The 60s had miniskirts, the 70s had flares, the 80s had shoulderpads. Every decade has a look. True, in each case this is an appalling oversimplification. Flares did not rule the whole of the 70s, for instance: by the summer of 1978, Sandy was rocking wet-look drainpipes in Grease. So to put your head above the parapet and attempt to skewer the look of the decade before that decade is even over is, clearly, madness.
But I’m going to do it anyway, so here goes. For a certain type of woman in the decade that is now drawing to a close, the unspoken style ideal was to look like you worked in the art world. This involved interesting neutrals (mostly navy for the first half of the decade, grey and beige the second) with sophisticated, painterly accent colours such as mustard or fuchsia. It meant a sihouette that was de-centred, abstracted from the shape of the body below. It called for unfussy pieces with intriguing details: a simple dress with a statement sleeve, for instance. There was little skin on show: there were a lot of funnel necks, then polos, and skirts were below the knee for most of the decade. There were elements of menswear – blazers, tailored trousers, unisex white trainers or Gucci loafers – but these were mixed with feminine silk blouses rather than styled in a performatively androgynous Annie Hall kind of way. For evening, tight black dresses languished unworn in favour of elevated, accessorised versions of the daywear look, or bold dresses with a certain flamboyance of colour or print or silhouette.
An observer noticing this woman as she crossed the road on her way to work – she probably had earphones in to listen to a podcast, this decade, rather than being on the phone – would have clocked her interestingly textured funnel-neck sweater, French-tucked behind the fly button of wide-legged trousers which in turn were cropped to show, perhaps, a flash of white ankle boot. This observer might have imagined her headed to a job in a private gallery, perhaps. She wasn’t power-dressed in a Working Girl kind of way, but neither was she tricked out and dolled up in a ladies-who-lunch kind of way. She had a job, she had purpose and discipline, but she wasn’t part of the machine.
I say she, but of course I’m really talking about me, and I’m very likely talking about you, too. A couple of years ago, I was telling a friend about a loose, sweeping Valentino dress in dark, wanton florals I’d fallen in love with and wanted to buy for a birthday party. I was trying to explain what was so fabulous about it, and why I so desperately wanted it despite being able to neither afford nor justify the price tag. “It’s very… ceramicist with a private income,” was the phrase that came out of my mouth, as I reached for a definition. She knew exactly what I meant. And she immediately agreed with me that I needed the dress.
How did “ceramicist with a private income” become a cipher for glamour? How did “en route to install an exhibition” come to be a more aspirational vibe than “mani-pedi appointment followed by lunch at Daphne’s”? Well, for a start, this decade has seen the art world expand and transform, from a prestigious but niche industry into a pop culture arena of big money, glamorous travel, blue chip status and boundless individuality. In 2000 there were 55 art fairs around the world; in 2018 there were 260. (In London, the weeks of the Frieze art fair surpass pre-Christmas as the busiest time of year at department store Dover Street Market.) Fashion and art have not been so close since the days of Elsa Schiaparelli and Salvador Dalí. Being “in the art world” has come to mean Instagrammable Venice water taxis, Roksanda’s catwalk shows at the Serpentine Pavilion, Erdem eveningwear and Marni earrings.
cotton twill workwear jacket in cobalt blue echoes the jackets worn by Vincent Van Gogh and Claude Monet in their studios. Photograph: Toast
An 1890 painting by Claude Monet in his Haystacks series, which in 1986 was sold for £2m, sold earlier this year for £90.5m. Art has snowballed in cultural value as exponentially as its cash stock has risen. As our culture has become ever more visual – Instagram is the pop radio of our times – the status of art, which stands at the apex of our aesthetics, has soared. What’s more, the mood music of the art world is perfect for now. Authenticity, a buzzword of this decade, is rooted in art. Individuality and creativity are honoured in art. And don’t get me started on the word “curate”, which 10 years ago was an activity specific to museums and galleries but has become the verb du jour, applied to arranging your wardrobe, or laying the table for supper.
