Is Fashion Art? Can Art be Fashion?

These are questions I have been asking lately.

Firstly, I was putting together a show for the Ecofam project which focused on recycling old fashion to make new fashion. The pandemic halted progress but my fashion curiosity was whetted.

Could I make art fashion? Could I make fashion art?

I decided that the best way for me to fuse these two strands was by focussing on the artwork as the central purpose of the fashion. This also meant I didn't have to get out my sewing machine. My stitching skills are a bit limited to dressing the kids in recycled velvet curtains. (Ask them, this did actually happen).

The act of putting my art on a dress shaped wearable canvas has been great fun this week.

I have noticed that I need to get away from the idea of the aesthetic of fashion to do it properly, in the spirit of the project. I need to stop getting sucked into the sense of what the dress will look like. If I start doing that, I start thinking like a buyer at Primark.

It is hard, I am sucked into the aesthetic constantly. I am a fashion victim, born into the slavery of looking good and turning heads. I went to boarding school and became a label slave. Then there was punk, the Blitz Club, Seditionaries. Later I ran the Brighton arts Club and hosted fetish parties. Clothes have been a very important part of my public image.

I personally really like my awkward-looking dress designs. The seemingly misplaced collage-like ones with disjointed emotional messaging. The weird ones are really working for me. The ones that I think people would look at and say 'what the actual fu......'

Some of my designs have been made into repeat textile patterns. I like the patterns. Yes they are aesthetic but they are also edgy. It feels a bit like me saying, 'look at this....now look at it again'.

Plus I do like the idea of hidden images.

I can make all sorts of mischief.

Look closely for the genitals, the guns, the drugs, and the porn.

I will be putting all the artworks from my portfolio onto my dresses. I have been a practicing artist for around 15 years so there is a huge portfolio to turn into fashion art.

Is it fashion? Not really, it is art though.

See more of the art dresses by the Dominartist here

www.dominartist.co.uk/dresses