Art in Real Life
From the street to the boutique
“Art is the tangible evidence of the ever-questing human spirit.” The same can be said of true fashion. Someone commented the other day that Chicago is a city where people come to find their art. Much of the art in Chicago is experimental or emerging. What might be dismissed in New York for not being completely put together is often given credit here in Chicago for the fact that it is artistic expression and therefore has potential. I actually moved to Chicago to find my art. I was busy facilitating other people’s art, which I am good at and love, but I knew I had to stop and find, and then create, my own art. I think the same thing happens in fashion. We find it easier to facilitate someone else’s art, and follow a trend, than to stop and find our own style. When someone stops and finds their own way of expressing themselves, fashion/art has been created.
Fashion as a wearable art form reminds me of recycling: taking one object, sometimes something outdated, unusable in its current state or simply unwanted, and creating something useful, even something beautiful. Recycling is a physical example of the way the creative mind functions. In creation of a work of art, not only is there a physical synthesis, but there is also an idea-synthesis that happens. All this is a bit philosophical perhaps, but I do have a point . . .. There really is nothing new under the sun. No work of art is wholly new or original, especially not in fashion. Fashion is simply a metamorphosis of ideas, silhouettes and colors and patterns.
Brilliance occurs in the fashion world, not by creating something new out of thin air, but by the way the look is put together, the art is truly in the composition and the line. Edie Sedgwick, famously known as a muse to Andy Warhol, was a fashion superstar in the 60s because she took everyday items such as black leotards, mini dresses, and large chandelier earrings and put them together in an unusual way that expressed who she was. While Edie Sedgewick may have been the “It” girl of 1965, Tavi Gevison, the thirteen-year-old fashion blogger from Chicago who was the star of New York Fashion Week this fall, is arguably the “It” girl of 2009. Though the two women might seem to have little in common, their fashion sense has earned respect and admiration for the same two reasons. First, their fashion sense was/is theirs, and secondly their fashion sense was/is uninhibited, a bizarre collage of everyday pieces arranged with good taste but without regard for the status quo.
Carl Sandburg, the great American poet famously referred to Chicago as “Stormy, husky, brawling, City of the Big Shoulders,” and fashion designer Michael Kors, after calling himself a “camel and gray flannel sort of guy” called Chicago “a camel and gray flannel sort of town.” So although the Washington Post dubbed Chicago “the Milan of the Midwest” earlier this year, the Chicago fashion market is still inherently built on practicality. This pragmatism results in both beautiful unpretentiousness and unfortunately an over reliance on gore-tex. Practical does not need to equal boring, but you would think North Face was running a city-wide viral marketing campaign by the way Chicago dresses as soon as the first cold front hits. Too often we end up just wearing clothes instead of wearable fashion. However, Chicago has no shortage of fashion inspiration; Chicago is after all home to Michelle Obama. Nor can the problem be blamed on the city’s designers and stylists. Great art does flourish in this city’s fashion community. I don’t think we can even blame the extreme weather. The real problem, I believe, is a disconnect between art and everyday life. Chicago is a stormy brawling city, but it is also a city with “lifted head singing so proud to be alive;” a city of ever questing human spirits.
I went to see RedMoon Theater’s Winter Pageant a couple weeks ago and was reminded of the uninhibited magic and beauty that lies in a child’s mind. Maybe what we all need this holiday season is a trip back to childhood. Children seem to always know exactly who they are and how they want to express themselves. Remember the uninhibited chopping of your own hair, coloring on walls and playing dress up? Who says we, as adults cannot do the same? The art and theater community here thrives on experimental and emerging art. Why can’t we throw a little bit of that into our fashion? Tis the season: find the magic in the everyday.
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