The Potency of Pop Art in Fashion

Although Karl Lagerfeld claims that he does not collect contemporary art, contemporary art influences sparkled bright in the Chanel Spring/Summer 2014 ready-to-wear collection. With the vibrant colors (Warhol!) and celebrity name-dropping ("Picasso Baby!"), it was hard to ignore the clear Pop Art inspiration on the runway. What’s interesting, beyond the playful jocularity of the clothes and models, is the message behind using Pop Art in fashion.

First and foremost, it’s important to note that Lagerfeld did not pioneer the use of Pop Art in haute couture. The marriage between the two began in the 1960s with Yves Saint Laurent’s Autumn/Winter 1966-67 Pop Art collection as one of the more striking examples. The collection featured highlighter hues and evoked Tom Wesselmann vibes.

Since Pop Art was an act of rebellion against Abstract Expressionism and its elitism, designers adopted Pop Art’s bold-hued, pop-culture-referencing aesthetic as a way to express their own mission to democratize fashion and make it more accessible to the masses. 

By injecting Pop Art into Chanel's SS14 collection, Lagerfeld tips his iconic black sunglasses to the relevancy of pop culture in the current fashion world. By using mainstream media as a source for inspiration and stepping away from the traditional snobbery of haute couture, Lagerfeld widens Chanel's brand reach by appealing to a more youthful audience: millennials watching the show on the Internet, twenty-something-year-old fashion bloggers, hip street style mavens, etc. Catering to the younger generation (#Instagram) is a sly move on Lagerfeld's behalf because of the huge role the Internet and youth culture play in shaping fashion today. 

Also of note is how one of the intentions of Pop Art was to make art and life one in the same. Therefore, by reflecting Pop Art in the Chanel SS14 collection, Lagerfeld asserts that art and fashion are one in the same (since fashion and life are obviously synonymous). This mirroring can be seen in how the runway was transformed into an enchanting art gallery and how Lagerfeld decorated the white walls with his own art (positing that there is little difference between creating a painting and creating an ensemble) and how the clothes themselves looked like color-splattered canvases (Alexander McQueen Spring/Summer 1999 anyone?).

The result of this Pop Art-inspired “art-is-fashion-fashion-is-art” concept is a dazzling display of painterly visuals in clothes, and this fusion doesn’t seem to be dying off anytime soon (thank goodness!). With the increasing numbers of designer-artist collaborations (Jeff Koons bags!) and the ubiquity of fashion exhibitions in museums (Chanel to Westwood!), fashion and art are continuing to zoom in an upward trajectory and the best is yet to come.