24 Times Fashion Designers Got Their Beat From Music

While pouring over the Grammy red carpet looks, it struck me that there should be more talk about music and fashion than there is about fine art and fashion. Not only are pop stars and hip-hop stars and rap stars the style icons of our day, but we relate to them on a highly personal level; smartphones allow us to take their tunes wherever we go. Look around you on the train, in the office, at the grocery store checkout, and more often than not those earbuds everybody is wearing are delivering the sound of music.

Of course, music and musicians have long inspired designers in ways both concrete and abstract. Take punk rock, for example: The movement that gave birth to it is dead, but the aesthetic will never die, as long as designers can get their hands on black leather and studs. Grunge is another case in point. Its secondhand and slept-in look is a gift that keeps on giving.

When designers aren’t conjuring the overall look of a musical genre, they might be channeling the style of a specific performer. Jean Paul Gaultier’s spring 2013 ready-to-wear show was peopled with doppelgängers of the likes of David Bowie, Grace Jones, Boy George, and Annie Lennox. Madonna in her “Material Girl” phase and Jimmy Hendrix are also frequently referenced.

Jean Paul Gaultier spring 2013 ready-to-wear

Photo: Yannis Vlamos / GoRunway.com

Jean Paul Gaultier spring 2013 ready-to-wear

Photo: Yannis Vlamos / GoRunway.com

There are times, too, when fashion is just about the basic elements of music itself: notes and instruments. About 75 years after Elsa Schiaparelli designed a dress with a musical-note print (in 1939), Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pierpaolo Piccioli showed something similar in their spring 2014 collection for Valentino; that show had 55 looks, each one dedicated to a different opera. Gucci borrowed notes from Elton John’s Bob Mackie–designed costumes for spring 2018, and Paul Smith’s fall 2014 tribute to The Doors’ Jim Morrison included a few beam notes as well.

Yves Saint Laurent and Pyer Moss’s Kerby Jean-Raymond are among the designers who have picked up instruments. Titled Braque, YSL’s spring 1988 couture collection included homages to the artist’s paintings of stringed instruments. These were recently iterated on by Jeremy Scott in his spring 2020 lineup for Moschino. Guitars and violins are probably fashion’s preferred instruments as decorative elements. It’s probably not a coincidence that their shapes mirror that of the idealized hourglass silhouette. Mic drop.

Look here to see when designers hit the right note.