Hi Jacking Fashion

Collages, montages and street art completely jostle up the image of fashion, seize it . and take fun with it. Here's to the decoding of a well established phenomenon.

- Caroline Hamel

During the Gucci fashion show a few months ago, a leather bag tagged with the word ‘REAL’ could not escape anyone’s attention. This powerful ‘IT’ bag, which already started arousing emotions amongst all fashionistas present, even before getting off the podium, was a result of a collaboration between Alessandro Michele, Gucci’s Creative Director, and GucciGhost, a New York street artist, who has been systematically playing with the brand’s logo in his corner of the world since the past four years. Hypersensitive to the digital culture, which did a mashup of the brand, as much in terms of look as in image, Alessandro Michele did not hesitate in trusting him with this collaboration. A symbolic backing that marks the union between fashion and street artists, something that is becoming more and more prominent nowadays.

A DECONSECRATED IMAGE

After obtaining the key to the New York bus shelter ad cases 18 months ago, Michael de Feo never imagined that this would open up the doors of the fashion world to him. Known as The Flower Guy since he started painting his signature flowers all over the walls of the Big Apple in 1993, he began by reworking magazine and bus shelter advertisements with his signature flowers over them, and placing them back in their original spots. This is how Natalie Portman for Dior and Giselle Bündchen for Chanel found themselves covered by a huge sea of flowers, bang in the middle of apartment buildings. “When one buys a magazine, it is our choice to see the ads. In a public space, we just submit to it. That’s why I began to turn around these methods of communication, but I wanted this act to be more subtle than aggressive, as though these paintings have always been around: I would paint these photos without covering them up completely and by trying to respect the original colour scheme,” explains Michael de Feo in his Manhattan studio.