A Conversation with Valerie Steele about Fashion and Art

by Ingrid Mida

Valerie Steele by Aaron Cobbett

Dr. Valerie Steele is the Director of the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York as well as the Editor-in-Chief of Fashion Theory. She spoke with Ingrid Mida on the topic of fashion and art on August 23, 2011. This is the transcript of their telephone conversation.

Ingrid: In July, I interviewed Matthew Teitelbaum who is the director and CEO of the Art Gallery of Ontario and in my conversation with him, he suggested that for a fashion designer to be considered an artist, he thought it was important for them to have the specific intention to engage in the artistic community before they could be considered as art. And I wondered what your reaction might be to that?

Valerie: I think that is a valid objection, because art is not just the object itself, be it the painting or the dress, it is also the belief in the value that it is art which is created by quite a number of different people collectively, including the creators themselves. Whenever I’ve questioned whether or not fashion is art, some people have gotten annoyed and said “how can you of all people question whether fashion is art?” But I have to question it, because designers as varied as Karl Lagerfeld, Rei Kawakubo, and Miuccia Prada have all denied that what they do is art. Part of the issue is who controls the definition of art? And does the creator’s intention trump all other interpretations of the work.

Let me step back for a minute.  Certain kinds of art, like classical music and old master paintings, achieve 100% buy-in; everyone agrees that this is art. Other kinds of creative endeavors -- like cinema, photography, and jazz -- were formerly not regarded as art, but increasingly over the past 30 or so years have been accepted as art, so that you have a photography department at the Museum of Modern Art, jazz is regarded as a great American art form, etcetera. I would say that fashion is one of those categories which is in the process of being reevaluated as art, but that process is still very much contested.  The person who is most useful to me in thinking about this was Bourdieu, who has written about the construction of art, and about how you have to have a group of people (dealers, curators, museum directors and collectors) who agree that something is art, and you also have to have some kind of consensus that the creator is an artist.

For example, some designers such as Hussein Chalayan have suggested that they may be artists, because “we studied at Central Saint Martins, where fashion is regarded as one of the arts, maybe a kind of body art. It’s true that we had to look at the business angle because we had to sell it, but we also received training as artists.” Most fashion designers , however, do not receive that type of training; they are trained to be fashion designers. Most of them regard themselves as fashion designers, not as artists.

Ingrid: That is an interesting perspective but there is so much overlap between the two especially if you consider the way that the Met presented McQueen’s work as an artist and the thematic premise of the show was that McQueen was a Romantic individualist, a “hero-artist who staunchly followed the dictates of his inspiration.”. The intent seems to be to present his work as an artist and that fashion was his medium.

Valerie: Yes you could argue that, and because the Met is an art museum, that is an implicit message behind all of their exhibitions of fashion.  You cannot look at the McQueen show in isolation. The Met had the Chanel show with Lagerfeld and many other designer exhibitions.  Do you say that everything at the Costume Institute is art because it is at the Metropolitan Museum of Art? The McQueen show was  brilliant, in part because McQueen was the greatest fashion designer of our era.  In addition, Andrew curated the exhibition brilliantly and was working with McQueen’s collaborators to create the ambiance that existed within his fashion shows, which many regarded as a type of performance art or theatrical art.

There is no consensus yet that fashion is art. However, by showing fashion in museums, it has encouraged the idea that fashion is art. It is true that if you look at a McQueen or a Balenciaga in the context of an art museum, it has the aura of a work of art, but it doesn’t mean it was created to be art.

Ingrid: That leads me to the next question referencing the Jean Paul Gaultier show. When I interviewed Nathalie Bondil, Director of the Montreal Museum of Fine Art, she said she didn’t really care that Jean Paul Gaultier had expressed the opinion that fashion is not art. She was more interested in the underlying premise of his work that beauty has no singular shape, age, gender or sexual orientation and that this was the important message to convey.

Valerie: That is an important message to convey, but not one that has to do anything with art. Art is not defined by the pursuit of beauty and has not been so for at least 100 years.

Ingrid: Most artists have a premise that underpins their work so if there is a socio-political message by which to reference their work, I think that is relevant. The JPG show used the animated mannequins and other means to convey an art installation like presentation. Since you are a curator yourself, do you think that a curator can make fashion into art by the way it is installed or by incorporating lights, sound, video?

