Fine Art to Natural World – Fashion gets inspiration from all sources. However, the synergy between fashion designers and architects is unparalleled. Architecture produces inhabitable art while fashion gives us wearable art. Designers who dip their toe into the world of architectural fashion, use building blocks to form the garment. In the same manner that architects use concrete, glass, bricks etc to construct the building, designers make high fashion dresses. Fashion Industry giants like Gianfranco Ferré and the late Pierre Balmain have an architectural background. Balmain has even said “dressmaking is the architecture of movement” while incorporating architectural elements into his design.
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Form Follows Fashion is the brainchild of Viktoria Lytra, the Greek Architect. It investigates the commonalities between architecture and fashion – to create shelter. While architecture creates shelter for one or more human bodies, fashion shelters one (most of the time). Both, however, focus on placing aesthetic as a common factor in the design of their product. This segregates them from the rest of the sciences and brings them into the realm of fine arts.
According to Lytra, another connection between the two is the correlation to the field of art. The inspiration from art can easily be witnessed in the designs that stand out and draw our attention to its artistic roots. Nature plays a vital role in this scenario. When the resulting garment/building comes out of an exploration of natural forms, the result is almost always original. With digital design and construction tools, the morphology for architecture and fashion has a vast and expansive area to be explored.
The hallmarks of high fashion which is inspired by architecture are scooping angles, detailing of shapes, exaggerated proportions, and attention to construction. Form Follows Fashion has created a three-dimensional look, by manipulating the fabric to build up the final effect.
“Certainly, we cannot say that there is a common period for these two, as we see for instance the AW2018 collection of Chinese designer Guo Pei to have similarities to Gothic churches. What generally is put into practice is to keep records of distinctive buildings and outfits, and to combine them under various criteria.” -FormFollowsFashion
Lytra has created a set of images that explore the relationship between architecture and high fashion. It features various movements and styles – minimalism, postmodernism, and deconstructivism. The dresses also play on common characteristics like twists, folks, pleats, prints, and curves.
Coco Chanel once famously said, “Fashion is Architecture: it is a matter of proportions.” Lytra’s designs prove her right.
With curves, angles, patterns, and colors inspired by buildings, Lytra, through Form Follow Fashion has brought forth some interesting and impressive futuristic clothes, jewelry and shoes.
All images courtesy of Viktoria Lytra.
Architect and designer with years of experience in planning and sustainable design. A graduate of MARG Institute of Design and Architecture, I’ve worked on residential, institutional, and urban projects—creating elegant, user-focused spaces with a green approach.