“Gesture is to me is everything in fashion. It is in the way we stand, sit, walk and lie. It is in the bone.”
Kenneth Paul Block
Fashion illustrator Kenneth Paul Block died last Thursday at 84. His iconic style of defining fashion’s glamour was felt everywhere beginning at WWD in the fifties and influenced generations. Block’s gestural strokes quickly captured the designer’s essence but his eye was mostly interested in the women in the clothes. Defining the second half of the 20th century, Block drew the ‘world of immense style’. YSL was quoted in Block’s book ‘Drawing Fashion: The Art of Kenneth Paul Block‘ with ‘It’s a pity today but there are no more fashion illustrators. For, however much I admire photographers, I have to admit that their work is done to the detriment of the design. It is often the background that takes pride of place. In the case of illustration, it is the opposite. The design is well and truly present, alive.’ The Society of Illustrators current exhibition, ‘The Line of Fashion‘, in New York’s Upper East Side is on view featuring Block’s work through May 2.
