‘I wanted to be a sculptor — for me, it is just the same working with fabric or stone.’ – Madame Gres.
A lot of great fashion designers are influenced by architecture and sculptures because those art forms offer designers a rich source of inspiration for grasping shape, texture, proportion and cultural significance. It allows them to push the boundaries of their own creativity and produce innovative and meaningful designs. The idea of designing garments using unconventional materials and thus either emphasizing or deconstructing the body shape has surfaced more than once in modern fashion. Since Paco Rabanne revolutionized fashion using aluminum sheets, rhodoïd tablets, metal plates, and other materials, more and more designers have further explored the notion of Wearable Art with a surreal merger of sculpture and clothing. They create clothes that are a form of expression, on the borders of fine art and architecture. Interestingly, while fashion designers are influenced by sculptural practices, sculptors are not much involved in fashion.
In the latest collections for spring-summer 2024, many of the established as well as the up-and-coming designers embraced sculptural forms. The collections explore the ways where clothing and sculptural elements converge and interact with a mounting level of intricacy.
Various fabrics such as chiffon, leather, cotton, and silk are warped into new forms and shapes creating spectacular displays and thought-provoking installations and proclaiming designers’ self-expression. Thoroughly sculpted those wearable art pieces are now appearing not just on runways but in stores as well. So, your next venture into the high-end boutique or department store might also be educational in art and culture.
Whether creating statuesque pants or a noteworthy silhouette, designers turned sculptors, are regarding fabrics like clay to be molded around the body (sometimes literally.) We could observe ‘wearable art’ being pushed to the limit, where the runway garments are more sculptural than sartorial.
Comme Des Garcons SS 2024
Some looks at JW Anderson’s SS 2024 runway show were made from plasticine. The opening look featured a hoodie and a pair of shorts produced entirely out of clay.
JW Anderson’s SS 2024
KWK by Kwok presented a new interpretation of a hoop skirt layering enormous discs to create the impressions of giant blooming space-age flowers.
KWK by Kay Kwok Show at London Fashion Week, September 2023
Sculptural fashion offers a garment that at a certain moment and to a certain extent distort the body shape either by constriction or by enhancing a volume.
HARRI debuted inflatable skirts and jackets to go with his signature balloon trousers
The boundaries between garment and sculpture seem sometimes blurred, and it’s more about the relationship between the wearer and clothing: the sculpture is personified and the wearer is sculpted.
A CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund finalist, Melitta Baumeister showcased garments in mind-blowing structures and volumes which were achieved by using foam. Clothes look like unyielding installations seemingly having a life of their own.
Runway fashion often goes beyond the conventional selection of department stores. Although sculptural fashion isn’t intended to be worn on an everyday basis there are more and more wearable-art styles that appeared this current fashion season.
Balenciaga SS2024- Demna Gvasalia’a attire for Balenciaga seems indeed to be curved from marble
Sarah Burton’s departing and most moving collection for McQueen proves once again how fashion serves both art and function. There is always a dialogue between the garment and its wearer.
McQueen SS 2024
The human body in Sculptural fashion also serves as a medium and is altered vividly either by excessively outlining its natural shape and curves or exaggerating them, so the outcome is unique and impressive. Rick Owen’s SS 2024 collection was yet again marked by sculptural layering and draping where we can see the designer’s passion for the body and architecture and the art of sculpture.
Rick Owens SS 2024
Sculpture and fashion have plenty in common: modeling; draping, cutting, shaping, casting, and molding. Iris Van Herpen has always related to sculpture and architecture in her ever-growing preoccupation with the future and innovations.
Iris van Herpen Couture fall 2023
Dutch designers Viktor Horsting and Rolf Snoeren encourage us to see more in clothing than its mere covering-the-body means. The designers play with various materials to manipulate and change the clothing’s normal function and thus transforming both the body and the vibe.
House of Viktor&ROLF Couture fall 2023
This season Daniel Roseberry continued as ever carving and draping sculptural, silhouettes to converge the margins between garments, jewelry, and sculptural arrangements of textiles. “I wanted this season to feel much more free, spontaneous, painterly,” said Daniel Roseberry before the show.
Schiaparelli Couture fall 2023
Sculpture in fashion unveils the artistic property of fashion, accentuating symbolism in clothing and assigning garments different meanings. As ever, we are in the Era where fashion dares to dream.
Noir Kei Ninomiya SS 2024