8 Artists to Inspire LFW Designers

Designers have referenced artists in their collections for as long as fashion critics have asked, ‘What’s your inspiration?’ This season, a number of New York designers eliminated the need for backstage queries by making their admiration plain on the clothes. Jason Wu cited KAWS, going one step further by collaborating with the graffiti artist on a black-and-white flower-petal print that ran through the collection. At Rodarte, Kate and Laura Mulleavy played Vincent Van Gogh’s sunflowers and starry nights across ‘50s prom dresses in an homage to the postimpressionist’s pigments and gestures.

From imagined hotel interiors, to chinoiserie, to the layered contents of a thousand-year-old stately home (Port Eliot), Mary Katrantzou’s designs incorporate impossibly realistic prints inspired by the world of design. Morris, meanwhile, is the textile artist most closely associated with the Arts and Crafts movement. His designs remain an important part of Liberty’s print repertoire and are held in the permanent collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum. The thread of interior/garment crossover and English design connects these two stars.

Peter Pilotto and Christopher de Vos have already demonstrated their receptiveness to avant garde artists, citing the work of Belgian op-artist Walter Leblanc as an influence on their first Resort collection. Josiah McElheny’s hall of mirrors at the Whitechapel Gallery refracts and distorts abstract videos into patterns that call to mind Pilotto’s covetable prints. Wear your A/W ’11 Pilotto gear to visit the installation, on until 20 July 2012. 

Few designers could confront editors’ arachnophobia in such a winning, wearable way. In Deacon’s S/S ’10 collection, he strewed spiders across neon shirts, silk dresses and bustiers, lending the insects a cartoonish air. Sculptor Louise Bourgeois, who died aged 98 last May, humanised her gigantic spider sculpture by naming it Maman. We’d love to see Deacon’s fashion interpretation of some of her smaller scale creations.

Michelangelo Pistoletto’s cardboard whorls make a maze of the Serpentine Gallery and conceal sculptures around every corner. The artist’s interest and means of manipulating space recalls Roksanda Ilincic’s architectural ruffles, which elevate dresses to the stature of sculpture.

Including this coupling might seem like a cheat, given Erdem’s declared admiration for all things balletic and beautiful (his S/S ’11 collection, with its en pointe-style ribboned shoes, was inspired by the Ballets Russes). But it was an affinity we couldn’t keep ourselves from highlighting in light of the impending opening of Degas and the Ballet: Picturing Movement at the Royal Academy on 17 September. There’s no question in our minds: if Degas’s ballerinas were around today, they would wear Erdem.