Prints, please

Cerruti - Spring/Summer 2011

High-tech digital printing has allowed fashion designers to go from creating art out of fabric to pasting art on it. While some prints interact with the angles and curves of the body, many others are standalone pieces that simply need to hang off something to keep it upright. However, the body is not a blank canvas. It’s a canvas that already comes with work whoever using it has to factor in. Yes wearing snazzy graphics help show off your personality and taste. However, if one cares to support the art of fashion, then it’s less about looking good however which way and more about achieving a knockout look while celebrating the uniqueness of the field.

In fashion, the relationship between fabric and body reigns supreme. As dresses from Cerruti expertly demonstrate, prints excel when they play up and down our features. Prints could also narrow a vision that has already been built up by pleats, shoulder pads or other tricks of the trade. Without prints, Lee McQueen’s otherworldly creatures from his Plato’s Atlantis collection would have had shape but no skin, revealing where they’re from but not what they are. The use of prints, as the star of the show or as the stage concepts and craftsmanship perform on, reflects the two expectations art at large has to find the sweet spot between: “Does it look good?” and “Is that enough”?