Folk Art Inspires High Fashion
Folk art has inspired today’s fashions. As a record of
time and place, folk art is, essentially, functional art that has been made
beautiful. The American Folk Art Museum is hosting a traveling exhibit that
bridges the gap between the two. The final installation of Folk Couture: Fashion and Folk
Art runs from
February 4 to April 29, 2018.
The exhibit, which has
already been shown at the American Folk Art Museum in New York, the Huntsvilles
Museum of Art in Alabama and the Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens in Florida,
features the work of more than a dozen designers who were inspired by folkart.
The Artists
The designers
include Catherine Malandrino and Bibhu Mohapatra, among many others.
Malandrino’s designs
bring together her native French couture with what has been called the street
style of New York. Her iconic Flag Dress that features the American flag and is
a statement about freedom, individuality, risk, fun, and open space, according
to Malandrino.
She has designed a handkerchief
dress that takes turn-of-the-century
papercut with Odd Fellows symbols to a whole new level. Like the symbols, it
too is meant to be a statement of fellowship and love.
A hand-held book of
tattoo patterns gave Mohapatra insights into the stories tattoos can tell.
Imagining a sailor at sea, he envisioned the body of water around the sailor to
be like a woman. The result is a dress with suggestive tattoo designs beneath
the garment’s watery organza surface. “She looks as if she has tattoos all over her body and this wave of
organza is floating over. It is a dream, it is a reality, and it is also a
fantasy,” said the Indian designer.
Special Program
Part of this unique
exhibit includes a series of free talks by the designers who will give
presentations on their respective folk art influences and artistic processes. For
a complete schedule click here.
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