FASHION DRAWING AS A CAREER
To many art school students in this country
fashion drawing seems an attractive but hazardous career.
In this survey the art editors of
Vogue, The Queen, Harper s and the Daily Express
advise students on fashion drawing as a career,
and give some shocks to conventional ideas
the fashion artist invites imaginationhis
women are unreal, and therefore might be us.
We slip into the personalities that he has left
vacant for us, and buy the clothes he has no more
than indicated. He relates the fantasy of fashion
to its periodhe and his technique are part of
the age it represents, and therefore we shall never
look funny, as we do in old photographs in
time we may parallel the grandes dames and petites
bourgeoises of Constantin Guys. For the purpose of
this brief survey, a rough division into four types
may be usefulthe catalogue drawingfashion
advertisingmagazine fashionnewspaper work.
Fashion drawing for catalogue work is a form
of illustration which is the prerogative of the
competent, and no doubt comes naturally to
them. Such artists maintain a low but honest
standard, are careful not to fall below it and
incapable, usually, of surpassing it. Such drawing
dominates British fashion and shares with the
county tradition responsibility for the legend
of British feminine dowdiness. There are, how
ever, excellent and even brilliant exceptions the
drawings for the catalogues of Galeries Lafayette,
produced by Colman Prentis and Var ley, are
notable examples. Let us hope they are a portent.
Space will not permit detailed discussion of
drawings for fashion advertising, or of the cam
paigns of the different fashion houses and their
personal ingenuity. On broader issues, fashion
advertising is influenced by magazine and news
paper work, and for the purpose of these notes
will be identified with them.
The most important consideration is obviously
the buyers' requirements, and Vogue must auto
matically take first place for intelligent and
imaginative use of the fashion artist (and fre
quently for his discovery). Listen, then, to J. de
Holden Stone, art editor of the English edition of
Vogue. He has written at length because he
wants to discourage a lot of students who are
thinking of going in for fashion drawing, and
rope in a few who wouldn't touch it with a
barge pole.' Here, then, is his advice
Start by thinking about photography. Realise
that the camera has cheapened whole aspects of
draughtsmanship which at one time or another
have been taken as evidence of supreme skill
perspective, detail, texture, unusual angles,
momentary facial expression, play of light, crowd
scenes, and so on. Note that the fashion photo
grapher, unknown to the reader, has developed
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