Geometric graphics made strong statements this season, with designers taking their cues from art and architecture to play tricks on the eye.
Hypnotic prints transport the mind to unexpected places. Valentino’s fall 2014 runway look (bottom right) evoked the world of Pop Art, from the illusory optics of Victor Vasarely’s “Vega-200″ print from 1968 (upper right corner) to the hallucinatory reflections of the pool Verner Panton designed for the former Der Spiegel headquarters in Hamburg in 1969 (lower right corner). In nature, bright stripes are a warning to steer clear, as seen on the coral snake (top left) — an inspiration, perhaps, for Marni’s striking fall design (bottom left). In architecture, gridlike forms create a sense of order, as with the rooftop tiles of the Hôtel-Dieu built in Beaune, France, in 1443 (top right), echoed in Fendi’s resort look (top center). Valentino’s dress and jacket (bottom center-left) do something different. With a looser effect, they recall the graphics of Sol LeWitt’s “Wall Drawing #1113″ (bottom center-right).
Recurring motifs reach for the infinite, suggesting a window into something greater — as in Artemide’s LED Net light fixture (bottom right corner), which mimics a strand of DNA. Or take the trippy prints found in the fall collections from Peter Pilotto (left) and Proenza Schouler (center right) — rave-appropriate attire that evokes the iconic scribbles of Keith Haring, shown here in his Tokyo Pop Shop in 1988 (top left). Like this poster (top right) inspired by Vorticist artist Edward Wadsworth’s “Dazzle-ships in Drydock at Liverpool, 1919,” the white-and-black marble interior of the Siena Cathedral (bottom left) uses geometric forms to direct the eye — but where?
Symmetrical designs are not just a backdrop. Prada’s printed coat for fall (top left) celebrates Art Deco style, piecing together urban shapes in the manner of these stylized chain-link tiles from 18th-century Sicily (bottom left). A bolder version of 16th-century silk Bargello wall tapestry (top center), Missoni’s iconic zigzag weave was renewed again for the house’s resort collection (center right). Camouflage? Hardly. Yayoi Kusama has used her “Yellow Trees” wrap to transform everything from buildings to herself (bottom center). Look around you. Whether in the Giacomo Arengario restaurant in Milan designed by Studio Peregalli (top right) or the exterior of the Chrysler Building (bottom right), pure forms of geometry are elevated to art.
