Artist’s Statement
Fashion and art have never ceased in coming together to create innovation and beauty in the world. It’s the collaboration between artists and fashion designers that have sparked some of the most amazing art-meets-fashion connections. Some collaborations include, but are not limited to, Louis Vuitton x Takashi Murakami, Versace x Warhol, and Missoni x the Futurists, just to name a few. For this project, we were asked to observe such collaborations while investigating the power between artists and their own self-portraits to create our own art-meets-fashion collaboration through a photographer based medium. Thinking about what makes a successful collaboration between an artist and designer, I wanted to preserve the identities of both the artist and the designer in my piece. In trying to determine what designer I look most like, I decided upon looking like Vera Wang because we have a similar face structure and hair type. Choosing an artist to collaborate with was the tricky part of this project. At first, I wanted to take the route of Yayoi Kusama, but my attempt did not answer the quotas of this project. So, I ended up using the work of Andy Warhol in my collaboration.
Vera Wang is the designer responsible for striking the balance between modernity and elegance in fashion couture. Her young adulthood did not start out with the desire of pursuing a career in fashion. In fact, Wang enrolled in the School of American Ballet and even competed professionally as a figure skater. Her background in ballet and figure-skating influences a lot of what her work is today including the silhouettes of her bridal couture. She launched her own career with the help of her father’s financial backing and the help of tailors. And then in the year of 1990, Wang opened her own bridal boutique in New York City. With a Chinese-American background, much like myself, Wang represents the success and representation of Asian-American designers in the industry.
Andy Warhol was an American artist accredited for his work in the 1960s pop art movement. After venturing through a career as a successful commercial artist, he became widely known through the art world for his whimsical and unique art style. The late 50s was when Warhol became more invested in his paintings therefore by kicking off the pop art movement. Some of his most famous motifs include the Campbell’s soup can, Marilyn Monroe, and flowers, which is the one I chose to use in my collaboration between Vera Wang.
As I mentioned earlier, my original idea of using Yayoi Kusama x Vera Wang did not work out successfully because I failed to portray an artistic collaboration between the two. Instead, I just projected Kusama’s patterns on my face as Vera and it did not come out the way I originally intended. Using Warhol’s patterns, I decided that I wanted to add them as a textile on the suit that Vera was wearing. My inspiration for Vera Wang was a portrait that was taken of her that was black in white where she was sitting on a stool and wearing an all-black suit. I thought about keeping it elegant and classic in the way Vera Wang approaches her designs as a designer and I created a suit with Warhol’s prints on it. I chose to do this effect because I saw it as a common theme between the collaborations between artists and designers. A lot of designers utilize the exact artwork of the artist on their designs to keep the identity of the artist intact. Photoshopping Warhol’s famous flower pattern onto Wang’s jacket was not the easiest thing to do because I wanted to make it seamless and natural looking like it is actually a real jacket that had been made. I found an easy way to do this was to turn down the opacity of the pattern in my work, so I could get smooth and clean lines.
Reading the comments from the critique, I got some really good feedback about how I could have improved my image including a comment that stated that the flowers on my suit looked a little bit flat and could have been rendered better. I agree with this comment and I definitely could have done certain things to make them more realistic like adding shadows. I was really happy to read a lot of comments stating how professional my picture looked and how easy it was to recognize both the designer and the artist, considering my original intention was to make both of these things apparent so it would be a piece that more people could relate to.
Overall, I am really proud of how my piece came out. Originally with the photos I made inspired by Yayoi Kusama, I really fell in love with them too and was sad that I was not able to use them, but I’m happy I developed an idea that answered the prompt of this project more successful. I think keeping the photo in black and white was a good move because it stuck true to Vera’s portrait and her aesthetic as well.
