ASS2 - Project 2 - Fashion Illustration
Research Point
“Historically, imagery that promoted the fashions of the day, most notably from the early 20th century to the 1950s, was dominated by illustration. However, the discipline lost ground to photography and it was not until the 1990s that illustrators have returned to this domain.” Alan Male 2007
Picking up on the Alan Male quote above, is there a difference between the imagery created by the fashion illustrators from the early twentieth century to the 1950s and those since the 1990s?
Yes, there is a difference in fashion illustration from 1900 to 2000.
I discovered this great link about the history of Fashion
Illustration. https://prezi.com/octuj6agcywf/fashion-illustration/
Fashion illustration has changed so much since the 1900s. In the 1900s it was using traditional methods to create illustrations such as using pen and ink. In today's world, it has declined due to photography. Today's illustrators still use sketching and traditional ways in the first instance to design outfits and see them on a body form but then it is processed into the digital art and built upon software to create their final image.
Fashion Illustration in the 1900s was mainly of women's clothing such as dresses - their illustration showed seasonal modifications to outfits rather than fundamental changes. Children also use to wear the same as their mother or fathers and not had a young style to them. Their portrait of people was to show the natural figure shape unlike later on in the 1990s where body shapes were more exaggerated and a form of expression.
In the 1950s this was the start of fashion becoming more exciting young people started wearing ready to wear fashions and it was a successful decade for fashion. People started wanting to be original by the clothes they were wearing and Fashion Illustration flourished in magazines and advertisements.
http://www.martelnyc.com/artist-collection/t1.html
However, Fashion Illustration in the 1990s made a comeback. Fashion illustration now became looser, artists could express themselves and become recognised through their style. The illustrations were more colourful and vibrant. New Technology was introduced such as Photoshop and mixed media work was also popular, as virtual collages were made possible. Fashion companies were thriving and always trying to become the years best style setting trends that the consumer wanted. Fashion design also came big with recognised patterns for brands such as Louis Vuitton who designed handbags. When I was younger I remember wanting one myself as all my friends were getting one. I didn't think it was the prettiest bag going but I wanted to be in the trend with the people around me to look cool and feel part of the society. You could instantly tell it was a Louis Vuitton bag by the patterns on the material of the bag as the below image.
You would just know it was a Louis Vuitton bag and that was that. Fashion illustrators became iconic by their style and seen as recognised artists.
Research historical and contemporary examples of fashion illustration by looking in magazines, accessing internet resources or visiting galleries. Has fashion illustration changed over this period or is it the fashion of illustration that’s changed?
This is such a good question to ask. I think it's a bit of both. by doing some further research I hope to state my answer.
Historic Examples:
Adolf Sandoz
https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O580317/latest-paris-fashions-fashion-plate-sandoz-adolf-karl/
This era was long dresses and frills in designs as Sandoz has drawn here. He has used Pen and ink with added colour. I only found little about him on the internet and he was not in any books I had either but I wanted to put him here as I think his work is a great example of the fashion in the 1900's.
He is best known for his Gibson girl illustrations. His main medium was pen and ink to create his illustrations He reflected women during the Victorian period.
Charles Dana Gibson
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibson_Girl#/media/File:Gibson_Girls_seaside_-cropped-_by_Charles_Dana_Gibson.jpg (all images)
Charles iconic illustrations showed a great representation of the beautiful and independent American woman at the turn of the 20th century. His wife, Irene Langhorne, and her four beautiful sisters inspired his images he created.
Paul Poiret
Paul was one of the first fashion illustrators in history to use colour printing techniques. His style was less stiff than the usual fashion illustrations around this time.
http://katyandlaney.com/2015/11/17/fashion-illustration-and-paul-poiret/
As you can see from these artists that clothing was simpler and Fashion Illustration was based around drawing natural shaped people.
Contemporary Fashion Illustrators:
Here below are some of Todays Fashion Illustrators who I feel are currently at the top of their game.
Donald Drawbertson
https://donalddrawbertson.com/
https://www.instagram.com/drawbertson/
I ❤️N.Y.
#youlooklikegarbage.
Cavs
https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2015/08/donald-drawbertson-robertson-fashion-artist
I have taken a snippet which is below from the page that I felt was quite inspiring:
Robertson, who recently moved his family to Los Angeles, was raised in Toronto, Canada, where he was asked to leave art school—in part because he shunned realism. “I failed Life Drawing for making all the people longer and skinnier than they were,” he says. “Now it’s the secret to my success.” In the 80s, Robertson helped launch MAC cosmetics, and he worked at several magazines in New York before landing his current job as roving creative director at Estée Lauder. But he never stopped drawing. Robertson’s aesthetic is homemade, a little messy, and collage-like, and that approach extends to his commerce: anyone can buy his work—which starts at $375 for a print and can go to more than $12,500 for a painting—online. “I’m trying to do stuff that’s less expensive,” he says. He believes that art shouldn’t be so rarefied, nor should fashion. How else to interpret a toilet-paper roller tricked out with the Louis Vuitton logo? “Fashion people are essentially children,” he says, laughing. “And the ones who are good are the ones who remain child-like the longest.”
