Fashion on Fire

Two of my favorite artists, Cai Guo-Qiang and Issey Miyake, collaborated on these amazing gunpowder dresses. In their work, both artists refer to the past and break with the past. Both artists play with our preconceptions of "artwork" and "dress" by exploding traditional uses of medium and form. 

Born in Hiroshima in 1938, Miyake witnessed and survived the atomic bomb. He is one of the most important Japanese fashion designers, famous for experimenting with pleating fabric and constructing unusual volumes that often transform the shape of the body. Miyake also apparently developed a friendship with Steve Jobs (great minds...).

I find these dresses to be extremely poetic and beautiful records of the process of art-making (watch Cai's Sky Ladder). I love the intersection of art and fashion and how fashion enables us to live with (and in) art. For more inspiration, check out genes: Fashion Photography and Related to Fashion.