There is a serious problem nowadays when it comes to fashion inspiration allegedly borrowed from art: while some designers actually go on their ways to find an artist or an exhibition they may think visually or historically inspiring, others simply visit events recommended by trend forecasting agencies or just wait for their trend forecasting reports to feature random images marked as "inspirational" and "fashionable" for the next season. The consequences in this case is that several collections every season end up borrowing from the same events. This is for example what happened with the "Matisse: The Cut Outs" event. An art success at London's Tate Modern, it spread like a pestilential plague in the fashion world, generating Matisse-inspired garments and accessories or entire collections.
There was another exhibition that was mentioned by trend forecasting agencies last year, though they did so in a minor way and that's why it didn't really reappear as much as the Matisse one on the runways. The event in question was entitled "British Folk Art" and was organised last year at London's Tate Britain.
Gareth Pugh actually channelled folk art in his S/S 15 womenswear collection, though in his case his references were more literal and inspired by the influence of stylist and collaborator Simon Costin who recently established the Museum of British Folklore. Massimiliano Giornetti, Creative Director at Salvatore Ferragamo, checked out instead the "British Folk Art" and tried to incorporate some of its themes in his Autumn/Winter 2015-16 menswear collection.
Luckily, Giornetti skipped the exhibition section including huge ship figureheads and giant trade signs (there were no pawnbroker's symbol of three golden balls, bears for barbers, or keys, padlocks, shoes and teapots...) that indicated pubs and other assorted shops, and he didn't seem to be too taken by the examples of ornamental jugs.
There were no Morris dancers and no monstrous Obby Osses or life-size Wicker Man-evoking thatched figures of King Alfred (though the dramatic scarves that sadly obscured the clothes looked at times monstrously cumbersome...). Giornetti was indeed more fascinated by the artworks made by soldiers during the Crimean War.
Giornetti seemed interested in calling to mind the skills of the soldiers who delicately and exquisitely embroidered pincushions with the words "Remember Me" to send back to their families and lovers or who stitched together the felted wool Crimean Quilt (c.1853-6), a labour-intensive work produced as a form of therapy and made with thousands of separate pieces (including bits of uniforms, according to the myth, also uniforms of soldiers who had died).
While raw thick knits and rustic scarves homaged a rural landscape, hand-stitched and embroidered insects, bees, feathers, thistles and flowers or birds printed on double-breasted gray cashmere overcoats, were intended as tributes to these lost skills (at the end of the 1870s military endeavours featured a long list of skills including, believe it or not, embroidery). Yet they also hinted at other pieces included in the "British Folk Art" event, such as the needlework of Mary Linwood, known for reproducing needle versions of old master paintings (her art was defined "needlepainting" as her long and short stitches perfectly reproduced a painter's brushstrokes).
The second part of the collection featured pieces that seemed less commercial than the lumberjack coats, blurred check jackets or shearlings and less elegant than the short wool coats with prints of flying birds. A series of wild animals - including baboons, bisons and zebras - appeared indeed on coats, jackets and jumpers.
Though Mary Linwood had reproduced via her embroideries some exotic animals, maybe Giornetti was hinting at the Wrexham coverlet created in 1842 by James Williams, a master tailor from College Street.
Made over 10 years by recycling over four and a half thousand pieces of cloth (mainly from old military uniforms), the coverlet featured different scenes and also included Biblical motifs such as Noah's Ark and Adam naming the animals.
There are actually some rather interesting points about folk art and fashion. The Royal Academy established in the late 1760s in its founding charter that "no needlework, artificial flowers, cut paper, shell work, or any such baubles should be admitted". With "baubles" the Royal Academy sadly indicated there was a barrier between "proper" art and pieces made by craftspeople who were not academically trained artists.
Indeed many folk artefacts were then considered as created to fill time and find an occupation, or they represented an expression of a rural community (at times coming together to celebrate a special holiday or an agrarian ritual) or of the local collective identity. Besides, folk art was mainly characterised by humble materials and was a predominantly working-class art.
It's interestingly how fashion twists and bends these concepts: the fashion industry is indeed an elistist world that produces - using luxury (and not humble) materials - commercial pieces not to merely "fill the time" but to make money.
So, while until a few years ago it wasn't possible to consider specific items made by anonymous and unknown artists as exquisite artworks, now that they are finally taken seriously by museums, they can also be acknowledged and used as the starting point and the foundation for fashion collections. Slightly patronising, isn't it?
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