Patchwork, or Containing Multitudes with Style
As modern citizens of the world, we are each a patchwork, an assemblage of elements hobbled together, clash and contradiction be damned. So it’s not surprising that in the late 60s, fashion designers and artists alike started to embrace patchwork — from Yves Saint Laurent, Prada, and Balenciaga to Issey Miyake, Richard Prince, and Mike Kelley. And, of course, Gloria Vanderbilt. And on to blockchain-based generative artist, Emily Xie.
Patchwork as the Modern Approach
As the world becomes ever increasingly global, we are less and less tethered to any one set of beliefs, one monolithic community, one dietary preference. In any given week, you might have pasta, stir fry, curry, sushi, and a hamburger all while sporting a tattoo in Sanskrit at your local synagogue where there are yoga meditation retreats. As modern citizens of the world, we are each a patchwork, an assemblage of elements hobbled together, clash and contradiction be damned
In fashion, patchwork refers to a type of needlework in which small, often square or triangular, pieces of fabric or cloth are stitched together. The individual pieces typically contain contrasting colors and patterns to make quite a dramatic whole. It’s hard not to think of Whitman’s famed line: Do I contradict myself? / Very well then I contradict myself,/ (I am large, I contain multitudes.). Patchwork, then, as a distinctly modern aesthetic, allowing us to contain multitudes with style.
Patchwork High Fashion
Patchwork in high fashion was popularized in the late 1960s when Yves Saint Laurent began experimenting with this construction method using rich brocades and colorful moiré. The French fashion designer created countless patchwork gowns throughout his career, so much so that former Saint Laurent creative director Hedi Slimane paid homage to this technique for spring/summer 2015, simulating patchwork on a bejeweled and bedazzled mini dress.
That same season, Miuccia Prada presented a heavily patchwork-focused collection for Prada, showing dresses and coats of substantial pieces of contrasting brocades sewn together. Back in 2002 while at the creative helm of the house of Balenciaga, Nicolas Ghesquière showed a series of slightly irregular patchwork dresses, configuring atypical shapes atop one another, all while interspersing chainmail elements and ornamental metal tassels. Most recently, a far more traditional method of patchworking was shown on the fall/winter 2017 runway for Alexander McQueen. Sarah’s Burton’s patchwork prints of needlepoint and scarves on long dresses with handkerchief hemlines were both classic and modern.
Switching gears back to Yves Saint Laurent’s patchwork couture gowns of the late 1960s, similar techniques were employed by two separate design houses in their spring/summer 2017 couture collections. Both the house of Schiaparelli and Dolce and Gabbana Alta Moda showed highly technical patchwork gowns, with complex shapes of contrasting fabrics layered together to create a beautiful, abstract whole.
Patchwork Art
Although these patchwork couture gowns are themselves works of art, they embody a sumptuous spirit originally attributed to Austrian symbolist painter Gustav Klimt. Through the allusion of rich patchwork surfaces crafted in each one of his ornately rendered canvases and mosaics, Klimt created a style uniquely his own that continues to be imitated and reproduced.
Other artists have utilized this hand-sewn craft through mediums such as wall hangings and tapestries. Japanese designer Issey Miyake worked closely with artist Tim Hawkinson on a series of dresses for Miyake’s ‘Pleats Please’ line, of which Hawkinson then took the designs and made a large patchwork curtain, titled “The Pneumatic Quilt”, for an Issey Miyake exhibit at Ace Gallery in New York City in 1999.
In the 90s, as well, late artist Mike Kelley utilized this technique of collaging fabric and created a sculpture made from patchwork panels of vintage sweaters from the 70s and 80s. More recently, artist Richard Prince released a limited edition rug of vintage patchworked sports jerseys, a somewhat subdued and livable way of incorporating patchwork in one’s home.
And then there’s Gloria Vanderbilt…
On the entirely opposite end of the patchwork spectrum of ‘livability’ is Gloria Vanderbilt’s New York apartment in the 1970s. The wildly eccentric Vanderbilt designed a living space entirely engulfed by patchwork, from the floor to walls to ceiling and bedding, every square inch of surface area was so perfectly covered in a variety of patterns, colors, shapes and textures. Her curtains almost appeared to be made of the same run of patchwork as Yves Saint Laurent’s gowns from the late 60s, of which Mrs. Vanderbilt so perfectly wore a similar style of at home, taking the concept of ‘dressing for your environment’ to an entirely new stratosphere.
Generative Patchwork on the Blockchain
Patchwork is a generous aesthetic, embracing wildly diverse elements at the same time. Which would seem to lend itself well to the world of generative art where the artist doesn’t know what the final piece looks like until it’s, well, generated.
New York generative artist, Emily Xie, creates algorithms that take up decidedly handcrafted materials to create new kinds of textural possibilities. As she writes, “[s]he is interested in how disparate materials and patterns come together to create unified visuals, and the stories that each might bring into the fold. She draws inspiration from physical media such as textiles, collage, and wallpaper, and examines them within a digital context.”
As part of LACMA’s initiative, “Remembrance of Things Future,” which asks blockchain-based artists to reconfigure work from the museum’s collection, Xie took as her inspiration, the “Bullseye” quilt from 1896 by Martha Lou Jones. Her two outputs, “Generative Patchwork and Bullseye” and “Interwoven,” are algorithmically forged digital textile artworks.
Xie deploys the logic and aesthetic of patchwork as one term within the algorithm, transforming the original quilt’s squares into living forms, belying patchwork’s tendency towards the geometric. Xie’s patchwork is somehow an organic, emergent, temporal form within a greater field. Which is one way to think about modern human life: as emergent patchwork.
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