From Zurbarán to Rothko: How Art Shaped the Spring 2027 Runways

Painters, sculptors and long-overlooked illustrators are everywhere on the spring 2027 runways, and designers are increasingly happy to name them. Vogue’s runway team went looking for explicit art references across more than 400 spring 2027 reviews, and the range they found is wide, running from Dadaism to 18th-century-inspired contemporary work.

Why art and fashion keep colliding

“Is fashion art?” is an old argument, and the sources suggest the more interesting shift is in who gets to join it. Amelia, a 32-year-old Columbia student who posts as Meelz on Art on TikTok, has been seated at Loewe, Dries Van Noten and Dior on the strength of her art-historical analysis. Dr. Elizabeth Way, curator of Art X Fashion at the Museum at FIT, goes further, calling art “probably the largest, most influential cultural movement on fashion designers.”

The big houses have leaned into that. Louis Vuitton staged a cruise show at The Frick this year, and Dior did the same at LACMA. Museums are no longer just a source of inspiration for these brands. They are the venues.

Opposites that land in the same place

Some of the most striking pairings on the spring 2027 runways involve wildly different source material that produced similar results. Lii drew on the graphic flair of Alex Katz. Loewe looked to 17th-century Spanish painters Francisco de Zurbarán and Diego Velázquez, and Zurbarán is currently on view at the Louvre. Both collections still ended up as visions of futuristic sportswear.

Amelia found Loewe especially interesting because it was so paradoxical: contemporary and traditional at once. She pointed to bright, saturated pieces with severe, geometric purity, dramatic drapery in the manner of Zurbarán, and courtly embellishment like the clothing in a Velázquez portrait.

Calder, Richter and the classical canon

Dior’s connection was more literal. Jonathan Anderson reproduced an 18th-century wooden chair from his personal collection, and some guests sat on copies of it. In the clothes themselves, Amelia saw airy refinement that echoed the motion blur of Gerhard Richter’s paintings.

Other designers went further back. Bora Aksu referenced 17th-century portraitist Mary Beale, and Nicky Zimmermann turned to the 19th-century natural history illustrators Harriet and Helena Scott.

Alexander Calder was the most popular touchstone. Sarah Burton drew on Cirque Calder at Givenchy, while Michael Kors focused on the mod qualities of the sculptor’s shapes. Elsewhere, Rachel Comey’s 25th anniversary show paid tribute to artist and novelist Rosalyn Drexler. Kiko Kostadinov added an experimental edge with the work of Italian artists Agostino Bonalumi and Nanda Vigo.

Prada’s skirt as canvas

Prada’s reference came from its own history. The show’s 63 skirts nodded to “Waist Down,” a traveling exhibition the house staged in the early 2000s. “We used the skirt as a framework for different ideas, different approaches, like a raw material to express concepts,” Miuccia Prada said in the show notes, adding that the simple shape, “almost like a canvas,” forces designers to reinvent the form within strict limits. The gradient-dyed leather also recalled the emotionally charged canvases of Mark Rothko.

What the references add to clothing

Anne Higonnet, an art historian and professor at Barnard, says art “teaches clothing how to transcend its necessity.” In her view, people use color, shape, texture, composition and rhythm to go beyond simply covering the body, and beyond signaling social position.

The takeaway from the spring 2027 runways is that these references work on two levels. The clothes can be enjoyed without a footnote, but knowing the source, whether it is a Zurbarán drape or a Calder mobile, adds another layer for anyone who wants it.

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