Perhaps in tribute, Robertson published his first children’s book, Mitford at the Fashion Zoo (Penguin Random House), in August. The moral of the story: “Keep your childish instincts,” he says. “Be pure. Don’t try to please people. And don’t bury the crazy.”
Meagan Morrison
https://www.instagram.com/travelwritedraw/
https://travelwritedraw.com/
Megan's work is bright, colourful and very girls in her style. She is perfect at drawing the human form and loves experimenting.
Meagan made her first journey to Dubai and over the course of three weeks, fell madly in love with this city of contrasts. Wildly inspired by the luxurious modernity juxtaposed with traditions, skyscrapers emerging from the desert, she longed for a platform where she could share all that she was seeing, feeling, and illustrating. She also became completely enchanted with the possibility of a life lead by travel and wondered how she could make this her reality as a fashion illustrator. In a moment of pure, uninhibited honesty with herself, Meagan wrote down the three words that best described what she hoped she could do for the rest of her life: Travel, Write and Draw. Meghan then decided to create a blog based on these three works and now she is one of the top bloggers on the internet sharing her fashion ideas and more.
She shows that social media has also helped her evolve as an illustrator in today's world. She can followers keep up with the latest trends, check out other illustrators and also get inspired.
Blair Breitenstein
https://www.instagram.com/blairz/
http://www.blairabreitenstein.com/bio/
Blair has breathed life into some of the must-know names in fashion and beauty right now, including Saks Fifth Avenue and Prada. Blair’s illustrations are very expressive and give contemporary high fashion a unique style.
Largely influenced by high fashion photography, Blair takes these fashion-forward photos into a whole new realm of layered watercolours and messy smudged lines. Featuring luxury designers in most of her illustrations like Mcqueen, Louis Vuitton and Prada, Blair transforms their designs into a personalised expression of them, almost as a response piece. Blair describes her process as spontaneous. She primarily uses watercolour and a small sketchbook. Her focus is to draw the viewer into this new quirky, abstract and chic world of fashion.
I really like her style of drawing people the eyes are made bigger and her figures all seem to have pointy chins. Blair shows that today's fashion illustration is more free with no rules and you can just enjoy creating art whatever your style.
Bil Donovan
http://www.bildonovanlimited.com/
Bil Donovan has a client list that currently includes Christian Dior, where he has served as artist-in-residence since 2009.
I find his style to be quite minimal and he does not draw a whole figure, he draws main lines of a figure that the human brain will instantly recognise as a person. He also uses touches of colours to create moods and atmosphere in his work,
My Answer
Based on my research above I still think that both is my answer. The fashion industry is always changing, new trends, styles and ideas, consumers are looking for the next new thing. This has led to Fashion illustration changing as well.
Fashion illustration has also changed due to technology. In Today world Fashion so much more open and a great way to express ourselves. Humans new ways of thinking have now also changed fashion Illustration, women can now wear trousers and both sexes today whatever they are born can decide who they want to be and what they are. Human evolvement and perceptions have helped change old fashion rules. This shows that the subject matter has changed within 100 years. Old rules have been broken which means people can now wear what makes them happy, comfortable and wear clothing that they think shows who they are as a person.
The fashion of fashion illustration has also changed. Artists are now noticed for their work and are recognisable through their style. The way artists draw fashion helps to generate ideas for the next season trends. This is compared to fashion Illustrations in 1990 - 1950 where there were no trends it was all the same styles, no bright colours and no one looked different.
Even though around this time Photography had taken over there were still some amazing Fashion Illustrators around that helped make fashion Illustration where it is today:
What about the missing decades of the 1960s, 70s and 80s? Was there no fashion illustration taking place during this period?
Mary Quant
https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/introducing-mary-quant
Mary Quant was the most iconic fashion designer of the 1960s. A design and retail successful woman. In her designs, she created super-high hemlines and other irreverent looks that were critical to the development of the 'Swinging Sixties' scene.
Antonio Lopez
Antonio was an illustrator from New York, whose was a fashion illustrator whose work appeared in such publications as Vogue. He was known for being the Picasso of fashion illustration. He captured the pulse of style from the 60s to the 80s, and is still revered as the most inspiring illustrator by our modern illustrators today. He worked with a variety of materials including pencil, pen and ink, charcoal and watercolour. Antonio illustrated for a broad range of art movements, from Pop Art to Surrealism.
