The artist takes care to render the fabrics and silhouettes used in the garment. Artists frequently begin with a sketch of a figure called a croquis, and build a look on top of it. With the rise of digital art, some artists have begun to create illustrations using Adobe Photoshop.

Fashion illustrations can be made into fashion plate, but a fashion plate is not itself an original work of illustration.ĭesigners use mediums such as gouache, marker, pastel, and ink to convey the details of garments and the feeling invoked by the artist. Illustration lives on, but in the position of a poor relative to the fashion., įashion illustration differs from the fashion plate in that a fashion plate is a reproduction of an image, such as a drawing or photograph, for a magazine or book. They are more obviously filtered through an individual vision than photos. I like to think of them as prose poems and having more fictional narratives. Photographs, no matter how altered or retouched, will always have some association with reality and by association truth. The first photographic cover of Vogue was a watershed in the history of fashion illustration and a watershed mark of its decline. Laird Borrelli, author of Fashion Illustration Now states,įashion Illustration has gone from being one of the sole means of fashion communication to having a very minor role. This was a major turning point in the fashion industry. More recently, there has been a decline of fashion illustration in the late 1930s when Vogue began to replace its celebrated illustrated covers with photographic images. Fashion illustration shows the presence of hand and is said to be a visual luxury. Not only do fashion illustrations show a representation or design of a garment but they also serve as a form of art. Ever since clothes have been in existence, and there has been a need to translate an idea or image into a fashion illustration. Fashion illustration has been around for nearly 500 years.

Learn to sketch fashion