We’re celebrating art this October, including the strong synergy between art and fashion that was prevalent on the autumn/winter 2023 runways.
This season’s collections were awash with artist collaborations and inspirations. We saw Gabriela Hearst pay homage to 17th-century artist Artemisia Gentileschi at Chloé, and Salvador Dali’s iconic surrealism paintings were brought to life on clothes at Rabanne. Roksanda looked to the work of Japanese visual artist Atsuko Tanaka for her sculptural silhouettes, and Harris Reed, creative director of Nina Ricci, collaborated with painter Jeanine Brito on a fairytale vision.
Here are the best artistic collections this season.
Chloé
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For the Chloé autumn/winter 2023 show, Creative Director Gabriela Hearst wanted to share the importance of female storytelling and give women the leading role. She was inspired by 17th-century baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi, who overcame a range of societal and personal struggles to emerge as one of the most celebrated female artists of her time, painting powerful women. Hearst’s clothes, although not a visual translation of her paintings reflect the women within them, the fashion they were wearing and the lives that they lived. Historic references such as high necklines, full skirts and bishop sleeves were translated into modern looks and followed a strictly monochrome colour palette. But Hearst added an element of surprise amongst the muted, with a look that depicts a painting by Gentileschi and her story of Esther before Ahasuerus (c. 1629). This was transposed onto a dress as a graphic, multicoloured, tapestry – the work of the Mumbai-based Chanakya International embroidery studio, which, through its craft school, provides women from low-income communities with a high-quality education in hand embroidery. Decorating the Renaissance-inspired silhouettes were hand-baroque pearls, hand-blown glass droplets and raw semi-precious stones that directly reference Gentileschi ’s paintings.
Rabanne
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Chasing dreams was the idea behind creative director Julien Dossena’s collection for Rabanne this season, with a sprinkling of looks inspired by the surrealist masterpieces of Salvador Dalí, celebrating the historic friendship between Dalí and Francisco Rabaneda Cuervo (better known as Paco Rabanne). Linked by their radical artistic expression, and as a tribute to the late Paco Rabanne, the collection features four paintings: The Shades of Night Descending (1931), The Dream (1931), Sun-Table (1935) and Meditative Rose (1958) which were translated on to clothes in an other-worldly aesthetic that captured the DNA of the brand: visionary futurism.
Nina Ricci
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Designer Harris Reed made his debut for French fashion house Nina Ricci in March of this year, and collaborated with German surrealist painter and emerging female artist Jeanine Brito on a fusion of art and fashion for a memorable collection. Taking three of the house’s signature archival symbols – the Three Graces, the iconic Apple, and the Doves – Brito reimagined them through her fantasy world, which Reed printed onto dramatic silhouettes; true to the brand’s glamorous heritage while starting a journey of artistic evolution.
Roksanda
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The London-based brand by namesake Roksanda Ilincic is known for its sculptural silhouettes and evolving femininity. This season Roksanda looked to the work of Japanese visual artist Atsuko Tanaka, who was part of “Gutai”, the Japanese avant-garde movement that flourished between 1954 and 1972, to guide her finale frocks, which held their own – quite literally – on the runway. Draped dresses were boned with curved padding and imagined in neon pink, green and blue, mirroring Tanaka’s canvases of colourful abstract paint circles. But, as a brand rooted in rich artistic oeuvre, Roksanda explored her own abstract expressionism too, as luxurious silk dresses became the canvas for explorative print techniques, likely inspired by the strokes and colours of American painter Helen Frankenthaler, whom she often references in her designs.
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Lead image: Chloé
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