OP ART IN

FASHION

AND DESIGN

Op Art in Fashion and Design

It was a marvelous time. In the 60s you were knocked in the eyeballs. Everybody, everything was
new. Diana Vreeland Editor in Chief of US Vogue 1963 1971

The Fashion Revolution of the 1960s

Not since the 1920s had the way people dressed changed so
radically. In the mid 1960s, thanks to a convergence of music, film,
fashion and social change, the mod look blasted out of London, with
the boutiques of Kings Road and Carnaby Street at the epicentre of
the scene.
For the first time in history young people had other options than to
dress like their parents. Up until then clothes for young women
were known as Juniors or Misses a watered down version of adult
clothes.
The sixties changed all that when young people started making the
clothes they wanted to wear, clothes that completely excluded their
parents generation. The mod look was about looking forward to
the future: sharp, bold, minimalist mod-ernist.
Two of John Bates's 1960s
dresses

The Mod Look

Mary Quant said of this time in her biography that she wanted
young people to have a fashion of their own, absolutely 20th
century fashion.
The monochrome geometric prints of Op Art perfectly
complemented the bold shapes of the mod look.
The sharp five point Vidal Sassoon haircut and the simple A line
shift dresses by Andre Courreges and Pierre Cardin soon
entered the mass market, having been quickly copied and mass
reproduced thanks to the new large scale availability of
synthetic fabrics.

Mary Quant having her hair

trimmed by Vidal Sassoon

Op Art Explosion
As Op Art and the artists at the movements forefront gained
recognition; the youth culture explosion of the sixties was gaining
momentum. Mod bands such as The Who crossed over to the
U.S. and everyone wanted a piece of The London Look.
The mod style, which was already waning in the U.K., reached the
other side of the Atlantic at around the same time as the 1965
exhibition The Responsive Eye in New York, which showcased
the work of Bridget Riley and Victor Vasarely.
Suddenly Op Art patterns started appearing on everything from
clothes to advertisements, stationery, furnishing fabrics and that
useful garment peculiar to the 1960s: the paper dress.

Paper Caper Op Art Paper Dress

Op Art Exploitation?
Bridget Riley and Victor Vasarely had polar opposite
views on the commercialisation of their work. While
Vasarely thought that art should be for everyone and
even collaborated with textile firms, Riley was
dismayed at seeing her original work co-opted for
commercial use without her permission.
In February 1965, Riley was being driven from the airport to the Museum of Modern Art in New
York. Travelling up Madison Avenue she saw in the shop windows row upon row of dresses with
designs lifted from her paintings. Riley denounced the way her art was being vulgarized in the rag
trade and publicly expressed her deep anger at the commercialisation of one of her paintings by
a New York dress firm. The firm was producing dresses with a design based on one of her
paintings which was owned by the director of the firm. She tried to sue for copyright infringement
but was unsuccessful.

Who Invented The Miniskirt?

Mary Quant is usually the name cited as the inventor
of the miniskirt. In fact both John Bates (under the
name Jean Varon) and Andr Courrges had shown
mini lengths before Mary Quant. Courrges had
shown mini dresses in 1964, but they had not been
well received. John Bates was one of the most
prominent designers of the 1960s and memorably
designed the iconic costumes worn by Diana Rigg in
The Avengers.
It was Quant though, who popularized the mini and
the one very practical element that would make
them somewhat wearable: tights. Up until the mid
sixties stockings were still the only option and longer
length stockings were initially produced to be worn
with mini skirts.

The Jean Varon Avengers Collection

Quant contacted suppliers of theatrical costumes who, thanks to advances in synthetic fibres and
manufacturing techniques, could make opaque woven tights in the same colours as the skirts she
designed. This meant skirt lengths could rise and rise while still protecting the modesty of the
wearer to a certain extent.

