At this year’s Vanity Fair Oscar party, actor Julia Fox broke the Internet when she wore a floor-length leather dress with a statement neckline buoyed by a hand gripping her neck and a bag made of human hair.
“I’m going to get roasted for this tomorrow. The comments are going to be ridiculous. But you know what, I’m having fun, and that’s all that matters,” she said on the red carpet. Call it fashion or art, provocation has always been a game for fashion, and surrealism has propelled it to stay relevant.
Whether it’s the shoe hat that Elsa Schiaparelli created in collaboration with the famed artist Salvador Dali in 1937 (both of whom remain icons of surrealism), or Kylie Jenner in a vintage fall 2007 Comme des Garçons skirt and jacket with 3D hands that grasped her hips and chest, the fashion industry’s engagement with surrealism has, time and again, emerged during times of economic or cultural hardships. This phenomenon then acts as a social catalyst to help escape the atrocities on humankind, like in the late 1930s and early 40s during the Second World War, and now, following the COVID-19 pandemic. We take a look at how surrealism found its way into millennial and Gen Z wardrobes.