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.