‘KAHLO TREATED HER BODY AS A CANVAS THAT NEEDED TO BE ADORNED BUT ALSO DISGUISED’
When fashion, art and industrial design overlap, the results can be startling. In this issue, we look at three occasions where these creative fields have come together in unexpected and intriguing ways.
The collaboration between Gucci and young Spanish artist Ignasi Monreal has resulted in a new and distinctive visual identity for the Italian brand. The advertising campaigns, books and limited-edition T-shirts that the 22-year-old has created for Gucci are an ever-so-slightly unsettling mix of intense accuracy and o and surrealism, created in Ignasi’s signature “digital painting” style.
“I try to look at a lot of things, stay cultivated, look at art, the currents and the masters. I love computer games, Japanese animation. So I guess my artworks are really a mix of all that imagery accumulated over the years, with my own spin on it,” Ignasi tells Sarah Maisey in an interview on page 24.
In the exclusive images from Gucci’s spring/summer 2018 campaign that we present on page 26, an upstanding, bespectacled owl in a slick white suit is flanked by two sleek purple-clad Dobermanns. All are wearing Gucci’s inordinately fashionable belt bags. Elsewhere, we see a pair of Gucci’s ubiquitous Ace sneakers, a forked tongue alarmingly extending from the sole of one of the shoes.
This is the kind of distorted reality that we have come to expect from Gucci under the direction of Alessandro Michele. The flamboyant Italian has put Gucci back at the forefront of the fashion zeitgeist, paving the way for Ignasi’s one-of-a-kind illustrations to also go down in fashion history.
Art and fashion also collide in a new exhibition at London’s V&A Museum called Frida Kahlo: Making Her Self Up. Opening on Saturday, the showcase features an extraordinary collection of personal artefacts and clothing belonging to the Mexican artist. Kahlo was acutely aware of the power of appearance, as seen by her dramatic signature style. From the untouched monobrow to the floral headpieces and traditional Mexican garments (most notably the huipil blouses and skirts of the Tehuantepec region), she treated her body as a canvas that needed to be adorned but also disguised, on account of the disabilities that plagued her throughout her life.
With its new Les Petits Nomades collection, Louis Vuitton celebrates a very different kind of art. Decidedly sculptural in form, this collection of smaller decorative objects was created in collaboration with some of the biggest designers in the world, including Marcel Wanders, Patricia Urquiola, Atelier Oï and the Campana Brothers. It is fascinating to see what these creatives have been able to achieve by employing Louis Vuitton’s extensive cra smanship and know-how.
One final piece of art that you might want to look out for on these pages is the bright purple driveway leading up to the Turtle Tail estate in Turks & Caicos, a fomer holiday home of the music legend Prince, which is being put up for auction this week. It is truly a sight to behold.