Op Art not Pop Art

Although Pop Art was a separate movement, it is often confused or
combined with Op Art when discussing sixties fashion. Pop Art also
had a huge influence on fashion during the mid 1960s with the graphic
work of Pop artists such as Andy Warhol being printed onto clothing.
The most iconic example of art meeting fashion in the1960s is Yves
Saint Laurents Mondrian shift dress. It was featured on the cover of
French Vogue in September 1965; cheaper mass market copies
inevitably followed.
Also not to be confused with Op Art: geometric styles were usually
made up of panels of fabric in boldly contrasting colours such as black
and white or bright primary colours juxtaposed. Op Art was all about
the print.
Yves Saint Laurent's Mondrian Shift Dress

Op Art Textiles
Textile companies Heals, Hull Traders & Edinburgh
Weavers led the way in developing Op Art prints into
furnishing fabrics; though usually the colours and patterns
were more muted than the eye straining patterns used
for clothing.
Edinburgh Weavers was the experimental arm of
Scottish textile firm Morton Sundour, which
commissioned leading artists, including Victor Vasarely,
to create patterns.
Barbara Brown's 'Expansion' fabric for Heals
Eduardo Paolozzi designed prints for Hull Traders and Barbara Brown designed for Heals. Barbara
Brown in particular was probably the most prolific designer of Op Art influenced furnishing fabrics.

The End of Op Art

As the sixties swung on, Op-Art prints and the mod
look gave way to the swirling prints of psychedelia in
the late sixties, then led to more muted colours and
organic forms taken from nature, such as the floral
art nouveau motifs made popular by Biba and later
Celia Birtwells prints for Ossie Clark.

Jane Birkin in Ossie Clark

(photographed by Patrick Lichfield)

Op Art Lives On
The resurgence of fabrics by Finnish company
Marimekko has led to a new generation of fans
inspired by their bright prints, loved the first time
around in the sixties. Missonis stripes and zigzags
owe something to Op Art but they are woven,
rather than printed.
UK textile artist Helen Owen has created some
fascinating Op Art textile designs over the past few
years and continues to work in this style.
Eley Kishimotos op-art flame print has been used on
everything from cars to backpacks to motorbike
helmets in the past few years.
Op Art Helmet - Eley Kishimoto
Collaboration with Ruby Helmets (2008)

1960's Op Art, Pop Art & Fashion

Art and fashion meet in the 1960's in the form of Op art and Pop art. Pop art and Op art were
separate art movements but the public mixed them, much to the annoyance of the founding
artists. The term Op-art was first coined by Time magazine. It was typified by the dramatic, trickoptic effects of line and contrasting areas of color.

Bridget Riley
Op Art was a term coined in 1964. Optically distorted geometric patterns in
black and white produced a whole range of movements on a surface. When
applied to fabric it created a new bold look in fashion and accessories. Op
Arts primary goal was to fool the eye. Bridget Rileys dazzling black-and-white
paintings triggered an op art fashion craze in the 1960's. Victor Vasarely was
also an influence. Op's greatest moment was the "The Responsive Eye"
exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in 1965.

Pop Art was an art movement and style that had its
origins in England in the 1950's and made its way to the
United States during the 1960's. Pop artists have focused
attention upon familiar images of the popular culture such
as billboards, comic strips, magazine advertisements, and
supermarket products.
The original Pop art fashion movement was both political,
in that it challenged the domination of couture and
bourgeois status dressing, and an artistic reaction to
abstract art and design, with the satirical and ironic use of
advertising and of representational everyday objects.

Early Pop Art in Britain was a matter of ideas fueled by

American popular culture viewed from afar, while the
America artists were inspired by the experiences of living
within that culture. Pop Art therefore coincided with the
youth and pop music phenomenon of the 1960's, and
became very much a part of the image of fashionable,
'swinging' London.
Some freelance designers took their inspiration from
sources of contemporary art and graphics like Andy
Warhol's Pop Art images. Warhol influenced fashion, and
Yves Saint Laurent certainly went down the pop art road
with his Mondrian dress and the black and white block
sheaths he introduced in the early 1960s.Brightly coloured
large-scale geometric repeats were favourites for both
dress and furnishing fabrics.

Today Pop art still influences designers and runway couture.