MINIMALIST

FASHION

SUBMITTED BY:
MAHIMA AWASTHI
NEELAKSHI KATARIA
NUPUR SINGH
MUBEEN AHMED
MADHURI VALLURI
NAMITHA CHILUVERU
INTRODUCTION
 In the visual arts and music, minimalism is a style that uses pared-down
design elements.
 Minimalism began in post–world war ii western art, most strongly with
American visual arts in the 1960s and early 1970s.
 Minimalism in music often features repetition and iteration such as those
of the compositions of La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, Philip
Glass, and John Adams.
 The term minimalist often colloquially refers to anything that is spare or
stripped to its essentials.
 It derives from the reductive aspects of modernism and is often interpreted
as a reaction against abstract expressionism and a bridge to post
minimal art practices.
 Prominent artists associated with minimalism include Donald Judd, John
McCracken, Agnes Martin, Dan Flavin, Robert Morris, Anne Truitt,
and Frank Stella.
MINIMALIST MUSIC
Balmorhea(band)
John Adams
Philip Glass
Steve Reich
Balmorhea (pronounced bal-mə-ray) is a six-piece minimalist instrumental
ensemble from Austin, Texas, that was formed in 2006 by Rob Lowe and Michael
Muller. Balmorhea were influenced by William Ackerman, The Six Parts
Seven, Tortoise, Rachel's, Gillian Welch, Max Richter, Arvo Pärt and John Cage.
MINIMALIST FASHION ACCESSORIES
Minimalist architecture
In minimalist architecture, design elements convey the message of simplicity. The
basic geometric forms, elements without decoration, simple materials and the
repetitions of structures represent a sense of order and essential quality. The
movement of natural light in buildings reveals simple and clean spaces.
DEFINING MINIMALISM IN FASHION
In the past few years, there has been a surge of minimalist aesthetics
amongst the fashion blogging community, which is probably no more
coincidence ever since Phoebe Philo took over the fashion industry by
storm, followed by Raf Simon’s latest appointment to Di or that heralded
a new Age for the decades-old atelier. It is also rather plausible that the
global economic recession may have something to do with this
burgeoning movement, considering that visible ostentatious display of
wealth is of poor taste when many people are having a hard time
putting food on their table. Following this growing trend, it has been
noticed that the word ‘minimalist’ has been slapped on every Tom, Dick
and Nancy’s wardrobe, outfits, decors, & their cats simply because they
are white and sparse. While it is true that the idea of ‘less is more’, i.e.
Reductivism, is an element of Minimalism, it is not the sole definition of
aesthetics movement, especially in the realm of art & design.
the main components of Minimalism to be as follows:
IMPERSONAL AUSTERITY

Impersonal: featureless, anonymous

Austerity: extreme plainness and simplicity

In combining the two words together, what art scholars are trying to say is that
Minimalism is the opposite of expressivism, hence the typical works are cold, and
exudes little emotion. Older, expressive works tend to be crammed with
metaphors, which early minimalist artists wanted to depart from. To them, their
deal was that, ‘here is a cube.’ And that’s that. What they were more interested in
was the shape and form and surface of the cube. The same thing can be applied
to fashion. Minimalist designers
concentrate on the specifics of form
and fabric rather than the function of
the garment as a body covering. They
do this through processes such
as rigorous reductivism and the
utilization of non-emotive design.

RIGOROUS REDUCTIVISM

Most of us are familiar, or can at least

deduce what the term means.
Stripping the design object to its core
would be the basic understanding of
its meaning. However, it also refers to
removing the appearance of
composition, so even if the
construction is incredibly complex, the
final works look deceivingly simple,
often utilizing invisible closures.

NON-EMOTIVE DESIGN

Non-emotive design elements are usually typified by geometric composition

and/or the use of non-conventional materials.
 Extreme simplicity often begins from
simple lines and geometric shapes, and
many early Minimalist works were
plainly repetitions of shapes and the
utilization of lines and planes. Gareth
Pugh pushed this idea further with his
seminal works back in 2007, where the
use of geometric repetition and linear
shapes were prominent, and continued
to be until very recently.

