The worlds of art and fashion have never been more enmeshed. Just days ago at New York Fashion Week, Carolina Herrera sent prominent female artists and gallerists down the runway, while Diotima partnered with the estate of Cuban modernist Wifredo Lam, currently the subject of a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art. The Frick Collection recently opened an exhibition examining the role of dress in Thomas Gainsborough’s portraits, and this May, the Metropolitan Museum of Art will unveil Costume Art, its next Costume Institute blockbuster exploring the relationship between clothing and the body through garment-and-artwork pairings.
If the current moment feels particularly intertwined, the dialogue between art and fashion is hardly new. The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology’s Art X Fashion offers a sweeping survey of that relationship from the 18th century to today. On view February 18 through April 19, the exhibition presents 140 garments, accessories, textiles, photographs, and artworks that trace the sustained exchange between the two disciplines through thematic case studies.
“So much has been written about this intersection,” says Dr. Elizabeth Way, curator of costume and accessories at MFIT, who conceived the show. “This exhibition is about how the museum’s collection responds to that topic.” Rather than leaning on obvious examples—Louis Vuitton’s collaboration with Takashi Murakami or Versace’s Marilyn Monroe prints after Warhol—Way digs deeper into why this long-standing phenomenon persists.
Courtesy of The Museum at FIT
Central to her thesis is the idea that fashion has always been a partner to fine art, not merely a follower. Historically relegated to the realm of decorative arts—and therefore positioned lower within Western hierarchies of visual culture—fashion has often been perceived as derivative. Art X Fashion challenges that framework. “Fine art and nature are probably the two things that most consistently inspire designers,” Way notes, pointing to fine art’s privileged position in Euro-American culture. Yet as art circulates through fashion, its reproduction may not dilute its value, but amplify it—a reversal that suggests the art world now courts fashion as eagerly as fashion has long courted art.
The exhibition opens with what Way describes as an “art history 101 timeline,” illustrating how both fields emerged from the same cultural currents. Visitors learn, for instance, that artists were among the earliest collectors of historic dress, using garments to costume their painted subjects—two British painters’ collections would eventually seed the Victoria and Albert Museum’s fashion archive. Fashion history, in turn, has helped scholars date paintings.
From there, thematic vignettes trace parallels across movements—Rococo, Art Deco, Surrealism, Pop, Postmodernism. A 1950s Charles James corset designed for a cabaret dancer brims with art-historical references, from Dalí’s eyes to the Mona Lisa. A video installation explores “garmenting,” a contemporary art practice incorporating clothing and accessories into fine-art works.
Courtesy of The Museum at FIT
The exhibition’s white-cube main gallery houses perhaps its most resonant section: the perennial question, “Is fashion art?” Rather than offering a definitive answer, Way invites reflection. As MFIT director and chief curator Valerie Steele has argued, fashion does not need to be art to be important.
Drawing on art and fashion historian Dr. Christopher Richards, the show proposes that if fashion demonstrates innovative form, exquisite craftsmanship, and cultural impact, it may reasonably be considered art. Sculptural designs by Martin Margiela, Rei Kawakubo, and Iris van Herpen exemplify innovation. Charles Frederick Worth, Paul Poiret, and Elsa Schiaparelli represent technical mastery. Meanwhile, Christian Dior’s New Look and 1970s punk attire underscore fashion’s ability to reshape the social and cultural fabric.
Additional sections examine reproduction, interpretation, and collaboration. The range is striking: Yves Saint Laurent’s 1965 Mondrian dress; Eric Gaskins’ 2014 gown translating Franz Kline’s gestural abstraction into beadwork; and a 2023 Grace Wales Bonner and Kerry James Marshall T-shirt collaboration benefiting Study and Struggle, a Mississippi-based abolitionist collective. Here, commerciality becomes conduit rather than compromise.
Issey Miyake for Pleats Please and Yasumasa Morimura, Guest Artists Series No. 1 printed polyester dress, fall 1996. Courtesy of The Museum at FIT
Ultimately, Art X Fashion reframes a tired debate. “This question of whether fashion is art obscures the important role that both fine art and fashion play in representing our culture and identities,” Way says. Perhaps it’s time to retire the rivalry altogether. After all, what better to sleep in than a kaleidoscopic pair of Louis Vuitton x Yayoi Kusama silk pajamas?
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