Fashion meets art...

  It’s actually a fact, rather than a surprise, that various forms of Arts, including of course Fashion, are closely related to each other. In Fashion, designers indeed receive influence and inspiration from other art movements and artists, as it is also the case that the opposite happens with, for instance, artists receiving inspiration from Fashion in creating their paintings. Over the years, we have witnessed both individual designers and well established brands such as Burberry, Alexander McQueen, Yves Saint Laurent, and Chanel, investing in art studying and creative adoption, “transcription” and transformation of influences for producing some of their new collections. After all, Fashion is unequivocally, among others that define it, about inspiration and creativity.

  Burberry’s womenswear A/W14 collection named “The Bloomsbury Girls’’ was all about inspiration. The latter derives from the Bohemian  style and decorative art of the Bloomsbury group, an association of artists, writers and intellectuals from the early 20th century with the painter Vanessa Bell and her sister, the writer Virginia Woolf, the painter (referred to as “a champion of Post-Impressionist painting”), theorist, and writer Roger Fry , and the painter and decorative artist Duncan Grant being the group’s central figures. Burberry’s A/W09 collection was inspired by Virginia Woolf, but the connection with the Bloomsbury group was to be made crystal clear in the A/W14 collection. In line with this, the House supported Charleston (Bloomsbury group’s home and country meeting place and currently a museum) in aid of the Charleston Centenary Project, at the national Portrait Gallery in London (30/09/2014).

Burberry AW14 and Bloomsbury artist Vanessa Bell's painting 'Flowers in  a glass vase'

In terms of the collection itself, the influences from the Bloomsbury group are readily identifiable. The collection was an explosion of rich natural colours with lots of cameo pink, antique rose, elderberry, burnt amber, olive and state blue, with these colours clearly being the characteristic and dominant colours in paintings of Bloomsbury group’s members.  The colours are soft and gentle as nature is –“I wanted to be softer and gentler” said Bailey– but also charming as Burberry’s creations historically are.

Burberry AW 14 and Bloomsbury artist Vanessa Bell's painting 'Flowers and Thislte'.

Moreover, in proportion to Bloomsbury group member’s intention of giving a bit of soul to their creations (they painted everything at the Charleston: bookcases, doors, fireplaces, even walls), the A/W14 serves the same aim: we enjoy the hand-painted handbags and shoes, the hand-painted flowers in the trench coats, the printed flowers and floral landscape of the cashmere scarfs, the hand-painted cropped sheepskin jackets, the full of flowers in dusty pink and cinnamon midi-length bohemian style silk dresses, and the colours in the block check blanket-ponchos.

The inspiration and influence from the group’s representations of nature and landscape is apparent with ease; the flowers and the colours at first glance, but equally the post-impressionistic way these gain shape and are put into context in Bailey’s creations. These fashion masterpieces act in essence like painting surfaces; thick brushstrokes of autumn/winter colours are being ‘thrown’ onto them and shape freeform flowers and abstract geometric patterns in a way analogous to that we note for the paintings, transforming the collection into an art moving piece.

Burberry AW14 and Bloomsbury artist Vanessa Bell's painting 'Spring'.