From the late seventies onwards fashion had branched out quickly, with each designer having his or her own distinct style.
Exercise: Everyday fashion
Over the next few days, I am going to sketch people around me from events that I have coming up and I will then post here to show my drawings and ideas.
Here above are some sketches I have done whilst out on a farm day trip with family. I have looked at people closely and written around my sketches as much information as I could to describe the people and the clothes they wore on that day.
I am now going to pick one of my sketches and make a final image. I am going to use my favourite medium paper to create the final fashion illustrations.
Partners Mother
My partner's mom is in her late 60s, she has quite a square body shape. She sufferers from a bad back and you can see how her back looks slightly stiff. Her clothing is of an autumn fashion style with boots and a jacket to keep warm. her coat is green and her skirt is brown, which emphasises the mood of autumn. She also has a shawl around her neck and a pair of glasses on. To finish her look she has got a medium sized bag. I am going to now cut the clothes out of paper and form her again as a final illustration. I am going to use brighter colours then what I have described to make it more appealing to myself.
Here above is my final image of my partner's mom. I think it came out really well I really enjoyed cutting out the clothes and putting her altogether. I still stuck to using green for her coat as it was her main fashion feature, I just used a brighter green than it was. I think my style is unique to what's out in the fashion industry and makes the clothes pop out at you.
Amanda the Bride
My close friend Amanda got married and it was such a beautiful special day. I decided to sketch her as I thought it would be great to make her dress out of paper. Her white dress had a layer of lace over the top and draped along the floor. She also had a very long vail and a bouquet of flowers.
Here above is my finished illustration of Amanda. For her white dress, I cut out the shape in white card and then found some lace material to cut out the dress again and put a layer of it on top of the white card to get the lace effect that I was looking for. I think she turned out really well and it was great to just be creative and to create something with a bit of texture.
Fashion Design Practice
I also had a go at creating and designing my own fashion ideas (above) I really enjoyed using my imagination and sense of style to make some great outfits. Just like the previous drawings where I was sketching people around me I have still used notes for key information such as colours, material types and special bits of added detail. I like the dress on the left the best because of how the dress falls and how the skirt area is layered. I am going to attempt this as a final illustration out of paper.
Here above you can see I have now cut out all of the shapes I need to create the dress. When going through my papers, I decided to do a tie-dye effect where the dress gets darker towards the bottom using blues and purple's. I am also going to attempt to capture the riffles in the dress by letting them flow over each layer and not sticking the ends down. This will help to create deep shadows to emphasise the layers.
I have finished my dress design and I think it looks great. I had fun working out how to make the dress pop out of the page. The bottom of the skirt is very effective how I managed to make the paper go into a wave shape to create ripples to grasp the idea of the dress. The dress design looks beautiful and very appealing to those who may be attending a ball.
My dream shirt dress
Sometime's we already have an idea of what we want or looking for before we go shopping. One day you may come across a style or notice the next trend which every fashion shop is selling and people are wearing. You then decide you would like to wear one too and then you think to yourself about the colours and the style. This happened to me this week as I have been after a shirt dress for a long time, but I have been waiting for one to come out with the colours and style that I can imagine myself wearing. I thought this would be a good opportunity to create my perfect shirt dress as an illustration.
Here below are some of the shirt dresses I have seen yet are maybe just not the right style or colour I am looking for:
I want my idea shirt dress to have the following:
Colours: Teal, pinks and lilacs
Pattern: to have some sort of flowers on - maybe large flowers
Style: quite long - to the shins, bow with a collar around the neck. and an underlayer.
From my ideas above I will now begin to create my paper illustration of my perfect shirt dress.
This is the shirt dress I definitely had in mind. Its got all the colours I wanted, the pattern and the style. Maybe one day I could have a go at making it myself but I am really happy with the outcome and my paper style again helps to show the layers of the shirt dress.
I am really happy with the four designs I have created, all from different aspects of designing. From looking at people to designing my own fashion and then seeing what's on trend and adding my own ideas to it. I think my paper style works well within fashion illustration and I have actually enjoyed designing and producing my final ideas. I want to try finally fry a different approach which is more expressive - I want to draw a design but then just left my creativeness flow and see what happens.
Heres my expressive illustration, I did it quickly to keep the flow and just had a bit of fun with colours. I like the fact that the arms look as though they never end. I used Pro-markers and they seem to work great when it comes to using them in fashion design. My friend did a fashion design for a degree and she gave me a book called 'Colours for modern fashion'. It's amazing! its got so much in there and has helped me a lot to understand and enjoy this part of the course. She said when she brought it that it came with Promarker pens and in the book it shows you how to use them in fashion design so it was great to dive in and have some fun learning about this type of illustration.
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