When luxury marries art
- Source: Global Times
- [13:40 July 13 2010]
- Comments
Breakable fashion.
By Mao Jiayu
The relationship between art and international designer brands may have started as a brief affair, but over the past 20 years it has decidedly become a marriage. When Chinese contemporary art began to revive with the reform and opening-up of 1978, Chinese contemporary artists would never have expected that international luxury brands would one day become an important support and driving force for them.
Working with artists, luxury brands use art to enhance the image of their products and the artists gain by winning international awareness. In 2007 Ding Yi, the 48-year-old painter based in Shanghai, was the first Chinese artist to design a silk scarf for Hermes. In a lecture on design and art on May 29 at the Minsheng Art Museum he said: "Brands favor artists because artists are independent, ready to try new things and they have different thought patterns. These are the things fashion lacks at present. They need inspiration from artists. This helps explain why a Louise Vuitton bag sells for 20,000 yuan ($2,950) and a copy made of the same material in Wenzhou sells for 800 yuan. This is becoming an age where creativity is highly valued."
Easy tigers. Photos: Courtesy of Lacoste and Salvatore Ferregamo
The tiger tote
Salvatore Ferregamo has always had an interest in art. And in recent years, Ferragamo has focused more on the Asian market. But before Shanghai-based artist Xue Song, it had only worked with a few Asian designers, like Alan Chan from Hong Kong, and Yayoi Kusama and Yohji Yamamoto from Japan. Xue was their first Chinese mainland artist.
In May 2009, Xue was exhibiting at an art fair in Hong Kong and this attracted the Asia Pacific head of Ferragamo. "They thought my concept of art coincided with the brand," Xue told the Global Times. "A few months later, I was invited to visit Ferragamo's headquarter in Florence to find inspiration for my work with them."
As it is the year of the tiger in China, it first occurred to Xue Song to paint tigers on the luxury bags. Not just any tigers, but tigers with Chinese elements - Xue is famous for combining Chinese calligraphy, folk art and Chinese brush drawing. "I chose two red tigers as there's a Chinese saying that good things come in pairs and red is a lucky color for the Chinese," Xue said.
