Is Fashion Art?
Opinion Essay
The line between fashion and art has become blurry as more and more artists collaborate with fashion brands, and fashion products appear in auction houses. People are getting confused about the boundary between fashion and art and even question if fashion belongs to art inherently. However, this seems to contradict the commercial nature of fashion. I believe that fashion is art in certain contexts. The two exhibitions I Am Because We Are curated by the Gallatin Gallery and Fashioning Wonder: A Cabinet Of Curiosities by the FIT Museum are great examples to demonstrate how Fashion is interpreted as Art when they incorporate history heritage (Gallatin Galleries; The Museum at FIT).
By looking at the exhibition I Am Because We Are by fashion photographer and artist Thandiwe Muriu at the Gallatin Gallery, the audience can see that fashion becomes an object of analysis and a symbol of artistic expression. In this series, the colorful and vibrant palettes of the silks dressing on women, the unique hairstyles, and other objects being played around in the photo’s setting, are not for attracting customers’ attention when selling a product, but for representing a certain Kenyan culture and tradition, according to the artist herself (Bardelli Nonino). The silks are normal to see in the marketplace in Kenya, the hairstyles were popular back in the artist’s mother’s generation. The objects are normal things in daily life, such as two fans that are played to be a pair of glasses in the work Victorious Dreams, 2023. The artist tries to express her young African woman’s identity through the visuals composed of clothing with traditional patterns as well as traditional hairstyles. This idea bounced with what sociologist Pierre Bourdieu wrote in 1993: “The work of art is an object which exists only by virtue of the (collective) belief which knows and acknowledges it as a work of art” (Bourdieu). Like all artworks, regardless of the objects used for expression, I believe that Thandiwe Muriu chose clothing, hairstyles, and traditional Kenyan fashion because fashion is deeply tied to women’s identity, and in this exhibition, it specifically represents Kenyan women. The artist, along with her audience, believes that this is a work of art for it speaks to other women in Kenya and those who can not speak but are eternally beautiful in a cultural way. This series of photographs to me is the inheritance of Kenyan culture and an exposure for silent Kenyan women which surpasses the idea of fashion being the commercial product, but sometimes could be a medium for history, identity, and emotions, which is just like art.
The exhibition Fashioning Wonder: A Cabinet Of Curiosities directly connects fashion with museums. The FIT museum is indeed under a fashion school, and it seems meant to present Fashion, but this doesn’t mean that the audience could overlook its value when the artifacts are Fashion items. In the introduction before the exhibition, the curators mention the intention to present the connections between curiosity and creativity, also prefer to use wunderkammer in German, which just stands for the cabinet of curiosities, and it’s also known as “Wonder-Room” which is encyclopedic object collections whose categorical boundaries were yet to be defined in Renaissance Europe. It is no surprise that curators categorize these fashion pieces into various interesting and ambiguous themes, including Specimens, Anatomical Theatre, Artisanship, and more. All these Fashion items are categorized just like artworks or objects with specific meanings, and all are interpreted as more than just pieces to be worn by people. For example, the Chiara sandals by Sophia Webster are interpreted as an expression of the fragility of life and mortality by the curators (The Museum at FIT). Although we don’t know the real intentions of the designer, the audience tends to believe that this is like an art piece that addresses something beautiful and fragile in our life by looking at it from an artifact perspective. Also, the dress from Comme des Garçons, which has been directly printed with Arcimboldo’s painting of Vertumus, is presented under the category The Chamber of Art, which seems to be interpreted as an appropriation of artwork, but also has meaning itself (The Museum at FIT).
It’s interesting to see the efforts of curators and museums here to influence Fashion into Art. While most of the clothing here originates from the commercial side of fashion, having appeared on runways or in stores, their reinterpretation by curators or historians seeking historical significance enhances their classification as artworks. And it is for sure that every single object here would not be as valuable or meaningful to be individually collected by another gallery or museum, but their effects when coming together to build this larger world called wunderkammern attract the audience to think more of these fashion pieces as artworks who somehow connected with the relationship between curiosity and creativity.
Overall, Fashion is not Art inherently, but it could be Art when people intend to interpret them from the perspective of history and heritage, or when simply seen as a medium to express culture, emotions, or identities. And no one can discourage you from believing that a piece is a one-of-a-kind artwork.
Reference
Bardelli Nonino, Chiara. “A Vibrant Series by Thandiwe Muriu Celebrates African Culture and Heritage.” Vogue, https://www.vogue.com/article/a-vibrant-series-by-thandiwe-muriu-celebrates-african-culture-and-heritage. Accessed 2025.
“Fashioning Wonder: A Cabinet of Curiosities.” The Museum at FIT, 2025, https://www.fitnyc.edu/museum/exhibitions/fashioning-wonder/index.php.
Nayeri, Farah. “In the Arts, Is It Breaking Big, or Selling Out?” The New York Times, 2024.
Thandiwe Muriu: I Am Because We Are. Gallatin Galleries, 2025, https://wp.nyu.edu/gallatingalleries/exhibitions/thandiwe-muriu-i-am-because-we-are/.
Bourdieu, Pierre. The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature. Columbia University Press, 1993.
