Alex Katz, Double Portrait of Robert Rauschenberg, 167.6 × 217.2cm,1959
The four seasons change, the new words of fashion circle also emerge in endlessly. This autumn and winter, a “Maillard” wave swept. On closer examination, it is more like an upgraded version of brown clothing, except that the new bottle of old wine has more playing methods. In artistic creation, brown has been low-key and indispensable since ancient times. Today, learn to dress with artists.
The name comes from a chemist, Louis Camille Maillard. In 1912, he discovered that when an aqueous solution of amino acids and sugars was mixed and heated, the solution turned yellow-brown. Later, the result of this experiment was named “Maillard reaction” (Maillard reaction), which specifically refers to the process by which the color of food changes from light to dark during processing, resulting in aroma and taste changes, such as egg tarts, bread, meat, popcorn……
Georges de La Tour “The Smoker”, oil on canvas, 70.8 × 61.5cm,1646
The association of steaming and fragrant food undoubtedly has a high degree of adaptation to autumn and winter. After the popularity of Maillard’s dress, people usually use the rare degree of steak to describe the change in brown depth or area size-from light khaki to rich caramel, from full-body brown to accessory embellishment, all belong to this category of dress.
However, if you think that Maillard wearing is just an evolution of “old money style” or “quiet luxury style”, you are wrong! Just as artists can use brown to be “colorful”, Maillard dresses can be mixed with other styles such as “dopamine” and “Y2K. From easy to difficult, I’ll teach you how to build a fashionable look.
# Starter Edition
* * Wearing ideas: same color system * *
🟤🟡;🟤🟠
🟤🔴;🟤🟤
As a compound color, brown is a mixture of orange and black. It is warm in tone and is often associated with rustic land, trees and other natural objects. The brown horse in the cave paintings of Lasco (Lascaux) and the tan background on the ancient Greek binaural, a color used in art in prehistoric times, all indicate its antiquity and elegance.
From left to right: Lascaux cave paintings, ancient Greek vials
Brown was initially unpopular, though. In ancient Rome, the word “pullati” used to refer to the poor meant “the man in brown”. It was not until after the Renaissance that artists began to use brown extensively, especially in portraits, to create strong light and dark effects.
Among them, the most famous is the Flanders painter Anthony Van Dyck (Anthony van Dyck), later even “Van Dyck Brown” to name the classic color in his paintings. In this kind of ancient master’s works, the brown base lays the tone of the whole picture, and almost all of them are of the same color system, which is unified and harmonious.
In wearing, choosing the same color is also a safe safety card. Among them, the most time-saving and effortless way is to directly choose the all-brown suit, which is suitable for commuters. This can be found in the autumn and winter 2023 show of many brands.
If you want to be more layered in color, yellow, orange, red and other colors, which are also warm colors, can complement each other with brown and combine them into the most recognizable “Maillard dress”. On this basis, you can also choose different materials such as knitting, leather, suede, etc., to make the same color wear and play more tricks.
# Advanced Edition
* * Wear ideas: bold color contrast * *
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The brown tone that lasted for several centuries was finally broken in the 19th century. Modern artists not only had to be unique in techniques, shapes and compositions, but also did not take the usual way of color matching, subverting all “common sense”.
Although at this time, brown is not the first choice, colorful is more popular, but there is an exception-Paul Gauguin (Paul Gauguin). Perhaps because the main character in the painting is a brown-skinned aboriginal, he is a rare artist in Impressionism who loves to use brown. Even so, the heavy and dignified brown disappeared, more of the wild growth, and the green jungle and blue lake water that often appeared in the picture formed a natural color collision with the different shades of brown, making the picture full of conflict.
Figure 1: Where do we come from? Who are we? Where are we going?, oil on canvas, 139.1 × 374.6cm,1897
Figure 2: When Will You Marry?, oil on canvas, 101 × 77cm,1892
To achieve a similar Maillard wearing effect, only brown is needed to superimpose cold colors, and the presence of the two should be evenly matched, giving people a stronger sense of impact. Therefore, the colorful “dopamine” in summer need not be put away in a hurry, and can be mixed with brown in autumn and winter!
Compared to Gaugein, another artist, Amedeo Modigliani, also likes to paint portraits in brown, but the contrast is less saturated. Therefore, in order to reduce the risk of “rollover” while retaining the overall brown vision, light brown and low saturation can be used, or shoes, bags, scarves, jewelry, and even makeup can be used to achieve a small area of color contrast.
On the contrary, the huge difference between color depth and saturation can achieve a strong contrast, such as dark brown with white, light brown with black, or brown with fluorescent color combination, etc., making autumn and winter wear more lively and eye-catching.
# Advanced Edition
Wear ideas: multi-color collocation, alternative patterns, unique design
In addition to the same color system and contrast mentioned above, more design-sensitive tailoring, unique patterns and three or more color combinations will form a more difficult Maillard dress. Just as painting has increasingly become a way of expressing individuality and self, so has the use of color in it.
Cubism, Picasso by Pablo Picasso (Pablo) and Georges Braque (Georges Braque), has completely deconstructed the human body and changed the way people look at it. Piet Mondrian’s early abstract experimental works used brown to simplify the natural landscape into a stack of color blocks, laying the foundation for its more pure hard abstract style.
In the 1950 s after the war, the abstract expressionist artist Lee Krasner began to use fabric collages in his paintings, tearing, disrupting, and reconstructing. Its masterpiece “porcelain” series is like a piece of broken porcelain, full of imagination and emotional catharsis power.
Lee Krasner, Porcelain (Porcelain), oil on canvas, 76.2 × 122.2cm,1955
In Maillard dressing, people can also refer to the expression of this kind of abstract painter, choose deconstruction design and pattern. If the existence of color is better and easier to control in pure color basic models, then this relatively complex design will test the aesthetics even more.
In addition, in multi-color matching, in order to avoid clutter, we can refer to contemporary portrait painting-the trend of flattening makes the distinction between color blocks more obvious. For example, in the works of American painter Alex Katz, the enlarged yellow-brown face, flat color blocks, prints and stripes and other pattern embellishments make the overall picture more contemporary and fashionable.
On the basis of a large area of brown, multiple color blocks formed by inner matching, bottom fitting and handbags can be used, so that even if the whole body has more than three colors, it can still be kept clean.
Figure 1: Alex Katz, Ada With Bathing Cap, 2012
Figure 2:COS 2023 autumn/winter series
Have you learned the above skills of dressing and matching? Although the constantly emerging new words are always reminiscent of consumerism, being tight and vigilant all the time has become another kind of shackles. In fact, trying new things is not completely in conflict with healthy consumption concepts.
(Source: Harper’s Bazaar Art)
