“This would look so much better printed on a cropped jumper,” said nobody ever. In recent years it seems as though every fast-fashion brand has espoused a collaboration with a famous dead artist: Primark and Keith Haring, Shein and Frida Kahlo, Jean-Michel Basquiat and H&M…the list goes on.
In many cases these collaborations exist as licensing laws within both the United Kingdom and United States mean rights to artists’ works belong to their estate. This results in such estates dictating who has the right to produce and utilise the artwork, allowing such estates full financial control and revenue from production. Therefore, in an attempt to squeeze as much money and royalties out as possible, estates often produce vast arrays of merchandise collaborations in the name of encouraging the spread of their artwork.
This also begs the question of the commodifiable nature of art and the relationship between fast fashion and fine art. At its core, fast fashion is mass produced, poor quality, and unoriginal slop—the direct antithesis to singular works of art, a celebration of craftsmanship, originality and creativity. By formulating what is an individual piece of work, exquisitely and precisely crafted over time to be placed on thousands of pyjama sets we risk devaluing the initial artwork and opposing the very facets that define fine art. Some may also argue this risks tarnishing these artists’ legacies, for the likes of Basquiat who regularly criticised the consumer culture and the commercialisation of art, such collaborations risk undermining their values.
The ubiquitous dissipation of these collaborations, some may argue, thus represents a reduction in artistic value. This however follows a very elitist view. Art is often an incredibly inaccessible medium and for artists like Haring or Basquiat, who spent their career championing for the rights of the underrepresented groups and to make art accessible, collaborations such as these allow this, making their work more accessible to the masses. By allowing a wider circulation of their artwork we ensure that art remains accessible, and everyone can display their affiliation and interest in such artists. Issues, however, largely arise when brands ignore the work of such artists, for example, during Pandora’s collaboration with Keith Haring in their ‘about the artist’ section they made no reference to Haring’s LGBTQ activism that coloured much of his work. This effectively reduces such artwork to nothing more than a commodified print and another item of clothing or accessory with little-to-no political or cultural value, which is an inaccurate representation of art.
Obviously, it is unknown what particular artists would think about their work; for every Basquiat who rejected consumer culture and commercialisation there is an Andy Warhol who celebrated the intersection of art with market goods and utilised the likes of Coca Cola and soup cans in their art. It becomes apparent that the intersection between fast fashion and art is inherently problematic because of the nature of fast fashion in and of itself, and therefore ethical and unproblematic consumption remains difficult. We should, instead, focus on uplifting and supporting present day artists, and the messages they send and intertwine this with fashion in a meaningful and enhancing way to ensure political messages are not lost nor ignored.
Image by Mark Chan for The Student
