Dress the Part: This Season s Art Exhibitions and Spring 2014 Fashion

Much has been bandied around the fashion industry’s artsy lean of late. For spring, Miuccia Prada commissioned graffitists to whip up those now-infamous, photographer-bait visages. Phoebe Philo channeled Brassaï at Céline, her adroit quirkiness alive in galvanizing kinetics. For fall, Burberry Prorsum’s Christopher Bailey proposed hand-painted leathers, with scenes depicting flowering, bucolic wilds. Hedi Slimane tapped the Californian imagist John Baldessari for a micro-collaboration on a grouping of sequined minis at Saint Laurent—and the list goes on.

Pretty and provocative though it may be, how does clothing with an art-inflected slant relate to greater culture’s current genius loci? We sought to see exactly how, cross-referencing spring’s collections—what’s presently in stores—with the visual signatures of artists featured in museum exhibitions this season. The results are pretty exciting: There are multiple instances of fashion overlapping with art—all featured below— from the literal (Paul Gauguin’s Tahitian homesteads at Aquilano.Rimondi) to the coincidentally, though exhilaratingly, linked (see the echoes between **Paul Matisse’**s matte, bold pastels and **Prabal Gurung’**s deft color-play . . . ).