Hello Dolls!

Fresh off an art opening and gearing up for the next open call, we wanted to post some collaborations between artists and fashion designers throughout history! Check out what happens when art and fashion meet:

Elsa Schiaparelli & Salvador Dali

Perhaps the most prominent early example of an artist-and-designer collaboration is Elsa Schiaparelli’s work with Salvador Dalí and the Surrealists. The Italian designer’s creative fashions of the 1930s were inspired by and, in some instances, conceived in collaboration with a group of Surrealists including Jean Cocteau, Christian Bérard, and, most notably, Dalí himself. While Bérard and Cocteau’s art served more as an inspiration for Schiaparelli’s independent creations, Dalí and the designer produced what are often noted as the first true hybrids of clothing and art in a collaborative manner. The partnership resulted in two of Schiaparelli's most iconic garments of the 1930s: the Organza Dress With Painted Lobster (1937) and the Tear Dress (1938), as well as the notorious Shoe Hat from her Winter 1937 collection. These designs are often cited as a milestone in the history of both art and fashion. In her autobiography, Schiaparelli declared herself first and foremost an artist, regarding dress design “not as ‘a profession, but an art.” The fact that she sought inspiration from her close friends and avant-garde artists in the Surrealist movement and evoked major Surrealist themes in her designs was a natural extension of this belief.

Piet Mondrian & Yves Saint Laurent

No art and fashion collaboration list would be complete without the classic and iconic Yves Saint Laurent dress inspired by artist Piet Mondrian. Saint Laurent released the 1965 dress for the Autumn season; its simple A-line, and tidy shift silhouette was typical of the mid-sixties. What was perhaps less typical was the clear allusion Saint Laurent was making to Mondrian in his uses of graphic black lines (running both horizontally and vertically) and white and primary color blocks. Its seamlessness is deceiving—the dress is made up of many of individual pieces of wool jersey and was hand-assembled to hide obvious seaming. This dress is not only an icon for Western fashion but also records the importance of Mondrian's work during the period of the 1960s.

Keith Haring & Nicholas Kirkwood

For men, women and everyone in between there are shoes—and then there are "shoes." The latter is capped in quotation marks to imply that all footwear is (and was) not created equal. And footwear designer Nicholas Kirkwood is on-trend with high quality shoes as usual; this time with his collaboration with the Keith Haring Foundation. While the collection was only available exclusive to the Joyce boutique in Hong Kong, the full collection was released at Mr. Kirkwood's newly opened retail space on Mount Street in London beginning in July of 2011. Kirkwood has used Haring's classics like Safe Sex and Radiant Baby in a bold and playful way that not only points to Haring's genius as a legible illustrator but also to Kirkwood's clever and elegant appropriation of Haring's imagery.

Yayoi Kusama & Louis Vuitton

2012 was a good year for Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama. She is best known for her use of polka dots, and a retrospective exhibition of her artwork was shown at two major international museums over the course of one year. If you don't recognize her name, you may have seen the dotted flower sculpture of Beverly Hills or the Yellow Trees that enveloped the Whitney Museum development in the Meatpacking District of Manhattan. Kusama told Women's Wear Daily, "Marc Jacobs came to see me in Tokyo in 2006, and he asked me if I wanted to come to the States and do fashion. That sort of encouraged me because...Fashion has always attracted me." From this 2006 encounter, blossomed a series of garments, window fronts and shop designs that—thanks to Jacobs' collaboration—made Kusama's artistic visions come alive across the globe. Unfortunately, the clothes paled in comparison to the graphic and hypnotic storefronts. Most notable was London's Selfridge department store that featured Kusama's favored giant pumpkins—and subsequently, a completely sold out collection. Printemps in Paris donned mirrored window fronts with polka dotted mannequins and silver baubles reminiscent of Kusama's 1966 Narcissus Garden work.

http://www.complex.com/style/2013/04/the-50-best-artist-collaborations-in-fashion/yves-saint-laurent-x-piet-mondrian

http://www.artspace.com/magazine/art_101/art_market/art_101_art_and_fashion_collaborations-5804