Meaning Creators: The Communicative Power of Language and Conceptual Art via Fashion Phenomena

Conceptual Art was an avant-garde movement that gave special attention to the idea, meaning, and concept rather than the beauty, form and art piece. From the early days of the movement in the 1960s, Conceptual Art and language have tied together. In fact, some conceptual artists attempted to make a bridge between language and art. Language offers many artists, such as John Baldessari, Joseph Kosuth, and Jenny Holzer, a lot of possibilities to convey their provocative messages to people. In this way, they succeeded to engaged people directly. This communicative power of Conceptual Art and language has inspired the design world, in particular, the fashion world. The purpose of this research is to investigate the connections between Conceptual Art and language in fashion. At first sight, it seems that there is no relationship between Conceptual Art, language and fashion phenomena. Because fashion is a big business and selling products play a vital role for fashion designers. On the contrary, in Conceptual Art, the concept or the idea is more important compared to the final product and market needs. This paper will also discuss how some fashion designers succeeded to show the relationship between Conceptual Art, language and the final product. It can be concluded, for these fashion designers, fashion is beyond the clothing itself. Through language, they become a kind of meaning creator which is the ultimate goal in Conceptual Art.