Opinion Visual art transforms fabrics to fashion
How can you create an apparel brand that commands premium price and instills pride of ownership in a customer so she/he returns to it?
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How can you create an apparel brand that commands premium price and instills pride of ownership in a customer so she/he returns to it? Visual art is the only tool that changes the character of fabrics. Anybody in the world can do apparel business with five elements: fabrics,limited texture,colour,cut and fit. But unless fabrics are transformed into the imagination metaphor,its not a fashion brand. Most Indian apparel brands suffer from missing out on this visual art effect.
Genesis of dressing style: Fashion as we know it today,originated from European monarchys obsession with visual art. Royalty patronised art and desired differentiation from their subjects. Frances 18th century Queen Marie Antoinette wore strikingly different dresses with daily advice from designer Rose Bertin,known as Minister of Fashion. The Queens radical fashion gave her visible force and autonomy outside tradition. Her provocative robe a la polonaise had a bosom-enhancing bodice,billowy,ankle-baring skirts,a three-foot powdered hair pouf decked with plumes and veils. Even when she rode to her death,Marie Antoinette wore a new white chemise she had secretly saved,a white fichu around her shoulders,and a pleated white cap to dazzle people. Her exquisite sense of visual art made her apparel sophisticated and visually differentiated from the masses.
Democratisation of fashion: In Paris in 1846,Englishman Charles Frederick Worth democratised royaltys search for individualism by starting haute couture,the ultimate in high fashion for the royals and the rich. The haute couture label belongs to France,possibly because it was invented from French monarchic heritage. Today,haute couture dresses have been known to take up to 900 hours to create,with interventions by artistic craftsmen working with the principal designer to show that single dress on the fashion ramp for just 120 seconds. Visual art is exposed in every square inch of such a dress.
Haute couture is always presented as a piece of visual art on a model in the catwalk. To make a statement about the intellectual-artistic construction of a particular idea,the designer plans the order in which each model walks out wearing a specific outfit in his collection. It is then left to the audience to visually deconstruct each outfit,appreciate its detail and craftsmanship,and understand the designers thoughts. Contemporary designers produce their shows as theatrical productions using elaborate sets of artistic technology components with live music. You may say the dress is just a single element in the show,but this is not true. Represented with visual art,the dress on the model becomes so powerful that it stays on in peoples mind even if they cannot afford it.
Sketchy visual art for fashion: Dressmaking was not fashion in the 19th century,it was considered low. In the 1920s,when European fine art was booming,visual art brought fashion onto the drawing board. Designers like Gabriel Coco Chanel made drawings and sketches of garments. Her 1931 sketch White Satin shows how she generated fashion through visual art. Yves St. Laurent was inspired by Pablo Picassos paintings,Coco Channels designs among other contemporary art influences. His 1976 collection is based on the 1920s abstract costumes created for Ballet Russe by painter Leon Bakst. The illustrative drawings of Chanel,Dior,YSL transported fashion from royal individualism to a larger clientele.
Industrialisation of fashion through visual art: Everybody cannot afford haute couture. Prominently using visual art,these styles are made into prêt-a-porter (ready-to-wear) through industrial production systems for mainstream markets. In 1971,the first St. Laurent Rive Gauche (Left bank of Paris) showroom opened to woo less affluent consumers. In todays huge market of mass fashion,even low cost brands are injecting high aspiration by creating outstanding trendy looks with visual art.
Visual art for mass fashion: Mass fashion brands like FCUK,ZARA,H&M among others do not have a designers name. To compensate that,every customer touch point at the retail store,such as visual merchandising,façade,shelf,fixtures,is interwoven with visual art. In New Yorks Fifth Avenue,a jewellery store in a high rise building has colourful balloons and metal cones,atop which are finger rings that sparkle in laser lighting. Shoppers cannot see the rings from 200 metres,but the display that looks like modern art,attracts them.
From Marie Antoinette to haute couture,prêt a porter to mass fashion,it all happened with visual art. Visual art conceptualised fashion and translated fabrics to style. Even at the retailfrom in-store ambience,the bag that shoppers will carry the garments inall comprise visual art that defines the brands personality. A shopper pays a higher price from the visual art impact he carries in his mind as pride of ownership for the brand. A fashion brand thats associated with regularly changing visual art makes the shopper feel hes wearing this unlimited creative sense. This is what transforms fabrics into a fashion brand.
Shouldnt Indian apparel brands incorporate visual art as part of their strategy too? They need to exit the vicious cycle of improving backend management with fabrics,limited texture,colour,cut and fit to price engineer the product for hard discount sales,and instead enter the unlimited avenue of visual art in fashion.
Shombit Sengupta is an international creative business strategy consultant to top management.
Reach him at http://www.shiningconsulting.com
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