Valerie: Not singlehandedly, no. A curator is one of the participants in the art world who can help promote the idea that fashion can be interpreted as art, but it is not really up to one individual curator any more than it is up to one individual designer to make a flat out decision as to whether fashion is or is not art. That has to be a collective decision. So no matter how much we admire a particular designer or regard the work as being as visually and intellectually gripping as a painting or a sculpture, it is not something that we can individually decide -- that it is art or is not art.

Regarding the animated mannequins in the Jean Paul Gaultier exhibition, I think that the faces, while fascinating, conveyed Gaultier’s belief that fashion is part of life, not that fashion is an art form. There is a real split between designers, like Paul Poiret and Elsa Schiaparelli, who thought that fashion is art, and those like Chanel and Gaultier, who say that it is part of life.  You also have certain artists who have tried to transform the material of life into art.  And you have certain critics who believe that fashion is  art’s evil “Other.”

Ingrid Mida is a Toronto-based artist. writer and researcher who recently gave the keynote address at the Costume Society of America mid-west conference.

Conferences in New York

Cover of Not A Toy published by Pictoplasma

Coming up are two conferences of interest. At the Museum at FIT, “Fashion Icons and Insiders” is taking place on November 3rd and 4th, featuring speakers including Caroline Weber (author of Queen of Fashion: What Marie-Antoinette Wore to the French Revolution and professor of French at Barnard), Thierry-Maxime Loriot (curator of the exhibition The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier), and Thelma Golden (Director and Chief Curator of The Studio Museum in Harlem).

On a completely different but equally interesting topic is the conference organized by Pictoplasma and hosted by Parsons, which takes place from November 3rd to November 6th. Exploring the topic of contemporary characters in art and design, it features among its list of speakers the Wooster Collective and the American artist Mark Jenkins, known for his street installations.

Pictoplasma recently published the book Not A Toy: Fashioning Radical Characters edited by Vassilis Zidanikis of ATOPOS and accompanied by the exhibition ARRRHG! Monsters in Fashion at the Benaki Museum in Athens.

Francesca Granata

When Does Fashion Become Art?

by Ingrid Mida

This is the abstract of my keynote address "When Does Fashion Become Art?" to the Costume Society of America mid-west conference which took place at the University of Northern Iowa on Friday, October 14, 2011 at 4 pm. It has been reproduced here to give a context for the upcoming publication of the transcripts of my conversations about art and fashion with Valerie Steele and Harold Koda here on Fashion Projects.

Alexander McQueen Black Duck Feathers Fall 2009-10 Solve Sundsbo Studio (Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Clothing can be a visual mirror of our inner selves. We each get dressed in the morning and make choices how to present ourselves to the world. We construct our identity with our choice of clothing and accessories and signal our belonging or not. This expression of identity through dress makes it a ready subject for artistic practices and interpretation and both artists and designers have considered notions of the body and identity as articulated through fashion.

There has been much debate about whether fashion is art. Fashion scholars such as Sung Bok Kim, Sandra Miller, Anne Hollander and Elizabeth Wilson have considered the question. In my interviews with four curators and scholars, including Matthew Teitelbaum of the Art Gallery of Ontario, Nathalie Bondil of the Montreal Museum of Fine Art, Valerie Steele of the Fashion Institute of Technology and Harold Koda of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, there was no consensus. This was not surprising to me given that fashion designers themselves do not agree on whether fashion is art.

It was an instinct – as a result of my work as an artist - that led me to frame the question in a different way. Instead of asking “is fashion art” it seemed to make more sense to ask “when does fashion become art?” After all, both fashion and art require the translation of an idea into another form. Both share a visual vocabulary and process-oriented development. Both fashion and art also have commercial aspects driving their conception. And both can include multiples as elements of a series or collection.

But, not all fashion is art. What falls into the realm of fashion is just too broad for that statement to be true, especially when fashion can include both garments of haute couture and trendy mass-produced items.

Changing the question to “When Does Fashion Become Art?” leaves open the possibility that some fashion might be considered art. This is especially true when contemporary art is defined by the expression of an idea or a concept. The object – whether painting, sculpture, video, installation or clothing – is important, but only in terms of the manifestation of the idea.