Art world chic stalked the runways this season. At Bottega Veneta, the elegant but just-slightly-off proportions – a scoop-neck cream crop sweater with a gold chain trim, worn with the softest leather trousers – had fans of Phoebe Philo’s era at Celine swooning. At Loewe, the chic understatement of a navy silk gown with a boxy, vest-like cut was catnip to an artfully-aligned audience. At Jacquemus, a sculptural camisole half-tucked into crisp tailored trousers had that insider wink of refined chic. Nothing obviously splashy to see here; but to the trained eye, this is perfection nonetheless.
A close alignment with the art world has been a key element in how matchesfashion.com has evolved into a uniquely sophisticated multibrand retailer. Natalie Kingham, fashion and buying director, has long held a chic curator in mind as an imaginary muse. Throughout 2019, the site has partnered with Frieze, hosting salons and pop-ups in tandem as the art fair travels around the world’s most fashionable cities. This is not just about selling dresses to wealthy art collectors, or about using art as inspiration for your look, but about life imitating art – specifically, the most fashionable life imitating an art-world kind of life. The matchesfashion.com townhouse at 5 Carlos Place in London is designed to feel “like the ultimate collector’s house, where we can host and entertain you, have original conversations and create memorable experiences,” says Jess Christie, chief brand officer.
The look crosses all income brackets. Cos is as central a pillar of this aesthetic as Phoebe Philo’s Celine ever was. “Art is ahead of fashion,” says Cos creative director Karin Gustafsson. “Artists reflect their surroundings, and so art tells us where the world is going.” The label on the inside can be an important badge – old Celine, as designed by Phoebe Philo, was certainly something of an old-school tie for the art sorority – but the surface is less about logo than texture and quality, and the more elevated high street brands have worked hard at securing loyalty from this customer. “The quality, the weight, the feel of fabric are extremely important,” says Hannah Gruy, who handles artist liaison at White Cube gallery and whose chic wardrobe saw her featured in a 2012 New York Times article about disciples of Philo, “but that’s not just Celine or The Row.” And while an “arty” slant on chic was once the province of women of a certain age, it has spread to a younger demographic. “We have always done this look,” says Toast designer Suzie de Rohan Willner of the brand’s aesthetic, which she characterises as “a mix of workwear, traditional craft and contemporary silhouette… It works at any age, but I am seeing more younger customers.”
A look that is, by definition, highly sophisticated is hard to pin down. Often the stamp of authenticity is in the detail, in nuances of thought process, which are a dog whistle to only a certain audience. The morning I speak to Gruy, for instance, she is on her way to “a meeting with someone externally from the gallery, so although it’s raining today, I chose my fancier Celine raincoat, rather than my Uniqlo raincoat.” Our visual culture may have spawned Love Island at one extreme, but it has also facilitated the emergence of a culturally aware, aesthetically literate audience for both fashion and art. “Fashion on its own isn’t enough any more,” says creative director Alex Eagle, a best-dressed list fixture and tastemaker across art and fashion, whose store in London’s Soho stocks a chic edit in all categories from the perfect one-piece swimsuit to gorgeous modern ceramics. “People are craving a more 360-degree view on culture,” she adds.
“Artists aren’t slaves to fashion,” says taxidermy artist Polly Morgan. “I’ve always really liked fashion, but I’ve never bought a fashion magazine in my life.”
“It’s not literal,” says Gustafsson of how Cos interprets an artistic sensibility into clothes. “It’s not about clothes that look like paintings, or anything like that.” The first principles of Cos are colour – a foundation colour card of white, black, navy, sky blue, grey and beige – and a subtle silhouette which is “about proportion and the way volume sits around the body”. Designer Francesca Amfitheatrof, alumna of Tiffany and Wedgwood, and now artistic director of jewellery and watches at Louis Vuitton, points to how “a twist in the detail – an elongated cuff, an extra-long trouser, a raised neckline” – can be crucial in art-oriented fashion. “It’s not about the obvious,” she says. “That’s what makes what Nicholas [Ghesquière] does at Vuitton so compelling – it takes you a while to get it. It’s not immediate, and that’s part of what makes it so great.”
