Like design or fashion products, art-fusion collaborations don’t come truly alive till fully digested by the greater public. To be fully legitimized, they too require their necessary components that will further validate their artistic, cultural and social relevance further. What kind of components you ask?
Today’s fashion and design brands, other than having pioneering products to begin with, require teams of experts to carry their meanings further. It’s professionals like photographers, journalists, magazine editors, models, agents, advertising agencies, distributors, storekeepers, buyers for department stores, salespersons, and museum curators who communicate vision of brands’ creative and production teams onto their consumers.
Naturally, it is a handful of creative experts who also help shaping and transmitting art-fusion collaborations to the greater public. It’s specially art-fusion collaborations’ specialists that are sensible to selecting and working with the most imaginative and unorthodox photographers and writers who can make it or break it. Whether through social media or word-of-mouth, it’s their creative content that’s capable of feeding all the relevant cultural and social channels. The more pioneering the visual and written content is, the faster and deeper it can penetrate and influence the consumers.
Art-fusion collaborations that lack, no matter how small of an oversight will easily manifest weaknesses that may not be noticeable to the naked eye at first, but perceivable immediately by other senses, like feelings. Since art-fusion collaborations are about making products or events irresistible, being aware of every possible detail that’s influencing people’s emotions, i.e. turning their desires ‘on’ and rather instantly is critical. If selecting the most suitable creative team of experts like art-collaborations specialists, photographer and writers, could be recognized as essential as selecting the most relevant artist or a designer to collaborate with, then for many brands increasing their success of art-fusion collaborations would be that much greater.
Unfortunately, at Arts & Labour we’ve noticed many art-fusion collaborations that had a considerable potential to start with, but were lacking just that – providing middle-of-the-road photography that’s too predictable, as well as narratives that simply neither inspired nor offered much to get excited about. In other words they were burying every effort the brand has put in in the first place.
That being said, our hat goes down to brands like of Kelly Weastler and Mjölk that are rather small but have managed to provide the blogosphere with captivating and innovative imagery that has fortified their already well-designed and developed art collaborations so much further. Of course, not to mention the continuous art-fusion collaborations of larger brands like the high-end Louis Vuitton or low-end Converse that constantly provide us with a spectacular feast we can at least indulge in, even if not purchase the product.
What are the pros and cons of art-fusion collaboration as a capsule collection? Do come back to our next post where we examine just that.