Fashion and art – often a symbiotic relationship and more common than one would expect. In fact, who’s to say that fashion is not an art of its own?

Image: Prada

A doyenne in the fashion world who can be considered an artist in her own right is Miuccia Prada. However, her last collaboration proves that a collective effort can provide the best artistic result. Enter Christophe Chemin, a Berlin-based artist who is self-taught and not limited to any particular medium.

The brand elaborates: “From text to visual, novels to huge colour pencil drawings, installations to theatre set design and artistic performance, collages to photography, video to cinema, Christophe Chemin breaks the limits, resulting in a very intricate world full of inner convictions.” Oddly, too, he cites bread as an inspiration. “He loves dry bread above all things. Dry bread, earth and simple beauty,” the brand adds.

At its Fall/Winter 2016 show earlier this year for both women's and men's fashion, Prada showcased its collections awash with eclectic scenes drawn by the artist. Think mystical and historical references aplenty like ‘Impossible True Love’, color pencil on paper, 2015. This is Chemin’s depiction of a couple’s passionate kiss on a starry night. A description of it includes: “In ‘Impossible True Love’, an ironical take on such a romantic genre, not only is the love impossible but the whole situation – even though it all looks here like a realistic situation or a simple staged kiss scene coming directly out of a movie.

"Or maybe … this intimate captured moment is happening off set, behind the projectors, in front of a background that was rejected and is laying now in the corner of some American studios. A glamorous actress playing the goddess Isis is romantically kissing an army boy that could be a young Elvis. This moment of projection, faked or true, is like in a dream – stars are falling from the sky, two different opposite cultures are reunited, and, like in dreams, it all floats forever in time.”

To see these beautifully captured designs yourself, come to the Sunday Times The EDIT's spring/summer magazine event taking place on September 29 in Sandton City’s Diamond Walk, right by the Prada store. 


Watch the Spring/Summer 2017 show here:


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