The Designers Inspired By Art For AW22

There has always been a synergy between art and fashion, and the autumn/winter 2022 collections were awash with artist collaborations and creative inspirations.

We saw fresh takes on trompe l’oeil with Louis Vuitton’s spray-painted creations, and surrealism was taken to new heights with Moschino’s art-encompassing escapist silhouettes. Roksanda collaborated with artist Eva Rothschild on an installation for the backdrop of her collection at the Tate Britain, while Maria Grazia Chiuri lined Dior’s show set with portraits from feminist Italian artist, Mariella Bettineschi. At Loewe, Jonathan Anderson collaborated with Anthea Hamilton on a runway set featuring larger-than-life leather pumpkins.

Here are five noteworthy names inspired by art this season.

STELLA MCCARTNEY

Stella by Stella was the title for Stella McCartney’s AW22 collection, celebrating iconic American painter and sculptor Frank Stella by exploring his career spanning minimalist to maximalist abstraction. Signature Savile Row tailoring featured graphic prints inspired by his 1994 Spectralia and was translated in monochrome on glossy evening dresses. Linear structures from Frank’s V Series featured as colourful stripes on knitwear and coats, while fluid dresses were decorated with drawings from his Ahab print. A perfect example of state-of-the-art style.

 

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DIOR

Dior’s creative director Maria Grazia Chiuri is known for her celebration of women, and her AW22 runway set featured portraits from Italian feminist artist Mariella Bettineschi. Entitled ‘The New Era’, Maria enlisted Bettineschi to create a series of images based on portraits of women by great European artists from the 16th to the 19th century: from Johannes Vermeer’s Girl with the Pearl Earring to Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. The show transformed the images, originally seen through the male gaze, into subjects through the female eye.

 

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LOEWE

Jonathan Anderson is forever pushing boundaries and creating sublime new worlds: this season he tapped into surrealism for Loewe’s AW22 collection. He sent 3D balloons attached to dresses down a runway lined with giant leather pumpkins by British artist Anthea Hamilton. Car-shaped dresses and puckered lip bustiers also made an appearance and stiff, sculptural leather dresses looked like bronze draped clothes worn by statues. Anderson has mastered the joy of escapist fashion.

 

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FENDI

Kim Jones’ collection for Fendi was a fusion of memories from Karl Lagerfeld’s soft spring/summer ’00 collection and the prints used for the house’s spring/summer 1986 collection, an ode to the geometry of the 1980s Memphis art movement. Sheer blouses feature Memphis prints – a blend of art deco and pop art – and feminine ruffled two-pieces inspired by SS00, although not directly referenced, appeared to be reimagined in a typically Memphis colour palette.

 

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ERDEM

British designer Erdem Moralıoğlu imagined the night lives of a group of extraordinary women who embodied Berlin’s progressive cultural spirit in the 1930s. His muses – photographer Madame d’Ora, painters Jeanne Mammen and Elfriede Lohse-Wächtler, and dancers Anita Berber and Valeska Gert – had liberated identities, nearly a decade before fluidity in fashion and culture became popular. Erdem AW22 was the epitome of deconstructed glamour suited to the city’s underground clubs at the time.