Fashion Illustration: When Ink Fights the iPhone
With each passing fashion month circuit, fans who don’t have the privilege of attending the shows in person scramble to the likes of Women's Wear Daily and Vogue to catch up on the latest collections. Catwalk photographers like Frazer Harrison of Getty Images make a living capturing crisp shots of each look as models come strutting down the runway. Even without all the professional equipment, fashion influencers like Chriselle Lim and Susie Lau, of Style Bubble, are able to share their fashion week experiences by uploading to their respective Instagram accounts live videos of final walks – simply from their smart phones. But before Canons and iPhones helped to disseminate collection photos to the masses, designers relied solely on fashion illustrators to document the collections from the front row.
Jacquemus AW16. Image Credit: Carly Kuhn, The Cartorialist.
Even though digital photography has taken over as the fashion industry’s default medium, recently fashion houses have been flocking back to illustrators and visual artists. Just like with selfies, the wrong photo filter can distort a garment or can distract from its most beautiful details. But illustration grants the liberty to emphasize any nuance, to exaggerate any motif, offering something more personal and original.
And when it is the off-season and illustrators aren't documenting other designers’ looks, they are creating their own. Fashion illustration allows for artists to render fabrics and stitch work with different materials. San Francisco artist Gretchen Roëhrs, for example, uses fruits and vegetables in all of her illustrations, creating bright and lively feasts for the eyes.
Image Credit: Gretchen Roëhrs.
Still, most fashion illustrators rely on traditional mediums to create their art. Brooklyn-based Jenny Walton frequently uses Prismacolor markers, and Los Angeles local Jeanette Getrost loves her Copics.
Image Credit: Jenny Walton.
Nowadays, many artists use social media to showcase their work, which leads to job opportunities. Carly Kuhn, whose portfolio includes work for Elle and L'Officiel Italia, credits a good deal of her success to Instagram. After Sarah Jessica Parker shared a portrait that Kuhn drew of the actress, Kuhn's Instagram blew up overnight. What came next was a flurry of followers, comments, and requests for commissions from brands like Prada.
So will fashion illustration take back its original place in the spotlight? With rapidly changing and developing technology, probably not. However, who's to say that it ever even left? Art and fashion have always walked hand in hand, inspiring and influencing one another. And just because illustrators aren't crowding the front rows as they once were, that doesn't mean that their work isn't as valued and loved as it was in the past.
