Fashion is art, but for how long?
By Clara Kearney
Fashion as an industry and as individual expression has been changing for a long time. When my Granny was my age in the 60s, she would sew her own dresses for any night out in the dance halls in Dublin. It’s a far cry from my Zara jeans and Motel Rocks halter neck, not just for the style but for the hands that made them and the direction of my money. The ills of fast fashion have been a dominant cultural talking point for a long time now, something the mainstream was only forced to reckon with when the Rana Plaza collapse occurred in 2013. Fashion has been commercialised and mass produced for a long time now, but there was always a part of me that held on to the artistic integrity of high fashion. Designer brands, runways and red carpets, haute couture and fashion weeks, is all of course gross displays of wealth and not innocent of exploitation, but it is art. The detail, the dedication, and the passion turns a mundane experience, choosing what clothes to dress ourselves in, into art. Just look at Jonathan Anderson’s Dior SS 2026. There is no night in the year more central to this fact than the Met Gala, but it feels very ironic to set the theme of ‘Fashion is Art’ for the Gala when it is funded and honorarily chaired by Jeff and Lauren Bezos.
Fashion, art and technology have always been in flux with each other
In an industry increasingly chasing profit instead of artistry, it isn’t a surprise, but it is showing that the stain of late-stage-capitalism, in the form of Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, has reached Fashion’s Olympus. Fashion, art and technology have always been in flux with each other. Nearly every major technological advancement has caused a rupture in the art world. When the camera was invented, many artists saw the loss of human effort in that form and became more emotive and abstract, establishing Impressionism. Oppenheimer’s invention of the atomic bomb caused the growth of the dystopian genre. Art is made in human reaction to change and suffering. The primary technological advancement of our time is of course, AI, and inextricable to this advancement are the billionaires that are pushing it and whose money is contributing to human suffering in the process, but that’s another story. What role does ‘art’ play in an industry funded by AI Billionaires? I believe it dosen’t. As the saying goes, money can’t buy taste.
I look to three names to prove this: Sargent, Schiaparelli and Sanchez. In 1884, British American portraitist John Singer Sargent painted ‘Madame X’, one of the most important fashion portraits ever made, wherein one strap caused international scandal. Depicting the socialite of Madame X with her collarbone exposed and bejeweled strap fallen caused such a controversy in the Paris salon that Sargent ‘self-exiled’ in London for a year. As one of my favourite artists and paintings, I was eager to see it depicted in the Met. If you had told me 24 hours ago that Schiaparelli’s Daniel Roseberry and Zendaya’s Law Roach would be designing and styling it, I would have been ecstatic. However, it was a sore disappointment.
Lauren Sanchez Bezos was the model, and it is an objective opinion that it was a plain dress, and I find it very ironic. Roseberry has been leading Schiaparelli for seven years now, and he has maintained the brand’s integrity wonderfully. Elsa Schiaparelli started her fashion house in 1927 and was noted for her collaboration with the surrealist Salvador Dali. Schiaparelli was bold, sculptural, eccentric; everything this dress was not. Like Sargent, she took risks, was deeply invested in other art forms, and made a broad cultural impact. Through their work, Roach and Roseberry do the same thing. However, when all these artists and all the money in the world come together for this look, it is a plain silk form fitting dress with a pearl strap and conventional hair and makeup. Sanchez appears a symbol of her husband’s wealth: use someone else’s artistry, repackage it without any of the risks so that it can be sold to the mainstream. There is reference made to artistic legacy and there are names to give it credibility, but its artistry is nowhere to be found. Even worse, Schiaparelli only made two appearances, and although I loved Kylie Jenner’s dress, there is no signature Elsa or Roseberry Schiaparelli to be found.
Sanchez appears a symbol of her husband’s wealth: use someone else’s artistry, repackage it without any of the risks so that it can be sold to the mainstream
The bell hasn’t tolled for fashion altogether. eBay was another major sponsor of the event with SZA and others wearing entirely repurposed garments – however while I appreciate this visibility, the real pioneers of the repurposed fashion movement are ‘ordinary’ people, not those attending the Bezos Ball. High Fashion artistry was still present; Robert Wun’s designs took Schiaparelli’s place as the most surreal and sculptural on the carpet. The Bezos’ presence just feels indicative of a changing direction of the fashion world. A world where the same people who control our algorithms, who also control our AI, who also control our fashion tastemakers (if Anna Wintour was bought, who can’t be?) and who are also in the pockets of those who control the fashion of the Everyman. So many independent designers and maximalist brands are thriving, so maybe there’s hope for a 21st century reactionary movement. Maybe I’ll try to gain my Granny’s sewing capabilities.
Image: Liza Rusalskaya via Unsplash
