Art x Fashion Collaborations: A Collision of Creativity
Featuring KAWS x Comme des Garçons, Jean-Michel Basquiat x Dr. Martens and more.
The worlds of fine art and fashion have long enjoyed a mutual fascination. Collaborations bridging the two date back to at least 1937 when friends Salvador Dalí and Elsa Schiaparelli came together to create a gown with a hand-painted lobster on the crotch, a surrealist take on sexuality.
An early experiment pushing the boundaries of both mediums, every era since then has given way to a number of influential and innovative art x fashion designs, from Yves Saint Laurent’s iconic 1965 Mondrian collection to Cindy Sherman’s 1994 collaboration with Comme des Garçons, in which the artist printed photographs of disjointed mannequins, bruises and smeared makeup directly onto garments. More recent art x fashion collaborations, such as Supreme’s capsules with Japanese artists Nobuyoshi Araki and Toshio Saeki, and Kanye West’s work with artist Vanessa Beecroft, have continued to blur the lines between the two worlds.
Below, a curated selection of 12 collaborations shattering the walls between fine art and fashion.