When fashion designer Misha Nonoo sent artist Dustin Yellin dragged out in one of her SS15 halter dresses and stilettos casually sipping on an iced latté, she did more than drive web traffic to her show–she also put her artist-designer collaborationon direct display. Designer’s have drawn inspiration from the art world long before the days of runway presentations, but the idea of an artist and a designer directly collaborating on a collection is only beginning to take hold in the fashion world.
“The universe and the mind are shadowy places seething with dark magic, seas of boundless depth and possibility, overflowing with joy and disaster.”–Dustin Yellin
The Brooklyn-based artist met the CFDA finalist three years ago when she had just launched the her eponymous label. She fell hard for Yellin’s unique creations and rightfully so. The contemporary artist makes sculptural tableaus by compressing multiple layers of intricately detailed glass plates to create stunning 3D paintings. He stumbled upon his innovative technique through the accidental death of a bumble bee.
While working with resin, a bee flew against the piece and became stuck. To end his suffering, Yellin quickly poured more resin onto the creature, sealing it within the piece, and so, his painstakingly precise and patience-testing technique was born. Using the resin-sealed atmosphere as his canvas like “holograms trapped in amber,” Yellin creates a multi-dimensional realm where painting and sculpture collide to create his impressive dystopian and nature-perverting installations that manipulate space and perception.
Yellin’s collaboration with Misha Nonoo found an adapted harmony by focusing on the constructive elements of Yellin’s work. In other words, they used a side perspective on his installations which reveals the intricate layering as inspiration for the clothing patterns. One-dimensional layers were transmuted into 3D and back to flat again in the form of wearable art. Just imagine how the creative world will progress when artists from different industries collaborate together.