Early Minimalism rejects traditional

craftsmanship in art objects, opting for
sleek, industrial materials. Fashion’s
equivalent would be the Japanese who
often opt for unconventional fabrics not
often found in ‘expensive’ clothing.
There is Comme des Garçons whose
boiled wool and polyester are some of
the most common fabrics found in her
collections, and it’s believed that PVC
has been sent down the runway more
often than genuine leathers. But when
it comes to textile technology, Issey Miyake led the way with his polyester Pleats
Please and A-POC, both inventions he spearheaded to revolutionize how we view
clothes, in that high-quality garments need not be made of expensive materials
sewn by a hundred old ladies in an atelier. On the Parisian front, there were of
course, the famous Paco Rabanne’s metal dress, Courreges‘s preference for vinyl,
and Hussein Chalayan’s transformational table dress.

ANTI-FIGURATIVE FORMS

Figurative: derived from real object sources; representational of the human body
or real-life objects

Related to the idea of form over function which was previously mentioned, the
anti-figurative component of Minimalism also removes the idea of a ‘figure’ in
terms of gender and human form from clothing. The book names the kimono as
the perfect example of clothing that ‘eliminates gender distinction, and negate
the sexuality frequently imbued in Western clothing’. Its emphasis on proportions
and volume paints a picture of a genderless, ageless and weightless body. Issey
Miyake once said, “I learned about space between the body and the fabric from
the traditional kimono… not the style, but the space.”

It was probably no coincidence that Japanese fashion pioneers were heavily

reliant on the abstraction and rejection of the traditional female body so often
glorified in mainstream Western, and some Oriental cultures. One of the most-
lauded runway shows the fashion industry never ceases to refer back to is Comme
des Garçons’s Spring/Summer 1997 show – ‘Body Meets Dress, Dress Meets
Body.’ The initial reactions were unsurprisingly unpleasant and plenty of editors
were getting all weirded out. To be fair it did look like Ms. Kawakubo had sent
down Quasimodo lookalikes down the runway. As usual she was trying to
challenge the traditional perceptions of beauty, but what was more important
was that she re-adapted the female body as a gender-neutral costume. The lumps
and bumps were not meant to constrict nor complement the female body, but
instead created entirely new structures altogether.
DEMOCRATIC/ACCESSIBLE

As it has been mentioned earlier, Minimalist artists shun metaphors and

traditional
craftsmanship, which
are often found in
highbrow art. The
underlying key is that
Minimalism is not
about achieving
flawlessness, but
cultivating the
relationship between
the viewer and the
object, like that
approachable kid
next door with a gap
in his teeth and
chicken pox scars as
opposed to the
beautiful work of art
that is Benedict
Cumberbatch who is
forever unattainable.

The idea of
accessibility, or
accessible clothing,
has briefly surfaced
in the previous points, such as using cheap materials to make creative, high-
quality garments, and not having to conform to the idealized beauty standards to
don genderless, weightless and ageless clothing.

However, it is believed that Deconstructionism brings the idea of democratic

clothing even further, in that what you see, is what you truly see. It takes a
complete garment and reduce it even further to its barest state; a snapshot in
time portraying the process of its construction, stripping it down to its
fundamental parts. Take it as an extreme form of reductivism, if you’d like.
 Margiela is often quoted as the pioneer of
Deconstructionism, if not a Deconstruction
specialist. His interest in the fundamentals of
materials and processes of dress drove him to
create garments that are diagrams of the
construction stages. As someone who has a very
shallow idea of a garment’s technical construction,
being given a glimpse of its complexity allows me
to have a greater appreciation of the process, sort
of like how the audience always enjoy behind-the-
scenes outtakes. One can only imagine the depth
of the creativity and skills needed to create a
particular process made tangible and frozen in
time, in a way that looks like a proper, finished
work.

One may ask how such an intricate jacket above is considered Minimalist. This is
an example of reductivism at its extreme, the body is entirely stripped, leaving
behind only parts that are essential to hold it together. The term Minimalism does
not just apply to what’s on the surface, but its entirety in the design process has
to be taken into account as well.

Like Ms. Kawakubo, Margiela’s works panders to impersonal aesthetics, in that

the purpose or meaning of the design object is secondary to how it looks. Some of
his works also relied heavily on repetitions and the use of non-conventional
fabrics, such as the artisanal jackets which were made from recycled vintage
gloves and belts. And needless to say, Margiela has always been one of the few
labels whose signifiers are exaggerated proportions.
CONCLUSION

So, that was basically the formal definition of

Minimalism. When we first read it, the impression
we had of Minimalism was turned upside down.
We’d like to stress at this point that clean works
are not necessarily Minimalist, and Minimalist
works can be intricate. What’s important is that
encourages us to re-consider the form and purpose
of a design object, as well as usage of innovative
materials.

But as we all know; art movements constantly go

through changes and shifts over time.
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