as they did by what graced the runway, a reminder that fashion is both an art and a business.
An illustration sketched in real time is given value when viewed through the modern lens of slow fashion and people’s growing appreciation for artisanal products or craftsmanship. A runway sketch, albeit executed quickly, is the antithesis of fast fashion’s fast-paced product drops and high-pressure, generic promotional imagery. While the clicks and flashes of intimidating cameras have become a habit at runway shows, watching the human hand artistically slide across the page of paper is quite another for guests.
This article was previously published on FashionUnited.uk. Translation and editing: Barbara Russ