Nevertheless, ideas expressed in terms of fashion are accessible to audiences in a way that contemporary art often is not. One does not have to be a fashion scholar or understand the complex and divergent theories of how fashion works to decipher the language of clothing. We do it unconsciously every day and to me, it is this quality that makes fashion as art such a powerful statement.

Some curators have embraced the concept of fashion as art. Recent noteworthy exhibitions of this type have included The Concise Dictionary of Dress at the Blythe House, London in May 2010, Rodarte, States of Matter at the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles in March 2011, McQueen: Savage Beauty at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in May 2011 and The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier at the Montreal Museum of Fine Art in June 2011.

Within each of these exhibitions, fashion was presented as a means of conveying a specific conceptual premise. This premise was not just a source of inspiration, but was a message or statement about society, identity or the body. And it is this aspect of fashion – when the form of expression is based on a thematic premise -- that defines for me the point at which fashion becomes art.

Ingrid Mida is a Toronto-based artist, writer and researcher who is interested in the intersection of fashion, art and history.

Daphne Guinness Exhibition at The Museum at FIT

Guinness by David LaChappelle

by E.P.Cutler "Daphne Guinness in Water" Los Angeles, CA 2008. Photograph by David LaChapelle.

It is rumored that Bernard-Henri Lévy originally wooed Daphne Guinness with the line, “You are no longer a person; you are a concept,” an idea that her eponymous exhibition at The Museum at FIT further solidifies. The multi-media exhibition co-created by Valerie Steele and Guinness features over 100 garments and accessories, as well as a number of short films and a floating hologram of Guinness (à la Kate Moss for Alexander McQueen’s Fall 2006 collection.)

The show begins with a concise cabinet of curiosities featuring Guinness’ trademark sky-high shoes. The gravity-defying platforms by Olivier Theyskens for Nina Ricci are on display. (Gaga fans, Daphne wore them first.) Alexander McQueen’s take on the motorcycle boot complete with a one-and-a-half inch spike jutting out like a modern-day spur is available for viewing, as is one of his baroque botany creations with flowers for platforms and leaves for heels. The first garment on display is by McQueen as well: a custom-made meticulously bejeweled catsuit with flowing cape. The cape appears ethereal, as if the fabric was somehow made out of jellyfish. Even without Daphne in it, it seems to emanate an aura.

Fine mesh screens divide the main exhibition space into themed rooms: “dandyism, armor, chic, evening chic, exoticism, and sparkle.” (The screens, a brilliant curatorial choice, allow for the mannequins to be positioned in a plethora of ways, which avoids monotony and still allows for visibility. The back of the garment may face the viewer on one side, but the front is still visible through the screen on the other side.) The “Dandyism” room shows fiercely structure ensembles. Apparently, Guinness' balks at the renewed interest in la garçonne styles, perferring to embracing a chromophobic version of dandy masculinity. Ultimately, though, all of the outfits seem to be feminine versions of Karl Lagerfeld’s personal uniform. Not coincidentally, many of them are made by “the Kaiser” himself.

Dresses and shoes from the ARMOR. Photograph courtesy The Museum at FIT.

Another room, and perhaps the most interesting one, is “Armor.” Daphne Guinness is quoted saying, “I think it’s very beautiful to be able to cover yourself in metal. I love the color and the way it reflects. But it is also a protection.” I wish the exhibition completely revolved around Guinness’ use of fashion as a protective armor, a pervasive thread throughout the oeuvre of her wardrobe. Toward the end of the exhibition, mannequins don not only her clothing, but also wigs of iconic Daphne Guinness hair. The wigs, created by Isaac Davidson of Wigbar, are the best I’ve ever seen exhibited and create a haunting effect of an army of Daphne Guinnesses, which would perhaps be Guinness’ best bet at armor.

While the exhibition is a triumph and a must-see, it leaves one with more questions than answers. Daphne Guinness’ personal history and significance as a fashion figure is briefly alluded to but not delved into. It is taken for granted that the viewing demographic is already well versed in her noteriety. (Granted, those at the opening—including fashion’s biggest and brightest bold names: Valentino, Cecilia Dean, Oscar de la Renta, Calvin Klein, Derek Blasberg, and Stefano Tonchi—were quite familiar with it all.)

