Fashion is mining modernism

Line drawing

The trend of reduction and communicating without the use of excessive elements continues to serve as our current favourite motto — less is more; clearly evident at Preen and Antonio Berardi. A forerunner of this style, artist Piet Mondrian’s linear influence is easy to detect in the Balmain S/S 2015 show, where the shapes and colours were reinterpreted as unevenly sized, vertical lines. The Bauhaus school revolved around the theory of form following function — a sensibility that seeped in from the precursors of the movement, Suprematism and Russian Constructivism. Ironically, the idea of simplification led to creating a mood that was open to interpretation. Like Gauri & Nainika, who took the minimalist route and clubbed curved lines with a structural twist, a combination that is dramatic to some and extremely simple to others.

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Natural control

Universal order and harmony were the core virtues of Modernists, who felt the need for clear and concise expression. Russian artist (and Bauhaus cheerleader) Wassily Kandinsky strove to express through colour and precise geometric shapes. He went as far as associating a yellow triangle, a red square and a blue circle with our psyche. Jacquemus seemed to follow this route, as his larger-than-life clothes were at once disordered and structured. It filters down to this season's must-have extras — Louis Vuitton's ‘Tribal Mask’ collection features swathes of colour in sharp structure. Looking for an easier-on-the-pocket route? Snag Aldo’s chunky, primary-coloured floaters.

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Art inspiring fashion isn’t at all a new phenomenon. But Spring/Summer 2015 finds a running theme within a single movement — Modernism. From Jacquemus’ orderly disorder to Gauri & Nainika’s abstract minimalism, take a little tour of art you can actually wear.

Starting point

Modernism was one of the earliest rebellions against societal structure, tradition and everything 'classic'. It was completely unlike Realism, in the sense of seeing abstraction in forms. Like the floating shapes, sudden lines and colour-blocking (or Kazimir Malevich’s Suprematism, for the novice) which were a patterned fixture at Wendell Rodricks and Angelo Marani’s S/S 2015 shows. While Marani replaced the primary colours with pastels, Rodricks used black to make his mellow brights pop. Roksanda Ilincic, in turn, took the Modernist theme up a notch and used abstract geometrics to partition her silhouettes.

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Inner atmosphere

Modernism advocated authentic representation of one's psychological atmosphere — an idea Sigmund Freud explored in his 1899 book, The Interpretation Of Dreams. Showing a glimpse of this thought, JW Anderson at Loewe tried to express chaos with precision through unevenly cut bits of coloured fabric hanging on a black dress. Designers like Junya Watanabe and Issey Miyake (whose iconic imagery with photographer Irving Penn is now a shortcut to understanding his body of work) have always communicated abstraction through their clothes. Watanabe’s S/S 2015 show, for instance, featured a series of circular looks, inspired by Orphism; where the clothes became the performance rather than an aid to the performance. The irony lies in not seeing something for what it is, but rather having an intuitive sense for its interpretation, like a quiet conversation between the subject and the object, to be observed. 

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