Do surreal times call for surrealist fashion?

Nothing is what it seems, as a sense of discomfort and instability pervades.

Image Credit: Paris Centre de Documentation de Costume

It’s fashion with substance: a meditation on the subconscious whilst eschewing rationalism to meld dreams and reality into what André Breton coined a “‘super-reality,’ or ‘surreality’” in Manifesto of Surrealism (1924). 

Surrealism in fashion is often considered “funny business” for its bizarre and avant-garde qualities — positing the body and material world in direct contact with the subconscious mind. Stemming from the 20th-century art movement, surrealist fashion emerged in the 1930s, situated between the two World Wars, as the byproduct of the disillusioned and directionless spirit of creatives in Paris within the post-war world. Artists such as Salvador Dalí, Man Ray, and René Magritte sought to make thought-provoking works that surrounded the dismemberment, fragmentation, desecration, and eroticisation of reality. Through the medium of fashion, surrealism perverts and distorts the corporeal form directly, playing with textures and forms to explore existence in the fraught modern age. 

Nothing is what it seems, as a sense of discomfort and instability pervades. Do surreal times call for surreal fashion?

Image Credit: Alessandro Lucioni; i-D Magazine

Surrealism offers an off-centeredness that has seen a resurgence on the runway: ranging from an abundance of trompe-l'œil hysterics owing to Jonathan Anderson at Loewe for his melded dresses to seem as if they were swishing in the wind to Matthieu Blazer’s leather ‘denim jeans’ at Bottega Veneta. However, it is Daniel Roseberry’s pioneering surrealist custodianship at Maison Schiaparelli (French for “House”; reserved for couturiers) that has catapulted surrealism back into relevancy in fashion lexicon. 

Although this may not have been what we’d envisioned for our Roaring Twenties, this influx in cerebral creativity further situates fashion as the mirror to the zeitgeist. This is exhibited in the cyclical nature of trends that capture the intrinsic wants of wearers — a continuous dialogue between inner and outer self-perception, a donned skin. It is with surrealism that we can understand a similarity between the post-war years and our post-pandemic reality, where constructing a surreality, like Dalí or Magritte, is perhaps escapism from the morbid state of the world. 

Julien Levy, a prominent and influential art dealer and gallerist in surrealist works, deemed the Italian fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli to be the only successful fashion contributor to the surrealist canon, due in part to her many collaborations with surrealists Jean Cocteau and, famously, Dalí. In her collaborations with Dalí, the partnership wanted to make “the fantastical real,” by engaging with the materiality and physicality of fashion that created new meanings and explorations into desires and sexuality. 

The Skeleton Dress (1938) — of black silk-crêpe and exaggerated trapunto quilting —epitomises the collaborative relationship between the two artists. Designed together for Schiaparelli’s 1938 collection Le Cirque, cotton wadding was used to construct a three-dimensional illusion of a skeleton on a skin-tight tailored dress. Dalí provided sketches of a woman in a sheer dress with an exposed rib cage and hip bones. This distortion of proportions and body parts were a key proponent of Dalí’s surrealist paintings. The dress would cover the wearer from their toes to their fingertips and culminate into the all-consuming high neckline. The combination of humour, morbid edge, and wearability owing to smart construction, was an exercise in the commerciality of the surrealist object. It left only those most daring and appreciative to don a Schiaparelli creation.

With surrealism and fashion having first met in the period of uncertainty between the two world wars, in 2022, they came together again against a backdrop of conflicts and global crises. 

Image Credit: Da Banda Model Management

Delving into the commerciality of surrealist fashion, like those that would have worn the Skeleton Dress, it appeals to a wearer seeking an alternative. Indeed, perhaps the off-centredness may be a hard-sell for the masses, and some reservations would be made for wearability and functionality, but, with the latest slew of contemporary fashion surrealist contributors, they inject a vivaciousness that goes beyond the head-turning and awe. Extra-long skinny sleeves tugged on Slenderman attenuation and danced with hyperbole at The Row’s Resort 2023 collection. Helmed by Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, they presented to The Row’s clientele an alternative flavour to the elegant minimalism and sophistication that they are known for. The excessive and impractical long-sleeves that fall at the same length as a trench coat, marked with The Row’s eye-watering price points for luxury ready-to-wear, makes for the definitive choice of shirt for the contemporary leisure class. Oh, Thorstein Veblen, how you would’ve loved The Row.

Jonathan Anderson’s collections in the post-pandemic world are, as he remarked, “Neurotic, psychedelic, and completely hysterical.” Anderson echoes how the 20th-century surrealists found their footing in a post-war society, prioritising automatism, the art-making process of surrendering to the unconscious mind, as a method for creation. Case in point, his AW22 ready-to-wear collection balances his queer and playful sensibilities with the subversion of reality. A consistent motif from the collection was balloons, particularly as blown-up bras with knots protruding as nipples; their irrational displacement creating tension in the anticipation that they would pop at the slightest touch. 

Image Credit: The Row, Vogue Runway

Perhaps the most famous of contemporary designers leaning into a surrealist state of mind is Schiaparelli’s creative director, Daniel Roseberry. He strikes a glorious balance between intimately referencing the surrealist archives of the house’s founder, Elsa Schiaparelli, whilst infusing them with his own sensibilities to recontextualise them to the zeitgeist. Roseberry’s take on Elsa’s Skeleton Dress in his SS20 couture show featured the skeletal form constructed of embellishments that were applied against a black silk slip dress and sprawled beyond, down the arms and legs. With a mixture of textures, contemporary silhouette, and a more relaxed fit, this was merely a persuasive introduction to what was to come. 

Roseberry’s hallmark contribution to the maison is his anatomical Midas touch; whether in his bijoux or ornamentation, the surrealist sensibility engages with the sensuality of the body. The gold “lung dress”, worn notably by Bella Hadid on the Cannes 2021 red carpet, was created as a response to COVID-19 and its impact on respiratory systems. Roseberry donned Bella with a gilded and rhinestone encrusted lung chestplate that hung from a chunky chain necklace and over her exposed chest in the gapping décolleté of a black wool-crêpe dress, citing the juxtaposition of his continuous use of the decadent gold against the simple black is a modern foil “at the service of the wearer” that enables wearability. Like the “lung dress,” many of Roseberry’s couture creations for Schiaparelli edge on the balance between reality and surreality, describing the latter as “only meant to be photographed, things you can’t even sit down in… we live in a day where the image is so critical that there is a place for this kind of fashion.”

Image Credit: Filippo Fior, Vogue Runway

It is worthwhile to understand the insight fashion has as a response to current social and cultural events, and as we find ourselves amid countless global crises. Surrealism is the perfect remedy to the pervading desire for escapism — both then and now. To subvert the expected reality and turn it on its head through displacement and eroticisation keeps us on our toes, it’s a sign that our primal curiosities of the subconscious aren’t lost on us even in a world of sameness. Whether it’s disproportionate figures or deceptive imagery, an organ painted gold capillary by capillary, or balloons for bras, it’s this “funny business” that surrealism provides a playful way to respond to the chaotic world. In the current state of unending micro-trends and fast-fashion, it’s what fashion does at its best; it provides optimism and a future of substance to what we wear.