about

René Gruau, was the powerhouse of the fashion scene from the 50’s to 60’s. He was an Italian artist known for his painterly style of fashion illustration. Fashion illustration requires the unique ability to use a brush in such a way that it not only captures nuance through gesture but is also able to transform the graphic representation of a garment.

His brief was to be a fashion illustrator, who's distinctive “New Look” of the 1940s revolutionized haute couture, theater, art, and commercial design.

Materials: At times, it's a broad sweeping brushstroke, full of energy, while at others a delicate contour framing the emotional timbre of the subject. This line is complimented by selective shapes and punched with a minimal use of color, typically red, black and white.

Antonio Lopez was a Puerto Rican, American fashion illustrator. In the pinnacle of his career, Lopez illustrated fashions for Women’s Wear Daily and The New York Times and eventually became a freelance artist for many of the top fashion publications, including Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Elle and Andy Warhol’s Interview. He is known to have “discovered” women like Pat Cleveland, Tina Chow, Jerry Hall, Grace Jones and Jessica Lange.

Antonio rose to prominence whilst at university in the 1960s, illustrating fashions for Women's Wear Daily and The New York Times. His unusual compositions, vibrant use of colour, collage, and off-beat models paved the way for a radical new visual vocabulary that had yet to hit the mainstream media.

Independently, Westwood built her own eponymous mini fashion empire, operating numerous boutiques and producing two menswear and three women’s wear collections annually as well as bridal clothes, shoes, hosiery, eyewear, scarves, ties, knitwear, cosmetics, and perfumes. On April 1, 2004, a retrospective devoted to her creations opened at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

Westwood's methodology—research, observation, an 'archivist's exactitude'—had been established early in her career, and unlike many designers she was willing to explain her creative processes, confident that although she would be copied, she would always be ahead.