Why Cars Are Driving the Look of Spring Fashion

The relationship between the auto and the mode has always been symbiotic; both, after all, are built for speed. From Gatsby all the way to today’s shows in Paris, the fashionable have been avid motorists, and designers have responded to their wheeled passions. Take Sonia Delaunay, who in the twenties in France had a car painted to match a coat she designed. By the car-obsessed fifties, exaggerated lingerie silhouettes resembled the fins on the Thunderbirds and Cadillacs of the era. Zoom ahead to the eighties, when Thierry Mugler prints presented grille-inspired get-ups, and onward to Paris today at Louis Vuitton, where Nicolas Ghesquière brought the spring season across the finish line with car prints that left viewers’ motors purring.