ABSTRACT
Fashion is adept at fulfilling traditional function of art by reflecting changes in contemporary culture. Think of how the Ossie Clark dresses in the Victoria and Albert Museum’s exhibition evoke the desire for escapism at the turn of the 1970s. Yet, unlike art, fashion rarely expresses more than the headlines of history. Some designers are directly influenced by fine art — a lot of Bill Gibb’s things were influenced by the slashed panels in dresses in, say, Flemish paintings. Yet only an old-fashioned aesthete would argue that the role of the artist is to create beauty. Sometimes artists do, but for most of them beauty tends to be a by product of their quest to explore the complex, messy, ambiguities of modern life. Quibbling over whether fashion is more or less important than art is just as pointless as questioning whether or not it is art.
