Surreal Talk

Fashion Quarterly – Issue Two, 2023

In a world that can seem stranger than fiction and as disorientating as our dreams, Surrealism is both a fashion movement and a coping mechanism.

“The roses are blue; the wood is of glass.” This fanciful thinking comes from André Breton’s 1924 Manifesto of Surrealism, but it could well be a fashion insider’s prediction for what we’ll see on the coming season’s runways — at Schiaparelli, Loewe or Moschino, perhaps.

French writer and poet Breton penned his theory to rattle the “rational logic” of his time. Daydreaming and detaching yourself from daily life, making it seem strange, made complete sense to his peers. “I believe in the future resolution of these two states, dream and reality, which are seemingly so contradictory, into a kind of absolute reality, a surreality.” It seemed the right reaction when reality was insanity.

“Surrealism was an art movement that grew out of the horrors of the First World War in the 1920s, but it grew more popular amid the economic uncertainty of the 1930s in Europe in the United States,” explains fashion historian Caroline Elenowitz-Hess. “Surrealism’s emphasis on absurdity, dreams and visualising the unconscious reflected the sense of the world.”

It was during the latter decade that an on-the-rise, avant-garde Spanish artist, Salvador Dalí, began collaborating with Italian designer and couturier Elsa Schiaparelli. Their work included many spectacular creations, including a shoe worn as a hat and the iconic ‘Lobster’ dress controversially designed for the soon-to-be Duchess of Windsor, Wallis Simpson. On the more sinister side, their ‘Tears’ dress was based on a painting by Dalí and an idea of flayed and torn human flesh.

The Surrealists could profoundly unsettle, but they also knew how to promote themselves, so their work was still commercial. Inspired to share a Surrealist way of thinking with the world, Dalí painted three covers for American Vogue between 1939 and 1944, and created window displays for New York department store Bonwit Teller on Fifth Avenue. Another famous Surrealist artist, German-born Méret Oppenheim, was known for her fur teacup sculptures (which took something ordinary and gave it a new, emotive quality, however uncomfortable), yet still managed to convince people to wear her jewellery, which included necklaces made to look like bones.

In January 2023, the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris closed the curtain on Shocking! Les Mondes Surréalistes d’Elsa Schiaparelli. The exhibition celebrated Schiaparelli’s “innovative sense of feminine style, her sophisticated, often eccentric designs, and the thrill that she brought to the world of fashion”, and as it was shared on social media, she began to influence a new wave of provocateurs. (A dress with a pair of gold nipples will get you around those Instagram and TikTok censors.) The brand had officially been relaunched in 2014, but it was only when American designer Daniel Roseberry took the helm in 2019 that it started to turn heads. The exhibition and many celebrities seen wearing Schiaparelli — including Michelle Obama, Julia Fox and the Kardashian-Jenners — have renewed the French label’s relevance.

“There are certainly many similarities between the contemporary cultural moment and the 1920s and 1930s, including a worldwide pandemic, the rise of fascism and significant income inequality,” says Elenowitz-Hess. “In a world with so much anxiety and uncertainty, emphasising the absurdity of fashion seems to be particularly appealing for both designers and consumers.”

Now alongside its haute couture offering, Schiaparelli has created its first ready-to-wear collection (a subversion in itself) for SS ’23. For Roseberry, it’s a chance to design for the everyday and the extraordinary. “Ready-to-wear may be beholden to certain practical considerations, but that doesn’t mean that the woman who wears it isn’t any less entitled to fantasy than those who buy couture,” he says.

Some of the maison’s iconic codes — including skeleton shapes protruding from garments, gold-silk-embroidered measuring tape woven through and other trompe-l’oeil — make their way onto tailored pieces, with all the wit and whimsy of its couture. For Roseberry, accessories, jewellery and hardware are a way to tip your hat to or dip your toes into Surrealist fashion. The ‘Face’ bag in particular is an uncanny carry-all, complete with searching gold eyes, a nose and a mouth. “They’re clothes that build the mystery of the woman one garment at a time,” he says.

Whereas the Surrealism movement was criticised for its misogynistic gaze and fetishisation of the body (and previous Surrealism-inspired shows have provoked reproval), Roseberry’s designs put the wearer’s personality at the centre. “It’s occupying a really unique space where we’re able to have a sense of humour and make people smile but it’s still hyper-sophisticated,” he told the Financial Times.

