Selfridges Loves: fashion masterpieces

British artist Matthew Darbyshire’s Brand Deities is the second installation to be commissioned for The Art Block (that’s our ongoing partnership with Yorkshire Sculpture Park, in which we display a new work every six months at Selfridges London).

Brand Deities consists of three figurative works that play with, subvert and interrogate familiar classical symbols. Observing that many worldwide brands’ names derive from mythological deities, Darbyshire has reinterpreted the typical statuary of Nike, Hermes and Mars, mimicking the layering method seen in digital printing but using traditional crafting processes.

Find The Art Block at the Duke Street entrance of Selfridges London.

No designer blurs the boundaries between art and fashion perhaps as deftly as Dries Van Noten. One of the Antwerp Six collective (the revolutionary group of fashion designers who graduated from Antwerp’s Royal Academy of Fine Arts in the early 80s), Van Noten’s artistic influences over the years read like an inventory from The National Gallery – from John Everett Millais to Francis Bacon and Mark Rothko.

For his autumn/winter 2018 catwalk show, Dries Van Noten looked outside the established galleries to Art Brut, otherwise known as outsider art, referring to the work of self-taught artists. “These people have no pressure from galleries,” said the designer afterwards. “You’re free to make things just because you feel like it rather than worrying about making money.” The intricate Biro-like prints (which took three months to perfect in his studio) look refined from afar, but upon closer inspection reveal an artfully doodled aesthetic. Genius.

Medea, the Milan-based label created by artists, models and twin sisters Giulia and Camilla Venturini, has gained a cult following for its effortlessly cool, structured shopping bags. The no-frills style creates a blank canvas for creative experimentation – and the first in a series of artist collaborations has just launched at Selfridges, featuring the work of American photographer Nan Goldin.

Goldin’s vivid portrayal of New York life in the 70s and 80s explores the city’s fascinating subcultures. Her unflinchingly honest portraits capture moments of intimacy and human fragility, often documenting hedonistic parties, drag queens, heroin addiction and domestic abuse. The limited-edition bags feature two of Goldin’s iconic photographs. “The figures in these images face front on, a direct communication that matches the strength and sensual provocation specific to Medea,” explain the brand’s founders. That’s what we call a fashion statement.

Jeremy Scott – aka the king of pop-culture cool – continues his love affair with 1960s pop art by serving up Lichtenstein-esque prints. 

Back in 2006, long before Instagram and meme culture existed (can you imagine?), Henry Holland was making tongue-in-cheek slogan T-shirts for fashion insiders (who remembers ‘Get your freak on Giles Deacon’?). Now, as part of House of Holland’s ‘T-Shirt Shop’, the brand collaborates with a rolling rotation of graphic artists, poets, illustrators and creatives – the latest of which includes London-based visual artist Joe Sweeney. On his ‘I love my job’ hoody, Sweeney comments: “I thought it summed up the apathy towards the daily grind in Britain. I normally associate the word ‘job’ with something I don’t particularly want to do. After about five years out of education, I’ve found a way that I can work through developing a visual language to communicate.”