Issue link: https://www.balharbourdigital.com/i/944328
172 BAL HARBOUR We can sense when a new fashion creature is emerging out of the deep jungle; we can feel when the fashion natives are getting restless and the hunger for the "new" is reaching a fever pitch. Fashion has its own particular heartbeat, and fashion illustrators are among the best at anticipating this unique pulse. Fashion is a living breathing thing with a mind of its own and, together with time, creates its own unique shapes and forms. "Fashion is what time looks like," my wife, Isabel, has been quoted as saying. And fashion illustrators have an uncanny ability for capturing this Zeitgeist. I consider myself a visual journalist when it comes to how I approach my fashion illustrations, I learned this from my friend the late Bill Cunningham, who was quick to tell me he liked looking at my scribbles and then trying to find people who really looked like them in the streets. We debated what comes first, imagination or reality—the fashion chicken or the artist egg? We proved each other wrong constantly and that's just it—reality needs fantasy and fantasy conjures up reality. That is exactly what fashion illustration does. Each of the fashion illustrators in this special portfolio—David Downton, Donald Robertson, Tanya Ling and Jean-Philippe Delhomme—are as individually gifted and eccentrically focused on their own inner vision as fashion design itself. This is what keeps the fashion industry's creative wheels delightfully and furiously spinning every season. Artist Ruben Toledo speaks to the power of the sartorial sketch as we take a look back at a decade of celebrating fashion illustration in Bal Harbour Magazine.