ART NEWS
Fashion Designer Victor Glemaud on Drawing Inspiration from Lucio Fontana to Hilma af Klint
Art is important “because it’s beauty,” fashion designer Victor Glemaud recently told Brooke Jaffe for “ARTnews Live,” our ongoing IGTV series of interviews with a range of creatives.
Art is a primary source of inspiration for Glemaud’s designs, which often use of bold colors and knitwear. “I go to galleries, I go to museums,” Glemaud said. “I just start to absorb or go back to things that I was thinking about, so I really start with thinking of color and that to me comes from art always, wherever I go.”
Glemaud has also famously slashed his garments, a direct reference to Argentine-Italian artist Lucio Fontana, whose best-known series is “Concetto spaziale,” in which the artist slashed monochromatic canvases. “The statement sweaters started with Fontana, Lucio Fontana,” Glemaud said. “I was in Paris with a friend of mine, and I saw this incredible Fontana exhibition and I was blown away.”
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Glemaud’s use of beautiful, bold colors in his designs vary according to his mood when making the collection. “Some seasons it’s primary [colors], and really bright and really bold, some seasons it’s pastels like Hilma af Klint,” Glemaud said referring to the pioneering abstract artist whose work has only recently become more widely known. “I like a contrast, I like a bright color, I like pastel, I like black and white, I like playing with all those different colors.”
[Read about why Hilma af Klint is important.]
Another more recent source of inspiration has been the quilted works of the late Rosie Lee Tompkins, whose work is currently the subject of a retrospective at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. “Whether it’s a pattern or a solid denim, it was incredible,” he said, adding that he would “love to figure out how to work with her estate.”
Glemaud also said he dreams of collaborating with other prominent artists, like painter Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, who captures “tone and color and movement so beautifully,” he said.
Later in his conversation with Jaffe, Glemaud discussed how the Black Lives Matter movement has impacted consumerism as a whole, and how it sparked a shift in his use of his social media platforms. He asked himself, “How do I help a new generation of creatives who look like me?”
