When Red Was Worn Best

CEBU, Philippines - While the term "best" is often hard to arrive at through differing views and interpretations, certain conversation topics don't require hours of winding arguments and debates when "the best" card is in play.

A case in point are the following movie celebrities who - by donning memorable heady hued fineries at one point in their careers - might as well have been subject of Chris de Burgh's hit 1986 love song "The Lady in Red" - when they wore red best:

Audrey Hepburn

When she wore a red Givenchy in "Funny Face"

Though Audrey Hepburn's look in the 1961 film "Breakfast at Tiffany's" continues to endear as a status benchmark for feminine elegance and sophistication, the Hollywood legend's show-stopping red dress in the 1957 film "Funny Face" was altogether something else.

Designed by Hubert de Givenchy, Hepburn in red at the Louvre gave the film one of its most memorable scenes.

Mila Jovovich

When she wore a red plunging v-neckline dress with the left side cut to hip level in "Resident Evil"

Mila Jovovich's red dress in the first of the "Resident Evil" movie adaptations (released in 2002) may not have endeared in the film's subsequent sequels, but it has certainly played a role in defining the persona of the film series' lead character, Alice.

Amidst all the automatic rifles, handguns and special-ops garbs that dominated the film's costume production, the sight of Jovovich in that red number - with knee-high boots and guns on hand - said something about how "contemporary chic" can be "badass."

Jessica Rabbit

In her signature red sequined confection in  "Who Framed Roger Rabbit"

The movie "Who Framed Roger Rabbit," released in 1988, was a groundbreaking live action-and-animation hybrid that ran with the tagline "It's the story of a man, a woman, and a rabbit in a triangle of trouble" - with the man played by actor Bob Hoskins, the "rabbit" voiced by voice actor Charles Fleischer, and the "woman" - Jessica Rabbit - voiced by talents Kathleen Turner (speaking) and Amy Irving (singing).

Inspired by the iconic looks of Hollywood legends Veronica Lake, Lauren Bacall and Rita Hayworth, the voluptuous toon siren's movements are credited to have been based on a Betsy Brantley (who is billed as "Jessica's Performance Model") - with the character being heralded as the re-invention of animator Max Fleischer's "Betty Boop" of the 1930s.

Rendered to form by animators James Baxter, Russell Hall and Nik Ranieri, Jessica Rabbit's red sequined gown continues to be one of the film's memorable "costume" ensembles.

Fiona Johnson

When she got Neo's attention in

"The Matrix" as the "Woman in Red"

Though Fiona Johnson played a minor character in the 1999 sci-fi flick "The Matrix," the Australia-born talent's seconds-long role as the "Woman in Red" is one of the film's memorable scenes.

As a character in Neo's (played by Keanu Reeves) training introduction to the Matrix, the blonde bombshell in red had only one purpose - to distract Neo from the fact that "Agents" can be anywhere in the Matrix, a task which she accomplished with flying colors.

Given that the film's in-the-Matrix sequences were shot with hits of green (an allusion to seeing the world through an old-school CRT computer monitor), the "Woman in Red's" scarlet outfit was a polarizing sight to behold, one that was, simply put, refreshingly breathtaking.

Julia Roberts

When she wore her now-iconic red opera gown in "Pretty Woman"

In the 1990-released "Pretty Woman," then 22-year-old Julia Roberts wore a red silk opera gown which now holds an iconic stature in Hollywood's ranks of memorable costume ensembles - if not, the general haute couture consciousness.

Hollywood gossip fare notes that the dress was supposed to be made in black, but the film's costume designer, Marilyn Vance, is said to have insisted that a scarlet hue was more fitting as the dress' shade.

Is Fashion Art

Famed French couturier

Paul Poiret once said, "I have always liked painters. It seems to me that we are in the same trade and that they are my colleagues."

Yet fashion has had to struggle to gain that "collegiality" among the arts, being also seen as "the bastard child of capitalism and female vanity," according to Valerie Steele, Director and Chief Curator of the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology. French philosopher Gilles Lipovetsky indicates a rough road for fashion as he opines similarly, "Like science and industry, fashion is one of the faces of modern artifice, of the effort of human beings to make themselves masters of their own existence." A poor statement of an art form, if it is such.

