Fashion Illustration Season

Infinite interpretations - fashion illustration evolves

Fashion illustration embraces much more than depictions of this season's designer collections. It can expand way beyond clothing into the realms of the fantastical and thought provoking. In this article, Zoë Taylor explores three varied approaches, speaking to the artists and curators who are reaching for a different perspective on what fashion illustration can be.

'The industry has been transformed, as has the world, by e-commerce and social,' said cultural historian Caroline Evans in spring 2023, when asked what had changed since the launch of her seminal book, Fashion at the Edge, 20 years ago. 'This isn't just about fashion design and sales but also about visual communication and new media, as we?ve collectively settled into life online. We now consume fashion as image as much as we experience it as material object, if not more so.'

Innovations in digital marketing have hugely expanded the terrain of fashion illustration, opening up new possibilities such as movement and interactivity. They have also fostered demand for illustration?s capacity to throw something more nuanced and surprising into our endless photo scrolls. Social media has played an important role in alerting clients to innovative artists, too, and online shopping has led brands to find new ways to connect with customers in real life, which has, in turn, increased opportunities for live event illustration and store-specific installations.

Fashion as part of a broader agenda  

Innovations in digital marketing have hugely expanded the terrain of fashion illustration, opening up new possibilities such as movement and interactivity. They have also fostered demand for illustration?s capacity to throw something more nuanced and surprising into our endless photo scrolls. Social media has played an important role in alerting clients to innovative artists, too, and online shopping has led brands to find new ways to connect with customers IRL, which has, in turn, increased opportunities for live event illustration and store-specific installations.

In Fashion at the Edge, Evans explored how fashion can reflect contemporary anxieties about identity, desire, capitalism, the body and mortality for example. Her study largely focused on garments and their presentation in the photography and theatrical runway shows of the 1990s but fashion illustratio