Tea Strainers amp; Safety Pins

Picture a situation where you have money to spend but nothing to spend on. That was the situation at last week's couture shows in Paris. J...

Picture a situation where you have money to spend but nothing to spend on. That was the situation at last week8217;s couture shows in Paris. John Galliano8217;s show for Dior was the highlight of the week. But it was less of fashion and more of art if you consider tea strainers and kitchen scissors to be that. For good measure, there were also lunatics in straitjackets, ballgowns apparently tied with string, and a crazed ballerina a young dancer from the Opera Garnier 8212; walking down a mirrored catwalk with her arm inexplicably set in a plaster cast.

Not surprisngly, the next morning The Daily Mirror asked: Dior think I8217;m sexy?8217;. Why would a socialite want to spend a million dollars to dress in a tutu. In The New York Times, Cathy Horyn wrote: It8217;s hard to imagine a couture client shelling out 25,000 for a dress just so that she can look like a bum.8217;

But as far as the controversial, British-born Galliano is concerned, haute couture is akin to high art. Next month, the fourth Contemporary Decorative ArtsExhibition at Sotheby8217;s in London 8211; Out of the Closet: Clothes of the Unwearable8217; examines the cross-over between art and fashion. The Dior collection would look quite at home there, alongside the buried8217; dresses by Hussein Chalayan he interred them in his back garden with iron filings to decompose, and the dresses made entirely of knitted human hair by the artist Emily Bates. Janice Blackburn, who curated the show, says she is fascinated by clothes made for the catwalk, when fashion becomes so outlandish that it can8217;t be worn.

She was quoted in The Guardian as saying: To me, they are not clothes, but wonderful art works 8212; pieces of sculpture,8217; she says. It8217;s a great shame that so few people see them.8217; Traditionally, artists have always scoffed at fashion designers, while the designers themselves are too self-absorbed to even notice. Anyone who has seen Robert Altman8217;s Ready To Wear can tell you that.

Fashion houses are some of the biggest patrons and sponsors of the arts from the PradaFoundation in Italy to Hugo Boss in Germany. In his new role as creative director of Yves Saint Laurent, Tom Ford finds himself head-to-head with a designer who has straddled the worlds of art and design since the Sixties. Yves Saint Laurent made a jacket from Van Gogh8217;s sunflowers, a dress from Mondrian8217;s colour blocks, and put the works of Matisse and Picasso into sequins.

In return for his contribution towards the restoration of the north wing of the National Gallery in London, he has a room there named after him. In France, he is so respected that his head is on a new set of commemorative coins. But Ford says he doesn8217;t have artistic aspirations of his own. What some fashion designers do is art,8217; he has said. I have great respect for it, but I don8217;t pretend to be anything other than a commercial designer and I8217;m proud of that.8217;

Galliano8217;s inspiration came from the down-and-outs he sees as he jogs along the Seine each morning. So he set to work knitting holes into cashmere socks, printing newsprintreviews of Dior shows from The International Herald Tribune onto organza, pulling threads in silk to make it look laddered and worn, burning fabric and then embroidering over it, and unstitching sleeves from the arm-holes of a jacket to make it look tattered and torn.

All in the name of fashion.