Wearable Art

Photos by Rachel Perry Welty for Vogue. Via.

For its December 2011 issue, Vogue asked conceptual artist Rachel Perry Welty to photograph an accessories story for the magazine. Using patterns from such luxury labels as Balenciaga, Prada, Givenchy and Alexander Wang, Welty creates self-portraits that transform these hip accessories into something oppressive. They completely overpower the human subject, whose face is obscured by her long blond hair; she is defined by her possessions, her consumption.

The images — fun, beautiful and extremely subversive for a fashion magazine — are based on Welty’s series Lost in My Life, which also show the artist overwhelmed, transformed by stuff: fruit stickers, price tags, receipts and twist ties. You can see her Vogue photographs at the Yancey Richardson Gallery in New York City, along with Lisa Kereszi’s wonderful, moving photo series The Party’s Over, which I wrote about for ELLE.com.