Collage En Plein Air
Collage En Plein Air
Written by Jagger Van Vliet
Art By Naia Driscoll
It cannot be understated that fashion today sits at an invariable impasse. For the past ten years, personal style has remained virtually inseparable from the brands and creators who defined the scene. See the wide-reaching sprawl of Abloh’s genius or the ineluctable lure of Demna’s exploits at Balenciaga. Indeed, luxury labels have done well to make themselves integral to the streetwear and personal style movements alike.
So, where does this leave us now? The state of fashion remains teetering between two violent extremes; two directions entailing drastically different landscapes of expression. On the one hand, we have seen the high fashion world make a stark return to minimalism, with brands beginning to divorce themselves from the logo-heavy gaucheries of a more hype-beasted era. “Quiet Luxury” has now crept into contemporary lexicons, highlighting a turn to pared-down items, luxe materials, and understated excellence.
All the while, another trend rages on in virtual spaces, with the explosive profusion of stark maximalism. Driven primarily by a handful of nascent fashion influencers, a faction of young people are pushing back against this movement of timeless, yet banal, minimalism. Plucking pieces from polar opposite decades, this rise in online maximalism trots hand in hand with the thrifting and vintage upsurge that has come to define much of the recent years.
In all, fashion’s cold war has still yet to be settled. Firmly ensconced in the new roaring ’20s, neither side has made substantial gains one way or another. Truthfully, it appears as though everyone is waiting for the other shoe to drop. Yet there is every reason to question why this push and pull must remain staunchly binary. The entire concept of maximalism versus minimalism, Loewe or Louis Vuitton, pits fashion as a warped competition far removed from what truly ought to be highlighted.
We turn our attention now to an unlikely development growing out of Washington, D.C. Visual artist and incipient fashion designer Aurelia Colvin is posing a third option. A thesis meant as an escape valve for those who have grown sick and tired of the predictable cycles of corporate luxury. Colvin calls the movement Collage en Plein Air.
Unavoidably, we all want to look good when we put on an outfit. Whether this entails flaunting trendy aesthetics or flexing high-end garments, our ultimate goal is to create a ’fit that is recognizably “of the moment.” So much of modern fashion insists upon this subtle balancing of brands and trends; in formulaic static ways, Collage en Plein Air demonstrates a complete and total separation from this phenomenon altogether.
Collage en Plein Air’s raison d'être, as it were, encompasses exceedingly impractical outfits that are more moving art installation than attire. Colvin poses that fashion must make a triumphant break from typical conventions in favor of creating uncompromising on-body paintings. Collage en Plein Air as a movement encourages arranging one’s clothing in a way that highlights the many textures, colors, and patterns that build the foundation of the garment itself. Regardless of how an item might be typically worn, Collage en Plein Air demands that apparel be selected and worn specifically to capture a briefly beautiful moment on one’s own body.
The term Collage en Plein Air derives from the French movement of painting outdoors, or in “plain air.” Notably, Plein Air painters, such as Claude Monet, were made to endure and overcome numerous challenges when it came to painting in natural environments. Changing weather conditions and shifting light sources, all inserted an element of beautiful chaos to the simple act of capturing a moment in time. Collage en Plein Air seeks to capture this same dynamic quality in the way we create outfits.
Colvin herself, in discovering the roots of Collage en Plein Air, began to experiment thoroughly with the incorporation of various materials and everyday objects into her outfits. In order to properly reflect an ever-changing moment, Colvin felt that she had to deconstruct her fashion into a painter’s palette. Here she found her outfits began to take on entirely new shapes: thick industrial chains overlaid upon lacey tops, a collection of nacred oyster shells, fused to silver clay jewelry. It all began to capture something beyond an explore page ’fit. This was something unfailingly genuine—a moving collage of personal ornaments and textures playing in the light. Together, these elements worked to make the act of seeing the ’fit different at every single second.
Colvin’s inchoate movement is, in many ways, a call to arms; the near-revolutionary act of literally becoming one’s own objet d’art. “To create and display art in plain sight is exactly the aim of Collage en Plein Air,” Colvin says. “Your person is your vessel and your greatest artistic medium. Why should the everyday act of dressing not be an act of creation—of expressing something abstract beyond words or images—embracing patterns and colors, lines and curves, visual and textural sensations.”
This could be just what the world of fashion is missing. We have lost the plot, so to speak, forgetting that at its core personal styling is still a living art. We are not mannequins for a particularly modish T-shirt, we are canvases built for expression. To welcome Collage en Plein Air is to welcome all of the chaos, collected obsessions, and curiosities of our modern world, onto our own form. Above all else, Colvin says that Collage en Plein Air must stand, first and foremost, “in the name of living art.”
In the present-day limbo, stuck between unmoving forces, Collage en Plein Air reclaims a moment in fashion. Instead of chasing trends, we could be chasing moments, stitching all these lovely instances together into something truly artful. “Collage en Plein Air exists outside of dressing for the adoration of others but for the adoration of the body, art, and self-expression,” Colvin says, “Your body is the original canvas and how you choose to adorn it is an artistic statement you can choose to make every day.”