At the end of summer each year, I get a surge of fall fashion inspiration. Fashion week has just wrapped, the September issues are in the recycler and I’ve consumed as much from the Vogue Runway app that my brain can handle. I do love seeing what designers are putting out there and in this decade the trend landscape can be far and wide. Usually Setting aside what the sites are saying are the “top 10 trends,” I typically glean my own usable inspiration from what I’ve seen. Something I have seen slowly creeping back into pop culture and fashion since last spring is the use of Op art as patterns and prints. Op art was a development of painting in the 1960s that used geometric forms to create optical effects ranging from subtle to the disorienting. Op art painting uses geometric forms as the basis for its effects and also draws on the psychology of perception. Leading figures of the op art movement were Bridget Riley, Jesus Rafael Soto, and Victor Vasarely. These motifs have been super inspirational for me since I first saw Gaultier’s use of Vasarely art in his Cyber Dot pieces for his Fall collection in 1995. Now coming full circle to the Paco Rabanne’s most recent fashion show partnering with the Vasarely Foundation to add his abstract paintings onto jacquards, all-over prints, knits and chainmail dresses. The show was set atop the 1979 work Hexa Grace in Monaco that is also by the artist. Needless to say, I’m full of op-inspo and I knew I wanted to kick off a fall full of very graphic fashion content starting with a mostly black and white op-art shoot inspired by the iconic black and white pieces of artist Bridget Riley. Throw together with a fantastically bold multi-wall mural by artist Exist1981 and its trippy fashion fun full of high-contrast chromatic tension.
All Photos: Bronson Pate of Bauman Photographers
Mural Art: Exist1981 at Broadstone Makers Quarter
Dress 1: Vintage – Brand unknown
Dress 2: Vintage Ralph Lauren
|Dress 3: BCBG | Blazer: Karl Lagerfeld
A Colorful Art Fashion Blog 