Mondrian Dress

MONDRIAN DRESS - YVES SAINT LAURENT 1965
For my essay this semester I chose to write about the famous Mondrian dress designed in 1965 by Yves Saint Laurent a French designer born in 1936 in Algeria. I chose this dress inspired by Dutch artist Piet Mondrian because of its eye-catching distinctive colours and in my research I have come to learn a great deal about it which I have found to be eye opening and much more interesting than just its appearance. In my opinion this instantly recognisable dress is a true example of Fashion inspired by art. Reflecting on this dress immediately brings the famous quote by Vladimir Mayakovski: ‘Art is not a mirror to reflect the world but a hammer with which to shape it’ to my mind.

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'Mondrian', dress. Yves Saint Laurent, 1965.
The Victoria & Albert museum
Museum no. T.369-1974

This cocktail dress is from the collection inspired by and pays respect to the 1920s abstract paintings by the Dutch artist Piet Cornelis Mondrian born in the Netherlands in 1872, who was a pioneer and an important contributor to the De Stijl group and art movement.

He created and developed a form that was nonfigurative which he termed Neo Plasticism. This consisted of a grid of vertical and horizontal black lines and the use of the three primary colours as can be seen in Fig 2 and Fig 3.   His paintings evolved from still life to abstract, geometric fields of colour.   Each painting was worked and reworked, built layer by layer toward a balance of form, colour, and surface.

|[pic]                                                           |[pic]                                                           |
|                                                               |Fig 3: Composition with Large Blue Plane, Red, Black, Yellow,   |
|Fig 2: Composition with Yellow, Blue, and Red, 1937-42, oil on |and Gray, 1921, Oil on canvas, 60.5 x 50 cm, he Institute for   |
|canvas, actual size: 72.5 x 69 cm, Tate Gallery. London.       |Art History...