A childlike appreciation is another central theme in Surrealism, to help us see things in a new light and liberate the mind. Elsa Schiaparelli may well have been delighted with some of the Barbie-film-inspired fashions of late, seeing as she was known for her signature magenta shade, the origin of ‘Shocking Pink’.

Others inspired by the work of the Surrealists include Jonathan Anderson, whose pieces for Loewe are ever more surprising, like the stilettos and boots that swap a heel for an unfurling flower, denim jackets and jeans printed with pixelated imagery, and looking ahead, trompe l’oeil duchess-silk dresses for Autumn/Winter that have an intense blurred image over them and are styled with boots so slouched they look like they could slip out from under the models’ feet. As Breton said, “In these areas which make us smile, there is still portrayed the incurable human restlessness.”

Usually more camp than surrealist, Moschino’s Winter ’23 collection focused on ’80s-style skirt suits for ladies who lunch, complete with ‘melting’ necklaces, buttons and belts that, much like Dalí’s melting clocks, turned back time. With the news of its creative director Jeremy Scott’s departure, many industry insiders expect Moschino will be revived as a more sophisticated and Surrealist label.

In step with recent runways, the art world is also recognising the dream logic of the Surrealists, especially in our post-truth political climate. Following the success of Sotheby’s Surrealism & its Legacy auction in March, a Surrealist work from René Magritte’s L’Empire des Lumières series is expected to fetch US$35-$55 million at auction.

Over time, imaginative New Zealand designers have mused on Surrealist art. Karen Walker’s Autumn ’17 collection Babou’s Revenge took the viewpoint of Dalí’s pet ocelot, and Kate Sylvester’s Art Groupie ’08 collection saw trompe l’oeil hands making their way across garments in a way not dissimilar to Loewe’s autumn/winter
’22 show. Before these came Annie Bonza’s graffiti-style embellishments and Marilyn Sainty’s penchant for the unusual.

Dianne Ludwig of second-hand store Welcome Back appreciates this Surrealist bent in our local design, including a Patrick Steel ‘Face Off’ dress from the mid-’80s she’s passed on to a delighted new owner. Her love for the movement came from when she discovered Elsa Schiaparelli in the ’80s, when Surrealism was having something of
a resurgence in fashion here. “Her designs were so original and magical,” says Ludwig. “I love that she brought the punk factor into fashion, but with such flair that never gets old.

“In an age of TikTok and Instagram, where your ’fit is its own performance art and artistic collaborations are rife in fashion, I think we’ll see even more Surrealist experimentation, even as an antidote to quiet luxury and the casual dress code,” she continues. “I just hope it’s done with some longevity of wear in mind, not just a one-off wear for the socials. If Surrealism in fashion pivots less on pure escapism and more on its punk values, it might lead us to changing the fashion system.”

Natasha Ovely of Aotearoa’s Starving Artists Fund once had a “slight obsession” with Surrealism that seeped into her uncommon approach and inclusive practice. Techniques like free-cutting of fabrics have helped her be more fluid when creating. “I don’t believe in the rules of dressing for your body type,” she says. “I allow a garment to have a silhouette of its own. To me, its completeness lies in seeing the wearer bring to life the proposition it holds.”

Although director and designer of Jimmy D, James Dobson, doesn’t think the Surrealist movement has specifically inspired him, he is drawn to the “ideas of the absurd and recontextualising”. In Jimmy D’s first collection, a hoodie became a hooded skirt. Later, the shape of a bib from a seafood restaurant was turned into a floor-length gown and a handbag. “Where your imagination will take you in a situation like this is much more likely to be completely unique,” he says. “It’s a powerful tool to create newness.”

Like the Surrealists, it helps for fashion designers to have a sense of humour. “A lot of fashion is super impractical or uncomfortable, so it doesn’t take much to nudge it towards total impracticality, which can spark interesting conversations or even just simply make you laugh, which I think is also a great reaction,” says Dobson.

Possibilities and distractions seem endless now we’re all very online. “Creating in a digital space removes even more boundaries of practicality or function,” says Dobson. “What do clothes look like in zero gravity? What if there was no restriction in a garment’s height? What if you weren’t even dressing a human body? These questions can all be answered and even pattern-made and mocked-up in a digital space, and might inspire real-life realisations.”

In the words of André Breton: “The marvellous is always beautiful, anything marvellous is beautiful, in fact, only the marvellous is beautiful.”