Artist of the Week: Fashion Illustrations by Raphael Vicenzi

Artist of the Week: Fashion Illustrations by Raphael Vicenzi

“I didn’t consider myself a fashion designer at all at the time of punk. I was just using fashion as a way to express my resistance and to be rebellious. I came from the country, and by the time I got to London, I considered myself to be very stupid. It was my ambition to understand the world I live in.”

– Vivienne Westwood

Fashion is a pretty big part of our society, and has been, virtually, since the advent of what can be considered society as we now know it today. It can express many things to many different people. For example, early western travellers to Asia and the Middle East would comment on the slow rate in which fashion changed in those regions. They saw it as a lack of progress, whereas observers from the region would see the rapid change of styles in Western culture as a sign of instability.

Historians widely consider that fashion “started” somewhere around the middle of the 14th century. This revolution (if we can call it that) allows art historians to accurately date art works starting from this period to within 5 years, and it also sparked the birth of “national styles”, meaning that the once homogeneous upper classes where fragmented, each region or country boasting its own “formal” attire.

This was marvellously documented by Albert Dürer during the late 15th century in a illustration he did, showing the differences between the bourgeoisie of Nuremberg and Venice.

The first decisively dominant look throughout Western Europe came in the 18th century, at the peak of France’s dominance of continental Europe. If we were to think of that period in terms of a Civilization V campaign, France was number one on the map, in terms of cultural output and influence.

That is why even today, when it comes to fashion, France is still where most people look at for their cues, and the fashion industry itself is pretty francophone, using words like haute couture and prêt-à-porter and haute couture to refer to branches of itself… I think.

Fashion has only gotten bigger throughout the centuries, and as a designer, you no doubt have to have at least a passing interest in it. That is why today, we will be showcasing a few weird, wonderful, and fashionable illustrations by Raphael Vicenzi.

We have written about Vicenzi before, adding him on a list we did about artists you need to check out, but this week, he is our Artist of the Week.

Based in Brussels, Belgium, Raphael is an illustrator with some pretty impressive achievements under his belt. He has been featured twice in Taschen, once in 100 Illustrators, and once in Portraits, as well as The New Age of Feminine Drawing. He is also fairly sought-after commercially, having done works for Be Magazine, Style, Libresse, and Place Laurier, to name just a few.

In an interview he did for Abdzueedo, he had this to say, when asked about when he started to show an interest for illustration and art:

I always wanted to do something creative but I wasn’t sure about what to do really. I discovered quite late in life that you could create art with a computer and I started to get interested in this. I worked my way up but I had to build some personal visual references and world and understand how to make an image.

He is inspired by a wide range of artists, including Banksy, Gustav Klimt, Chloe Early, and Stina Persson, as well as various illustrators from the sixties. Since, in his own words, “there is no chance I can become a fashion designer or a painter”, he looked to the digital medium as a way of mixing all his different interests in fashion, art, collages and graphic design.

In the same interview we mentioned earlier, Raphael tells us a little bit about his creative process:

Sometimes I have an idea that I think I will be able to realize and I start working on it before it goes away. It happens that I just start something for the sake of doing something and I manage to take it to the end.

I mainly use Photoshop, draw stuff in there with brushes I made myself, then I start adding up textures that I scanned and created with watercolours, markers, paints and so on. I’ve got hundreds of them so I can pick and mix what fits the mood of the piece I am working on. It’s quite an unconscious process with trials and errors. Usually my errors are way better than if I try to force it a certain way so I try to accept this as part of my process.

I am building up the image bits by bits, going back and forth, adding elements, typography and so on. I trash a lot of unfinished pieces though but I suppose they help me to get to the next finished one.

I don’t have control over the whole process although I am trying to keep some focus in mind to finish it.

Now that you know a thing or two about this weeks featured artist, let us get to what you came here for, and show you a few of his awesome works.

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As you can clearly see, Raphael has a truly distinctive style, mixing bright colors  in a punk kind of way to create truly stunning illustrations that would look just as good on a t-shirt or jacket, as it would in a frame on a wall.

The Klimt influence is there for all to see, with all his works exploring, to some extent, the theme of femininity, in a retro world, so vividly influenced by the past four decades. They have a certain anarchic beauty about them, and they are definitely the kind of works you want to show to someone who thinks digital art is not real art.

We have just about wrapped up our presentation of Raphael Vicenzi stunning fashion illustrations. All that is left for me to thank your for reading this article. It was definitely a pleasure for me to learn about this artist, and fashion in general, and I hope it was at the very least bearable to come along with me on this journey.

If you are so inclined, please leave me a comment in the comment section below. I feed of of lauds, as well as criticisms.

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