Fashion holds a valid claim to status as an art. Great couture requires a creative mind (think Alexander McQueen, Valentino Garavani), skilled craftsmanship involved in the making of any garment, and the creative use of media (from fabric and sequins to even trash and raw meat). Fashion trends have at many times followed artistic trends, and the bond between the visual arts and fashion design during the Art Nouveau period, for example, is undeniable.

Fashion is also for the consumer. The rise of global capitalism and the establishment of the assembly line have made fashion available to the masses. Styles and brand names serve to convey social status. Whereas "styles of music and painting might evolve in pursuit of truth and ultimate form… the fluctuating styles of the skirt… are seen to merely entice the gullible or put down the hoi-polloi" (Virginia Postrel, Wall Street Jounal). There is some truth to that statement. If the industry decides it wants to sell us something, it uses a variety of media to convince us we need it: a strut down the runway at any major fashion week event, a celebrity endorsement, and now even affordable designer lines at discount stores.

My answer to the critical question, though, would be a bit more ambiguous, and given a little time for contemplation, I could give an answer I'd be satisfied with. There are some truly brilliant minds that have graced the world of fashion and made it their own art form. In my mind, McQueen has been the greatest of these - his posthumous solo exhibit at the Met received rave reviews, and justifiably so. The art institution has recognized other designers with their own exhibits. A relatively recent issue of Vogue did a spotlight on the "Balenciaga and Spain" exhibit at the de Young Museum in San Francisco, and the Roberto Capucci "Art into Fashion" exhibit at the Philadelphia Museum of Art was a smash.

I suggest some different terms, though. Aside from the actual medium (if we want to call it that), I've come to see fashion as an outlet of sorts for other forms of art - maybe as sort of an avenue for cultural movement. We certainly saw that happen in the 1920s when women bared their legs and cut their hair, and in the 1960s when hippie style was surely definable. Notable First Ladies like Jackie Kennedy and Michelle Obama have used fashion politically. We can name the grunge movement, the "hipster," the list could go on…

Fashion, I think, also enables art - a different type of cultural movement, more thoughtful. In September 2010, New York Fashion Week opened at the Lincoln Center - but it wasn't only to be runway shows that year. Throughout the duration of the rest of the year, the new director of fashion at the center organized events like opera, theater, dance and music, fashion films, photo exhibits and lectures.

At the recent turn of the century, fashion press employed fine artists to illustrate the designs of the day. Today, contemporary art's most famous photographers (think Annie Leibovitz) are regularly hired by the fashion press. There was a fascinating picture story in W magazine's November 2011 "Fashion Meets Art Issue." "Ai Weiwei Enforced Disappearance: An Exclusive Collaboration with China's Most Wanted Artist" was the imprisoned (under house arrest) Chinese artist's first work since being released from government custody. Weiwei Skyped in on the shoot from his studio in China and directed the crew as they shot on Rikers Island and in New York City. The story commented on conflicts between individuals and authorities, the model dressed in Alexander Wang. Fashion enables art.

In very recent years, photography has enabled fashion to become a kind of street art. "Street fashion" blogs like The Sartorialist, Face Hunter, Garance Doré, and countless others have inspired fashion aficionados to look to the streets to increase their style savvy. Photographing both fashion icons and unknowns in their street clothes, the blogs provide inspiration for the creative, expressive dresser. In fact, The Sartorialist photographer and blogger Scott Schuman was named as one of Time Magazine's Top 100 Design influences. And though some of these particular blogs have become quite famous worldwide, there are also thousands of fashion bloggers photographing inspirational styles on the street, posting blog entries, and making an impact on the fashion and self-expression of their readers.

Back to our original question: Is fashion art? The question defies an easy answer because what we wear also crosses into the world of commodity and craft. To some, it's an industrial machine, designed to trick people into dumping exorbitant amounts of money on non-essentials. Yet to others, it ranks right up there with painting, sculpture, and the opera. This dual nature points to a gray area. No matter how we look at it individually, though, it is fact that the fashion world and the art world are most definitely woven rather tightly together. Both institutionally and in less formal forms, fashion and art collide, and, I believe, will continue to move along a continuum together as contemporary art progresses and evolves. (www.musedialogue.org) (FREEMAN)