The principles of art-oriented fashion are situated at the point where lifestyle and attitude meet aesthetics. It’s a look that combines purpose – these are clothes for a woman with a purpose beyond being decorative – with a sense of freedom, or at least autonomy. There is an informality to the soft, sculptural shapes, but “it’s not holiday, or hippy”, Amfitheatrof says. “It’s for a woman who has plans, and ambitions. You look at certain types of clothes and you think, that’s beautiful, but it doesn’t relate to my life,” she adds. “This look speaks to women and how they really live.”
Lucia Wood, head of design at Jigsaw, is passionate about designing for a modern, culturally informed woman and believes that “lifestyle isn’t so clearcut any more. It’s not about a division between the career woman and the stay-at-home mum. Working doesn’t necessarily mean that you are at the same office all week, so our clothes are about flexibility, and curating a wardrobe.”
For Gruy, “my work and non-work wardrobes are pretty blended. Flat shoes are essential, because at art fairs you are on your feet all day. And if I go to an event after work that’s more often than not spontaneous, so I rely on red lipstick.” At the Venice Biennale, Amfitheatrof regularly walks 20km in a day. “You are on a boat, off a boat, so you need flat shoes and you need a jacket,” she says firmly. In a decade in which female empowerment has been a narrative of both fashion and art, “women in the art world are finding their voice”, Amfitheatrof says, “and there is a sense of not dressing for men. This is not a world where you have your cleavage on show.”
Again, principle and practicality overlap. “I like nice clothes, but I don’t prioritise getting dolled up,” Morgan shrugs. “I just don’t see that as an important enough way to be spending my time.”
Philo’s departure from Celine last year left something of a power vacuum here. “There has definitely been a period of mourning for Phoebe,” Amfitheatrof says. “She’s not easy to replace because she always thought laterally, and she had such a singular point of view.” In the post-Philo era, the art-oriented look has continued its trajectory toward being cleaner and crisper than the floatiness with which bohemian dressing was once associated. The magnetic pull of Scandinavian style and design can be seen here, just as it can in the architecture and interior design choices of the same tastemakers, who over the past decade have ditched colourful shabby chic for pale wood and clean lines.
Utility is becoming a buzzword in fashion, with jumpsuits that look ever closer to overalls, and apron and pinafore styling on dresses. At Toast, a key piece for this autumn is “a French jacket in workwear blue, with Japanese styling. The timelessness of those designs feels subversive,” de Rohan Willner says.
In art and in fashion, beauty is prized. “I want a sense of ease in a dress, but I also want it to make you look beautiful,” de Rohan Willner adds. “I care about the fabric but I also want the collarbone to be enhanced by the neckline, for instance.” A high-profile art moment like the Venice Biennale, Amfitheatrof says, is “not an easy pack. You need dressed-up pieces for evening. There are some brands, like Louis Vuitton and Alexander McQueen, that work really well in the art world because they are not just adornment but are part of a richer conversation.”
Textile designer and art world style icon Tiphaine de Lussy favours Roksanda, for her bold elegance and as a designer who “has a real interest in and connection to art”. Morgan, on the other hand, doesn’t like “fussy things. I wear my boilersuit in the studio, and in the evening I dress like an Italian businessman in a cashmere coat and tailored trousers.”
There is room for all these points of view, in this wardrobe. This season, the chic art world customer may be buying artisanal statement pieces by Simone Rocha, Loewe, Hillier Bartley or By Walid, or investing in minimalism by Jil Sander, Raey or Gabriela Hearst. “The art world is a world that tolerates difference among women,” de Lussy says. “And perhaps there’s something empowering and aspirational in that.”
