Let’s Explore Fashion for Learning, June 2024 Fashion Assistance
Is Art an Excuse for Unwearable Clothing? — Pros and Cons of Digital Fashion
“Is digital fashion still in fashion?” Elektra Kotsoni, Vogue, June 4, 2024, asks those working in it about its future. There was much discussion about whether to also make the digital fashion into 3D reality. The first photo by Rick Owens was definitely digital first. The others I am not sure. All photos above 2024.
When they first appeared a few decades ago, I was aghast. Not knowing whether they were first expressed in digital as a substitute for a sketch, then made in reality, or whether digital was its only expression in reality. However, it seems that some far-out fashion clothing was being designed by brands in real fashion shows at the same time.
Might this be an additional cause of the failure of the successful fashion industry in America, that I knew ? As a successful high fashion designer, from 1950s to 1980s, I created and manufactured affordable fashions for Middle Class consumers that they loved, and are still wearing today.
Fashion Design Education
Even more disturbing, was to discover fashion students aping these brands and digital fashions. What is going to happen to my beloved fashion industry, when there are no longer any young designers making creative, wearable and affordable clothing for consumers? Are they destined to wear T-shirts, jeans, and the same old shapes in dresses, coats and jackets for millennia? There are some textile designers giving some reprieve from the same old shapes, when they are chosen by home sewers and clothing designers. It is important to note that clothing designers are 3D forms related to the body, and textile designers are 2D shapes on material — and are two different categories.
In the 1960s, when I was teaching fashion design in an art college, I noticed that the students were starting to be prepped by other teachers to approach fashion, only as an art, not as science/technical or industry applications. At that time the implications were not obvious to me. Now I see the results of that bias in many fashion schools and colleges.
Knowing the history of the fashion industry, because I worked in it from the 1950s to 1970s and 80s, and then owning my own design and manufacturing business, I did realize that an art perspective was lacking. That is why I chose an art college, in 1951, to help evolve my creative skills along with my technical and business experiences. However, the bias became one-sided for fashion as an art, with distaste and anger at any science, technical and industry perspectives — as I discovered when teaching at the college in the late 1960s, and at other fashion schools and colleges in the late 1980s, after I had sold my design and manufacturing business.
I came to realize that there is some advantage as student projects to make these pieces as sculpture, because it builds manual skills, which are necessary in pattern draping and the making and sewing of clothing. However, art/sculpture and clothing/sculpture have different purposes. Art/sculpture need only relate to itself. If something is enclosing the body, then it should have a harmonious relationship to the body. Pieces above do not, and they are certainly not wearable.
Cutouts are becoming increasingly popular
Belts are everywhere
Some bad shape/fit — answers by redesigning
- Some designers do not like darts, leaving a sloppy fit.
- Cowl is a beautiful answer for bust fit.
- Too tight, buy bigger or don’t wear T-shirts.
- Ugly knees are unnecessary. Cut out fullness in back leg and ease seam on front leg.
I enjoy exploring what is happening in fashion, and explaining it to my readers. Please, young designers and teachers, do not forget consumers nor the human body we are given.
Thank you for reading. Love to you all.
