Indulging
There have been multiple instances where contemporary art has flirted with the fashion world, some more successful than others:
For instance, Louis Vuitton’s collaboration with Yayoi Kusama in 2012 (images 11 and 22). Kusama, despite all the psychological horror that influences her practice, makes very fashionable work (images 12 and 13). The artist has always understood the visual language of garments and Fashion (with uppercase F). Maybe this is why so many of her exhibitions result in selfie opportunities. It is fair, Kusama’s work is attractive, it makes people want to see themselves within its frame.
The most well-known products that originated from this collaboration were the classic models of Louis Vuitton bags covered in painterly polka dot motifs. The elements from Kusama’s oeuvre (the multitude of dots) were shamelessly transferred onto purses, clothes and scarves, creating a play of repetition and accumulation, and essentially a graphic pattern.
Kusama has been fixated on dots since the 1950s. However, her collaboration with Louis Vuitton in 2012, and later another in 2023 (image 23), coincided perfectly with the polka dot mania of the fashion industry. Polka dots made an appearance on the runways of Marc Jacobs, Stella McCartney and MiuMiu in 2012. Later, in the fall of 2023, the motif had another major moment with MiuMiu and the “office siren” look.[1] Interestingly, anartist’s work can become trendy if in tune with the fashion world or with the algorithm.[2]
Kusama wrote in her autobiography Infinity Net, “My desire was to predict and measure the infinity of the unbounded universe, from my own position in it, with dots—an accumulation of particles forming the negative spaces in the net. How deep was the mystery? Did infinite infinities exist beyond our universe? In exploring these questions, I wanted to examine the single dot that was my own life.”[3] It feels radical that, besides this intention, Kusama was open to transferring her dot onto a luxury bag. Not because Louis Vuitton is radical in any way, but because Kusama is not against her work culture hopping.[4] She did not fear that her work, when aggressively placed in the world of fashion (with lowercase f), would diminish its meaning within the art world. Meaning would remain intact in her art practice and it would preserve all of its complexities.
However, other examples of the relationship between art and fashion simply did not have the same effortlessness as Kusama and Louis Vuitton´s collaboration, most likely because they did not taste right in either the mouth of art or the mouth of fashion. For instance, think of Louis Vuitton’s collaboration with Jeff Koons in 2017 (images 25, 26 and 27). A partnership that feels and looks strange, because its outcome doesnot look like either fashion or art. The use of famous paintings from the art historical context feels stale. The bags seem to imitate those you can buy at souvenir shops in Paris, whilst having a much higher price point. Of course, Koons was probably playing with the notion of the highly reproduced work of art and the status of the old masters. However, it feels like Jeff Koons, unlike Kusama, did not take the job of designing a bag so seriously. His taste and fashion sense feel less embodied and developed. This is when the merge of fashion and art falls flat: when the artist is hyper-conscious that their work is about to enter a fashionable context, and therefore has to rethink the work itself. It makes me wonder why Koons did not want to incorporate elements of his own oeuvre into the fashionable object of a Louis Vuitton purse? Koons’ Balloon Dog would look great on a bag![5]
Ultimately, the collaboration failed to deliver major cultural shock value, which, in the context of Koons’s work, is somewhat disappointing. Implementing these master’s artworks is not subversive in the slightest, since wehave seen time and time again that fashion can appropriate art on its own. It does not need an artist to do so. In this case, Kusama’s work is enticing because it is able to operate in the worlds of art, fashion (with lowercase f) and Fashion (with uppercase F).
I am interested in this relationship between art, fashion and Fashion, because I am excited about the loss of boundaries between things. When the autonomy of categories like art or fashion (with lower case f) is questioned, the loss of distinction and inherent meaning allows for imagination. As I mentioned in the first chapter, letting ourselves be affected by an immediate reaction (to whatever it may be) is the only way to create new instances. It is the only way to create at all.
The moodboard is a testament to this precise borderlessness. It takes anything out of its fixed original context (like the fashion or art industry) and gives it a new surface onto which it can bleed. The moodboard I am interested in is not a tool for appropriation; it is a tool for generating. Through this uncontrollable bleeding, new images emerge. The moodboard is the material trace between images. It operates within a system that is left to spontaneous progression, a condition of randomness and uncertainty. It exists in a state of entropy, a slow decline into an orderless visual world.
[1] A look known for its knitted cardigans, pencil skirts, sheer button-up shirts, polka dots and tiny glasses with no prescription
[2] Refering to Instagram or TikTok’s alorithm
[3] Infinity Net, Yayoi Kusama, 2002, Tate Publishing
[4] I am using this term to ilustrate when a piece of media or a work is transferred from one part of culture, for instance art, into another, in this case fashion
[5] I am not referring to a specific Balloon Dog sculpture by Jeff Koons, rather the motif that the sculpture became