Iconic Art and Fashion Collaborations

Art and fashion collaborations started gaining popularity in the 1920s. When the creative minds of artists and designers come together, the results are unique, memorable and influential.

Major fashion houses sometimes set aside budget to pay artists to collaborate, and to run campaigns to promote the collabs. It makes sense that these collaborations are the ones we hear about most often. Here we have chosen a few iconic art and fashion collaborations that may have received less publicity, but remain powerful examples of artists and designers combining their strengths.

Here we have categorized the iconic art and fashion collaborations into two types. First are garments and accessories. Second are retail, runway and public art collaborations.

Garments and Accessories

Yayoi Kusama x Louis Vuitton

Yayoi Kusama and model in the 2022 LV collection

Female artists of color are underrepresented in the well-known art and fashion collaborations commissioned by large European and North American brands. Yayoi Kusama is an exception. In 2012 and 2022, Louis Vuitton collaborated with Kusama, who is known for her sculptures and installations. 

Time Magazine named Kusama one of its 100 Most Influential People in the World in 2016. 

Originally from Japan, Kusama, now 95 years old, emigrated to New York City in 1958 and quickly became part of the 1960s art scene. Long after her return to Japan, Louis Vuitton creative director Marc Jacobs visited her studio and spent the next ten years bringing a collaboration to fruition.

The first Yayoi Kusama x Louis Vuitton collaboration coincided with Kusama’s 2012 retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. “The obsessive character and the innocence of her artwork touch me,” creative director Marc Jacobs said in a press release. “She succeeds in sharing her vision of the world with us.” 

Louis Vuitton Maison Champs-Élysées flagship store 2023

This iconic art and fashion collaboration was so successful that Louis Vuitton invited Kusama for a second collaboration in 2022, which included ready-to-wear, accessories, trunks and fragrances. This time it was creatively marketed through life- and larger-than-life-size images of the colorful Kusama herself. For instance, an inflatable Kusama appeared on top of the Paris flagship store on the Champs-Élysées.

Art in Return 

Kuyichi x Art in Return jumpsuit

Amsterdam-based Annemieke van Beek worked for 25 years as a creative director for several international fashion brands. In 2019, she made a career switch. Van Beek started creating three-dimensional artworks and offering them on her platform Art in Return. The owner of 100% organic denim brand Kuyichi visited Van Beek’s atelier to acquire an artwork. However Art in Return’s work is not for sale. You can acquire a piece by making a trade with something that inspires or sustains the platform. In exchange for a work of art, Kuyichi offered Van Beek the opportunity to design her own denim jumpsuit. The aim was to produce as sustainably as possible by using Kuyichi’s recycled denim. Kuyichi and Van Beek decided to produce a limited edition jumpsuit and connect it to a great cause. For every jumpsuit sold, Kuyichi donates 50 euro to an organization helping Ukrainian refugees.

Issey Miyake 

An Issey Miyake dress photographed by Irving Penn

From the late 1980s until his retirement in 1997, award-winning Japanese fashion designer Issey Miyake made art from his clothing. His experiments with pleats allowed the wearer complete freedom of movement. It was also easy to produce and care for these garments. The garments were first cut and sewn, then sandwiched between layers of paper and fed into a heat press to be pleated. The fabric held the pleats, so after the paper was removed, the garments were ready to wear. 

Art and fashion collaborations included a 10-year relationship with fashion photographer Irving Penn, and a Guest Artist series in the late 1990s with photographer and collage maker  Yasumasa Morimura and artists  Nobuyoshi Araki, Tim Hawkinson, and Cai Guo-Qiang.

Miyake stated that his intention was not to answer the question “Is fashion art?” but instead to create an “interactive relationship” between the art and the people who admired it. By wearing the artworks upon their bodies, the wearers interacted with fashion and art simultaneously.

Retail, Runway and Public Art

The most obvious art and fashion collaborations are ones worn on the body. However creative collaborations also exist in the environment around us. For example, brands and artists collaborate on retail, runway and even public art projects.

Willi Smith  

Willi Smith on the cover of WilliWear News in collaboration with Paper Magazine, Summer 1986 Collection

Willi Smith was a visionary multi-disciplined artist. He was one of the most successful African-American designers in the fashion industry at the time of his death in 1987. Inspired by the fashion he saw on the streets, Smith invented streetwear and launched his WilliWear Limited label in 1976. Ten years later the label grossed over 25 million USD.

One of Smith’s great contributions to the fashion industry was making clothing accessible and affordable. He also increased visibility for the Black and queer experience through his collections, events, and collaborations. 

A natural collaborator, Smith expanded the concept of art and fashion collaboration to his retail interiors and the runways at his fashion shows. The SITE architect collective worked with Smith to reimagine the WilliWear showroom , offices and retail spaces. Imagine a cityscape indoors, with brick-like vignettes, steam pipes, and fire escapes to reflect WilliWear’s street style. 

Artists including Keith Haring, Robert Rauschenberg and Barbara Kruger worked with Smith to design t-shirts that Smith produced, framed as artwork on canvas, and sold at designer prices, similar to a Nike or Yeezy sneaker drop today. 

Theatre National Daniel Sorano Dancers on Set, Expedition. Photo: Max Vadukul, 1985

Even on the runway, Smith collaborated. He used film as a creative medium that competed with 24-hour cable television and home shopping TV networks. Les Levine’s Made in New York (1984) and Max Vadukul’s Expedition (1985) were short films produced by WilliWear that position fashion as a form of entertainment and reinforce the brand’s emphasis on multicultural exchange.

Prada Marfa 

Prada Marfa. Photo: Prada Group 

Prada Marfa is a 2005 replica of a luxury Prada boutique, located in the middle of the Chihuahua desert, 37 miles from Marfa, Texas. The products inside — carefully arranged shoes and handbags — eternally stay the same, while the outside of the building naturally decays.

Scandinavian artist duo Elmgreen & Dragset created this permanent installation which they describe as a ‘pop architectural land art project’. Since it’s not located in a museum, Prada Marfa is subject to the elements as well as “an audience that didn’t ask for an art experience”, Elmgreen said. “When people interact with [public art], even vandalism can be seen as a positive – it’s a sign of people feeling that they have a say in public space.”

Another unique feature of this collaboration between art and fashion is the fact that the project was not commissioned by Prada. Miuccia Prada did approve the use of the brand and donated a selection of pieces that complement the desert tones of the surrounding environment.

In Summary

These iconic collaborations are just a sampling from the last 50 years. Click here to read about the latest collaborations.

Artists and fashion designers have been inspiring one another for much longer, and continue to do so. So what makes a successful collaboration? James Wines, a SITE co-founder who co-created Willi Smith interiors describes it this way, “In order to make a strong statement that can affect the most diverse audience, you have to begin with what’s common. We really shared that, a conception of starting with the commonplace but then making an intervention that changes the meaning. That is a powerful act. Everyone can relate to the ordinary, but then they experience something extraordinary. We all had a mission of putting art in places where you least expected to find it.”