Accidentism, as the word suggests, doesn’t rely much on conformity and planning. It is a philosophy embodied by bold colours, kitsch designs, a sense of optimism and playfulness. It’s exactly what the world needs right now and, thankfully, it is all over the spring catwalks.
Josef Frank, an Austrian architect, designer and theorist, coined the term “accidentism” in 1958 (although he practised it throughout his career). His philosophy started as a reaction to the bland homogeny of postwar European design. The idea is that if you love something, it will look good next to something else you love; that comfort should prevail over practicality.
Frank built his career designing modernist buildings but, after fleeing to Sweden in 1933, he began working with fabric, collaborating with Swedish manufacturer Svenskt Tenn. His work – which appears in an exhibition at London’s Fashion and Textile Museum – involves faux-naif prints and textiles, featuring fruit, flowers, birds and butterflies. Fertile and abstract, his prints mimicked a natural disorder. In short, they felt alive. “I’m of the opinion that much that is good comes about merely through chance and not careful planning,” he once said.
His aesthetic of clashing colours, asymmetrical designs and randomness also comes out in the themes of this season’s catwalks. In womenswear, Gucci’s spring/summer look featured incongruous fabrics, textures and 1940s-v-1970s period designs and, in menswear, JW Anderson exhibited colourful standalone pieces assembled arbitrarily. But from Zandra Rhodes, who elevated “fashion design to wearable works of art”, to Jean Paul Gaultier and Christian Lacroix in the 1990s, “anti-design” (as Frank’s critics called it) is a recurring theme in fashion.
“Happy-accident dressing has long been taken to express uniqueness,” agrees fashion curator and stylist NJ Stevenson. “Fashion tends to use the word ‘eclectic’, but I think to intellectualise this into ‘accidentism’ is perfect.” If nothing else, it suggests “fashion can express wit”.
Dennis Nothdruft, curator at the museum, agrees: “Whimsy and humour were on Frank’s mind when he was designing.” He sees Frank’s designs as personal, subjective, but also unifying. “And we need it now,” he says, “something uplifting.” Bearing in mind that Frank was fleeing Nazi Austria, the autobiographical tenor is unmistakable. By reacting against homogeny he was challenging the conformity of modernism. “We did think about this when we opened the exhibition. The timing felt right.” Given events this past year, and the increasingly politicised fashion and cultural scene, it is hard not to see the parallels.
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Josef Frank: Patterns–Furniture–Painting is at the Fashion and Textile Museum until 7 May
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