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Well, this week discussion is about a fashion's premier illustrator who touched sixties New York, rocked seventies Paris and his reverberations are still being felt in the Runways today! He was Antonio Lopez!
When he was young, Antonio Lopez's mother, a seamstress, would ask him to draw flowers for her embroideries. He helped his father, a mannequin maker, to apply make-up and stitch the wigs on the figures. At first, he thought he would become a dancer, and in fact, at the age of 12, he was awarded a scholarship to the Traphagen School of Fashion, which provided Saturday programs for children, particularly inner-city youth. Then in junior high school, he was encouraged by his art teacher to attend the High School of Art and Design, part of the New York City school system. Upon graduation, he was accepted to the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT), where three teachers - Beatrice Dwan, Frances Neady, and Ana Ishikawa - supported him in his efforts to embark on a career in fashion illustration.
In the early 1960s, Lopes began to free-lance for fashion magazines such as Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, and Andy Warhol's Interview. He introduced himself to couturier Charles James and the meeting between the young artist and older master produced an illustrated record of all the clothes James had ever designed. James taught Lopez to appreciate the sculptural quality of clothes, a perspective that had a lasting effect on his drawings.
Lopez worked in a variety of materials, including pencil, pen and ink, charcoal, water-colour, and Polaroid film, and also pursued jewellery design, conceptual designs (such as window displays for Fiorucci and Studio 54), graphic collaboration on Interview, he was in demand around the world.
But unfortunately, Lopez died of complications related to AIDS on March 17, 1987, when he was forty-four years old.
Here are his works!
It's an outre undertow which referred to pop art. This is not just a usual or simple dress but it was a state of mind by playing with the pattern and colours of the dress.
Lopez's campaigns for Missoni endure as one of the greatest artist/designer collaborations. It is from a campaign launched at the same time as the 1984 Olympics. At this time, Lopez was already ill. It was a rare thing in the annals of fashion illustration because he always sketch in black and white before making the finishing picture, like doing a Polaroid, but not this time.
It's mature style is familiar through the posture of the bodice and the pattern of itself that bring out the edge in its Swinging Sixties imagery, more New York underbelly than London dolly bird
Antonio, Karl and Pat Cleveland in Paris, 1970
