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Fashion illustration is the art of communicating fashion ideas in a visual form through the use of drawing tools or design-based software programs. It is mainly used by fashion designers to brainstorm their ideas on paper or digitally. Fashion illustration plays a major role in design - it enables designers to preview garment ideas before they are converted to patterns and physically manufactured.
Fashion illustration has been around for nearly 500 years. Ever since clothes have existed, there has been a need to translate an idea or image into a visual representation. Not only do fashion illustrations show a representation or design of a garment but they also serve as a form of art. The majority of fashion illustrations were created to be seen at a close range, often requiring the illustrator to have an eye for detail. [1] Fashion illustration is said[ by whom? ] to be a visual luxury. [2]
More recently, there has been a decline of fashion illustration from the late 1930s when Vogue began to replace its celebrated illustrated covers with photographic images. This was a major turning point in the fashion industry. Laird Borrelli, author of Fashion Illustration Now states,
Fashion Illustration has gone from being one of the sole means of fashion communication to having a very minor role. The first photographic cover of Vogue was a watershed in the history of fashion illustration and a watershed mark of its decline. Photographs, no matter how altered or retouched, will always have some association with reality and by association truth. I like to think of them [fashion Illustrations] as prose poems and having more fictional narratives. They are more obviously filtered through an individual vision than photos. Illustration lives on, but in the position of a poor relative to the fashion., [3]
Fashion illustration differs from the fashion plate in that a fashion plate is a reproduction of an image, such as a drawing or photograph, for a magazine or book. Fashion illustrations can be made into fashion plate, but a fashion plate is not itself an original work of illustration.
In the modern day fashion illustrations are seen more as interpretations of garments rather than exact replicas. [4] Illustrators have more freedom when working for themselves rather than for magazines, that valued realism over the illustrator's creative liberties.
Designers use mediums such as gouache, marker, pastel, and ink to convey the details of garments and the feeling invoked by the artist. With the rise of digital art, some artists have begun to create illustrations using Adobe Photoshop or an application such as Procreate. There are two main purposes for fashion illustration: design communication and artistic expression. For design communication, artists frequently begin with a sketch of a figure called a croquis, and build a look on top of it. The artist takes care to render the fabrics and silhouettes used in the garment. They typically illustrate clothing on a figure with exaggerated 9-head or 10-head proportions. The artist will typically find samples of fabric, or swatches, to imitate in their drawing. When illustrating for artistic expression, accurate proportion and faithful rendering of textiles takes a back seat to dramatic usage of color and line to convey movement.
Camberwell College of Arts is a public tertiary art school in Camberwell, in London, England. It is one of the six constituent colleges of the University of the Arts London. It offers further and higher education programmes, including postgraduate and PhD awards. The college has retained single degree options within Fine Art, offering specialist Bachelor of Arts courses in painting, sculpture, photography and drawing. It also runs graduate and postgraduate courses in art conservation and fine art as well as design courses such as graphic design, illustration and 3D design. It has been ranked as the top British art school by The Times.
Arthur Rackham was an English book illustrator. He is recognised as one of the leading figures during the Golden Age of British book illustration. His work is noted for its robust pen and ink drawings, which were combined with the use of watercolour, a technique he developed due to his background as a journalistic illustrator.
Marimekko Oyj is a Finnish textiles, clothing, and home furnishings company founded by Viljo and Armi Ratia in Helsinki in 1951. Marimekko made important contributions to fashion in the 1960s. It is particularly noted for its brightly colored printed fabrics and simple styles, used both in women's garments and in home furnishings.
Helen Dryden (1882–1972) was an American artist and successful industrial designer in the 1920s and 1930s. She was reportedly described by The New York Times as being the highest-paid woman artist in the United States, though she lived in comparative poverty in later years.
Christian Bérard , also known as Bebè, was a French artist, fashion illustrator and designer.
Maurice Vellekoop is a Canadian artist, cartoonist, and illustrator. He is most known for his queer cartoons which often feature naked men. He has drawn pin-ups as well as multi-character comics. Vellekoop is also a fashion designer with his drawings and designs appearing in popular magazines across the United States.
Sir William Russell Flint was a Scottish artist and illustrator who was known especially for his watercolours of women. He also worked in oils, tempera, and printmaking.
