Inspiration: Shaping Fashion Balenciaga

I don't know much about high-end but if you've ever met me it's clear I do like fashion, and i guess I move to my own rhythm on it? That's not to say neither high end fashion nor trends don't hold inherent interest and value, it's just a matter of personal taste.

Particularly, I'd never find myself wearing Balenciaga but I'm really interested in it as art: it has such beautiful form and shape and I picked up some applicable wisdom while I was there (that an outfit should consider form, and the best types for flattery were mixing baggy/shaped and form-fitting in one outfit). He (and designers inspired by him, which arguably pushed the limits of fashion further than he did in his more conservative and less technologically advanced time) isn't afraid to use bold shapes and I found myself finding them interesting from a cartoon standpoint- I love children's animation with a diversity of body shapes, that pushes the understanding of the form of the human body (though I can take or leave the "mom figure" with the really wide hips because honestly it's tired?). I've been trying to simplify the way I use shapes and lines this summer, thinking about entire characters (or even just faces) as a square, or a triangle, and trying to stick to that:

Anyway, I wasn't expecting a revelation from the Balenciaga exhibition at the V&A at my nan's suggestion when she came to visit me in London but I really enjoyed it!

I thought it was great the drawings, which normally, I feel, rely on emphasis, actually translate almost perfectly into a finished garment. Like, truly a work realised? This dress, too, has no back seam and simply hangs off the front like a reverse-cardigan, and it works, which I think is great- I like seeing art that says "nah" to constrictions of the craft, almost, it seems, effortlessly.

The folds on this jacket were so sharp- they're held in place by a ribbon that runs down the inside of the sleeve.

Like, there's really skill to thinking about simple shapes, designing an outfit that fits the form so well with sad shapes, AND executing it so perfectly in 3D such that every angle is beautiful.

I liked what this dress did too- there was no corset involved in what was (or looked like) a very tiny waist, simply properly shaping the skirt and shoulders made it look that way. (At this point I ran out for space for photos on my phone, but you can see something similar in the leftmost dress below).

The right isn't a Balenciaga but someone inspired by him, further pushing how form can sit on a body, while also going beyond fabric (that said, Balenciaga was pretty experimental with material- the exhibition had X-rays of the dresses that showed the inner wires and other such contraptions that gave the dresses their shape) and creating something really amazing. There were other such dresses like this:

For example, the left one was leather which made for a very dramatic dress regardless of the oversized hood and wide angles, and the right was a white and green dress with a what looked like a delicated pleated fabric formed over wire circles. These are, like the others, mildly stylised since honestly I'm done doing overly-detailed realism to impress people, I get a lot more out of stylising from life, but there is little emphasis- these really were the shapes of these dresses, and damn, were they beautiful.

I did some more fashion iillustrations from photos I liked over the summer after this:

They have a bunch of flaws and still really lack movement and dynamism which is what really irks me about my art, more than the change in personal style, and some of the shapes I'm trying to use forego basic anatomy, but I dunno, I'm trying?