Does cultural and ethnic background predispose one’s artistic style?
Well, in fashion design, there seems to be a correlation.
For example, the (Iranian) American fashion designer Behnaz Sarafpour appears to be following the usual experimental, non-formal, slightly playful and rather immature tendencies of recent fashion designers.
Form, or formality, is abandoned for a certain wistfulness, or youthfulness.
Unfortunately, this translates to bad design.
But, I think there is something else at play in Sarafpour’s designs. She seems to be working with a combination of prudery and immaturity.
The blacks and grays predominate, shorts substitute for skirts, and a fifties frilliness – without the lines and formality of that decade – adorns much of the clothing.
Perhaps it is her Muslim cultural background which influences her to design in such a way. The Iranian woman is after all enclosed behind a black cloth, unable to appear as a fully grown and mature human being.
And surprisingly, Sarafpour’s prudery, lack of maturity, avoidance of colors, and abandonment of formality is exactly how many young designers are working theses days.
Sarafpour’s culture has merged quite unexpectedly with that of the young modern, New York, LA and Paris fashion designers.
A strange merger it is, where a fundamental religious background seems compatible with some of the most progressive modern cities in the world.
In the case of the moderns, I believe the problem is that they discarded formality. Form and line are the ones that shape the woman’s body best, and the most successful at bringing out the maturity of grown women.
Without being faithful to form, the woman’s body looses all shape. Clothing then become straight sacs – as in the Muslim clothing – or boyish pre-adolescent cuts.
Sarafpour's colorless gray well-cut dress inevitably leads to the colorless gray formless "short" suit.
A pretty, girlish dress, short on the sleeves and hemline results with a formless school uniform of a 'rebel' girl.
And even attempts at a formal gown looks like a sweet sixteen birthday dress.
And, as a reference, the whole of Narciso Rodriguez's Fall 2006 collection looks like the woman-girl who cannot quite get out of her sweat pants (sport-wear theme is big in his collection) and who insists on wearing her shirts and jackets a little too baggy.