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The New Contemporary Art Magazine
Jo Cope, a conceptual fashion designer, mixes fine art and fashion. The artist intends to create pieces that are “hybrid installations that are perhaps only possible in a gallery but that nonetheless create a wearable garment and suggest alternative futures for fashion design.” Due to this blending of fields, her work has appeared in design stores, boutiques, and galleries across the world.
Based in the Philippines, multimedia artist Yvonne Quisumbing has made a name for herself creating wearable art for the fashion world. Her designs have taken her to the runways of Paris and Osaka, and recently lead to a collaboration with UNIQLO. The designer also channels the fashion industry in her surreal paintings, which explore complex notions of beauty and identity.
The surreal sculptures, installations, and photographs of Dutch artist Guda Koster subvert fashion and create entirely new worlds with its elements. Considering herself more sculptor than photographer, each of these images begin with a live experience that has been constructed, cut, sewn, posed, and then photographed with a timer, as the artist is often present in the pieces.
Swedish fashion designer Bea Szenfeld is known for her experimental style that uses unconventional materials to create her extraordinary pieces. Her Haute Papier collection features handmade outfits constructed entirely from paper, showcasing her imaginative approach and technical ability to transform the material into wearable art. Now, Szenfeld takes her origami-inspired fashion from the runway to the theatre in a collaboration with the Royal Swedish Opera, featuring dancers modeling her designs. The images of ballerinas dressed in Szenfeld's voluminous, sculptural costumes are currently on display at the Dansmuseet in Stockholm in an exhibition called "Everything You Can Imagine is Real". Images by Karolina Henke.
"When I started to work in three-dimensions, I became free," says artist Mariko Kusumoto. The Japanese multi-media artist, now based in Massachusetts, has found fantasy in the ordinary since she was a little girl, digging through her grandmother's dresser for treasures to play with. Today, she uses a transparent synthetic fabric to bring her imagination to life, creating wearable art that blurs the line between fashion and sculpture.
"Void Season" is a different kind of fashion project that makes us excited to see how the future of fashion is going to look. What first appears as an eccentric, simulated dance and a color-coordinated Tumblr exploration turns out to be a study of algorithmic textiles and procedural surfaces. This digital magic was created by the Berlin, Germany based design studio known as Zeitguised. Their mesmerizing visuals are crafted as a unique blend of tantalizing design, handmade algorithms and bespoke generative processes.
The paper dress captured the vibrant and consumerist zeitgeist of 1960s America so precisely that the fashion press speculated about paper garments taking over the market. But as the novelty appeal of paper clothes wore off, their downsides became more apparent and they very soon ended up as waste. Los Angeles based Venezuelan photographer Cristobal Valecillos' series "A Cardboard Life" elevates paper back to a high fashion level, but his work's allure comes with an urgent message. All of his images are made out of recyclable materials from the clothes on his models to their environments, styled after the splendor of Pre-Raphaelite painting and making us look at trash with new eyes.
Berlin-based artist Vermibus shocks passersby with haunting public interventions, in which he replaces fashion advertisements with his own manipulated versions. To create the staggering, sometimes startling images, Vermibus splashes a solvent across the printed surface. The chemical reaction causes the faces and flesh of models, as well as the logos and brands they represent, to wash away. This process can be viewed in a video produced by Open Walls Gallery in Berlin.
Photographer Fabrice Monteiro collaborated with Senegalese fashion and costume designer Doulsy (Jah Gal) and the Ecofund organization to create "The Prophecy," a series in which the destruction of the African landscape is highlighted through theatrical costume and narrative. Larger-than-life characters wear costumes partially made from the trash found in the ten polluted environments where Monteiro photographed his models.
While he works primarily in advertising and editorial photography, Richard Burbridge has a vision that's distinctly his own, no matter who the client is. The photographer has been based in New York City since 1993 and has shot a slew of covers and fashion features for the likes of Italian Vogue and Dazed & Confused. Though he photographs models in luxurious couture, Burbridge throws traditional beauty conventions out the window. He often alters the models' faces and bodies with surreal props — bondage masks, baby doll heads, food, foam and anything that will give his sitters an otherworldly appearance. Unafraid to violate the models' pristine hair and clothing, Burbridge confronts viewers with the beauty within the ugliness (and vice versa) and creates images that challenge our expectations.
At the intersection of fashion and sculpture you’ll find the wearable artwork of Copenhagen-based artist Nikoline Liv Andersen. “My work is expressive, living in the borderline between fashion and art with a big focus on textiles, textures and delicate details” Anderson said, describing her work. Many of Andersen’s designs challenge the purpose of ordinary materials, using them to create intricate works of art.