Eduardo Recife is an artist, illustrator and typographer from Brazil, known for his distinct collage style which combines vintage imagery, magazine cuts, textures, stains and many details and symbols. Recife is also known for his 35 typefaces, of which the majority is freeware.
Alan Pipes is a British writer on art, product design and graphic design. He studied physics at the University of Surrey, in Battersea and worked in print publishing, notably as Managing Editor of Computer-Aided Design journal (1977–82), published by IPC Science and Technology Press, and editor of CadCam International (1982–85), published by EMAP, before becoming a freelance writer in 1985.
threeASFOUR is a New York fashion house – led by Gabriel Asfour, Angela Donhauser, and Adi Gil – known for combining technical innovation and couture craftsmanship with an aesthetic focus on natural geometries. Hailing from Lebanon, USSR, and Israel, respectively, Asfour, Donhauser, and Gil have referred to threeASFOUR as a ‘United Nations of Fashion’, and their collections frequently promote intercultural unity. The house presents their designs at New York Fashion Week, and their work is exhibited by several museums internationally, including the Metropolitan Museum’s Costume Institute and London’s Victoria and Albert Museum. In 2015, threeASFOUR was awarded the Cooper Hewitt National Design Award for fashion design.
Count Renato Zavagli Ricciardelli delle Caminate, professionally known as René Gruau was a fashion illustrator whose exaggerated portrayal of fashion design through painting has had a lasting effect on the fashion industry. Because of Gruau's inherent skills and creativity, he contributed to a change in the entire fashion industry through the new pictures that represented the already popular designs created by designers in the industry. The benefits, including economic stimulation and enhancement of advertising are still present in the industry today via a new way of fashion illustration, fashion photography. Gruau became one of the best known and favorite artists of the haute couture world during the 1940s and 50s working with Femina, Marie Claire, L'Officiel, L'Album Du Figaro and an assortment of "high-style" magazines. Gruau's artwork is recognized and commended internationally in some of Paris and Italy's most prestigious art museums including the Louvre in Paris and the Blank in Italy. In addition to his international fame and recognition, "Gruau's artwork is known for its timeless and enduring style".
Irwin Crosthwait, was a Canadian painter best known for his role as a fashion illustrator.
Christine Berrie is a Scottish illustrator and artist based in Glasgow. She is known for her industrial-themed illustrations, including such objects as wall plates, gas meters, dials, buttons and switches, control boxes, electrical objects, machinery, and appliances.
Amy Davis is an American fashion illustrator, actress, filmmaker, and lo-fi musician. Her illustrations have been in shows all over the world, as well as published in magazines and books. She is married to filmmaker Jon Moritsugu, and helps run his film production company, Apathy Productions.
There are more than 100 illustrators of English-language editions of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-Glass (1871), with many other artists for non-English language editions. The illustrator for the original editions was John Tenniel, whose illustrations for Alice and Looking Glass are among the best known illustrations ever published.
Ruth Sigrid Grafstrom (1905–1986) was an American illustrator, producing significant work in fashion illustration during the 1930s and 1940s.
Galerie des Modes et Costumes Français is a series of fashion and costume plates that was distributed in Paris from 1778 to 1787, during the reign of King Louis XVI of France and Marie Antoinette. The first collected volume, which was produced in 1779, had a title page which bore an allegorical illustration as well as the full title of the collection: Gallerie des modes et des costumes français dessinés d'après nature, Gravés par le plus Célèbres Artistes en ce genre, et colorés avec le plus grand soin par Madame Le Beau. Ouvrage commence en l'année 1778. A Paris, chez le Srs Esnauts et Rapilly rue St. Jacques à la Ville de coutances. Avec priv. Du Roi. Importantly, this lengthier epithet indicates that the engravings of the Galerie were created "d'après nature," or "after nature," meaning that they were intended to represent what was actually worn in the streets of Paris during the latter part of the eighteenth century.
Percy Venner Bradshaw, who often signed PVB, was a British illustrator who also created the Press Art School, a correspondence course for drawing.
Sara Carles Johns was an American artist and fashion illustrator.
Traphagen School of Fashion was an art and design school in operation from 1923 to 1991, and was located at 1680 Broadway in New York City. The school was founded and directed by Ethel Traphagen Leigh (1883–1963) with a focus on the foundational concepts of the American design movement. This was one of the earliest fashion schools and played a role in the development of American fashion by educating over 28,000 students in 68 years of operation.