Hopefully, the forthcoming book will offer more insight into Guinness. However, I doubt it. Guinness has mastered the art of the British aristocrat, where seeing and revealing are entirely different things. A life of wealth and visibility has rendered Guinness the perfect postmodern icon, hyper aware that she has become a hyper-real version of herself. What a concept.

Red suede shoes by Nina Ricci. From the collection of Daphne Guinness, to be featured in the exhibition Daphne Guinness. Photograph courtesy The Museum at FIT

The show runs from now until January 7, 2012.

E.P.Cutler is currently a Master of Art Student of Fashion Studies at Parsons The New School for Design. She worked as an Archival Researcher on the film, Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has To Travel, which will be in theatres spring 2012. With a background in fashion journalism, she has written for New York Magazine, Marie Claire, and MYKROMAG.

Estethica at London Fashion Week

by Rio Ali

It’s easy to get caught up in the glitz and glamour of Fashion Week when there is so much excitement about emerging young London designers. It was only a few years ago that the likes of Christopher Kane, Marios Schwab and Louise Gray were showcasing their debut collections to unsuspecting audiences; now they are fashion heavyweights commanding the order of LFW. Celebrated for its endorsement and support of fresh design talent, it is widely accepted that as the capital of experimental and extreme style, it is London that people look to for inspirational and progressive approaches towards fashion. So it is only natural that London takes this tradition one step further and applies the same forward-thinking attitude towards ethical and sustainable fashion initiatives.

Launched at London Fashion Week in 2006 and sponsored by high street retailer Monsoon, Estethica is a revolutionary endeavour conceived to support the growth of sustainable fashion and exhibit the elite of eco design. Celebrating its fifth year and cementing its prominent place on the British Fashion Council’s LFW schedule, a brunch was held to inaugurate the exhibition, where the designers participating were able to enlighten and educate over champagne and canapés. Nineteen carefully selected designers and ethical fashion companies (chosen for their merit in design and commitment to sustainable methods of production) showcased their efforts for spring/summer 2012, The guidelines state that to be part of the Estethica family, the designer must be working with organic, Fairtrade and/or recycled materials.

The BFC is doing great work in raising the profile of these brands and designers with a conscience, and in turn ethical fashion as a whole. Providing the opportunity to be showcased at the heart of London Fashion Week is a coup in itself; a unique platform that these designers are fully aware of and take advantage of wholeheartedly. Of these nineteen bright young designers, each has a unique take on the principles of design practice and a distinct aesthetic. Most noteworthy, their limitless passion for ethical fashion is not compromised by their love for beautiful clothing and accessories proving that when it comes to dressing, one can be stylish and sustainable.

As the exhibition’s sponsor, Monsoon’s range of sustainably sourced and ethically produced apparel titled L.O.V.E is the perfect example of a major high street retailer going against the grain of popular high street retail concepts. New to the fold, Eva Zingoni brings ‘sustainable couture’ to the exhibition, with her lux-inspired collection based on recycled fabrics cut from excess materials otherwise discarded by Parisian fashion houses. Eco-friendly favourite, Lost Property of London, known and loved for their fashionable yet functional bags recycled from abandoned fabrics, returns to Esthetica. Jewellery designer Joanna Cave presents her collection of recycled silver and ethically sourced pearls next to and in association with Partimi, an eco-friendly ready-to-wear line that uses organic wools, silks and linens. Both brands take their inspiration from childhood memories and the beauty of nature. It is important to note that these designers certainly benefit from the support of organisations such as the Environmental Justice Foundation and the Soil Association Certification These bodies are also part of the collective effort of educating consumers and ensuring that every stage of a garment’s production process is accredited for.

There is certainly a demand for a new attitude towards fashion. The days of trend-based quick fixes and questionable quality in garments are rapidly fading – phrases such as ‘the triple bottom line’ and ‘upcycling’ are becoming part of everyday fashion. This is indeed a very welcome departure and the start of a brand new era for ethics in the fashion industry.

All photos by Rio Ali

Rio Jade Ali is a London-based fashion writer and consultant, currently working on heritage projects with Burberry and Margaret Howell. She is undertaking her master’s at the RCA in Critical Writing in Art and Design.