One of the most shocking moments in Project Runway history was when Nina Garcia declared, “Fashion is not Art. Stores are not museums. You go to stores to buy clothes. You do not go to stores to look at clothes.” Seriously? Her fashion credentials should have been revoked then and there. Also her membership in the sisterhood. Has she never gone window-shopping? Has she never gone “shopping” with her friends just to look?
Marc Jacobs also declared that fashion is not art, though his argument was more cogent and fully-formed. “Fashion to me is not art because it is only valid if it is lived in and worn. I make clothes and bags and shoes for people to use, not to put up on a wall and look at. I think clothes in a museum are complete death. I have seen exhibitions of the clothes of Jackie Kennedy and I am not interested in her wardrobe. I am interested in the life and the women who wore those clothes.”
Of course, the answer to that question depends on how you would answer the question “What is art” If you define it as static and inviolate objects separate from function and use, then fashion cannot be art. If you define it as the combination of craft and materials in a creative expression of ideas about form and function, then fashion is clearly an art. I think, however, that one Alexander McQueen dress is also a definitive proof that fashion is art.
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