Fashionable Bauhaus: Translating the Bauhaus Esthetics into Textile and Fashion Design

Abstract

This article shows how the Bauhaus ideas were translated into textile and clothes. At the center of Bauhaus esthetics were functionalism, abstraction, and the realization of the “Gesamtkunstwerk” (total work of art). The Bauhaus esthetic thus decisively shaped the development of art and design in the 20th century. The text documents the many difficulties encountered in the attempt to translate this esthetic from textiles to fashion. It shows the institutional problems that arose since a rejection of female creativity prevailed within the Bauhaus school, so those female students had to work primarily in weaving. Furthermore, the examples of Gunta Stölzl and Anni Albers are used to explain how the female artists finally managed to successfully translate the Bauhaus style into textile works. It becomes clear that although the Bauhaus propagated the Gesamtkunstwerk, it no longer meant the unification of art and fashion that was so important for Art Nouveau and the earlier reform movements. The article also traces how fashion designers in the 21st century, particularly on the occasion of the Bauhaus anniversary in 2019, referred to the Bauhaus and how two-dimensional patterns of weaving were translated into fashion collections, whereby the problem of transferring them to the three-dimensional field of the body is also addressed.

Keywords:

• Architecture and fashion
• esthetics of the Bauhaus
• Bauhaus weaving
• fashion design of the 20th and 21st century
• total work of art
• women artists at the Bauhaus
• Bauhaus today

Notes

1 For the mixing of body and dress in Fuller’s dance see: Flügel: Psychologie der Kleidung, p. 227.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Petra Leutner

Petra Leutner, Dr. Phil., is Professor of Fashion Theory and Esthetics at the Academy of Fashion and Design Hamburg, Department Design at Fresenius University. She teaches esthetics, fashion theory, and perception theory. She did research at various German Universities and is a member of the German Society for Esthetics. She heads the fashion section of the German Society for Semiotics. She has numerous publications on esthetics, fashion theory, visual studies, theories of perception, semiotics, and gender studies. [email protected]