A Sonia Delaunay fashion illustration on display by The Department of Special Collections and FIT ArchivesArt has always enjoyed a symbiotic relationship to fashion with painters such as Matisse often inspired Yves Saint Laurent but artist Sonia Delaunay was the original interdisciplinary designer.
The current art world is filled with examples of exhibitions using fashion to extend the artist’s statement past the canvas found in the work of Rubén Torres Llorca.
Sonia Delaunay
Dashing through the lobby the other day at FIT, I was stopped by the original designs of Delaunay.
The Department of Special Collections and FIT Archives showcased Delaunay’s illustrations and I TwitPic’d the vibrant geometric shapes. I was quickly retweeted by @saruzza sharing an upcoming Delaunay exhibition at Cooper-Hewitt next year entitled Color Moves: Art and Fashion by Sonia Delaunay,
March 18–June 5, 2011.
On view will be examples from the Musée des Arts Decoratifs, Musée de la Mode de la Ville de Paris, the Musée de l’Impression sur Etoffes in Mulhouse, the Bibliotheque Nationale de France and private collections around Europe and the United States.
A Sonia Delaunay study on display by The Department of Special Collections and FIT Archives
Sonia Delaunay
The show will feature her signature color palette and rhythmic shapes found in Delaunay’s 1920s fashion designs. Known not just for apparel but also weaved her trademark expression into graphics, interiors, theater, film and especially textiles.
Co-founded with her husband Robert Delaunay, the Orphism art movement, known for its strong colors and geometric shapes, has been widely interpreted by fashion.
My introduction to Delaunay began backstage at a Perry Ellis fashion show. As a fashion student, dressing the models was a frequent experience and in 1983 Perry Ellis devoted his collection to the Russian artist.
Sonia Delaunay
The hand knitted shetland and cashmere sweaters with the swirling Delaunay designs created the strong 80s trend of intarsia patterned sweaters. A knitting construction that requires to knot individual colors used in the design as every stitch creates the pattern is often a slower process compared to jacquard knitting or using floats. The result is a lighter weight finished sweater instead of the float technique which often doubles or triples the weight.
Below is an American Vogue editorial from August 1983 that got the American fashion industry spinning! Ironically, a year later I joined the Ellis team designing and charting knit graphs.
The Perry Ellis Fall Collection inspired by Sonia Delaunay featured in August 1983 American Vogue
Wonderful art and article!