Where I See Fashion || Interview

Within the creative world we can find inspiration from all areas of the planet, be that people, nature, art, music or fashion. All these things work together to inspire each other in every aspect and combine their own elements to continuously enforce creativity within our lives.

Bianca Luini is a fashion design graduate living Milan, and is the creator and owner of Where I See Fashion, a blog with well over 355,000 views that has taken the Tumblr-Sphere by storm and shown the world that inspiration is everywhere. 

Bianca matches fashion images with a variety of art and nature photographs in a side-by-side comparison drawing the parallels between the two. The compilation of two images is often so compelling and mesmerising that its hard to believe that the right side image was not the original inspiration to the fashion designer - or was it...?

I was lucky enough to speak to Bianca and ask her some questions about her blog and the movement she has created within the world of Tumblr: 

Match #195

Picture by Feng Wang published on Vogue Italia’s website | Google Maps view of the “Underwater Waterfall” in Le Morne, Mauritius

What and why made you start your blog Where I See Fashion?

I’m constantly inspired by the beautiful pictures that I see all over the web, and I've always wanted to find a personal way to collect them. I started noticing similarities between pictures while doing image reserch for uni projects (I've studied Fashion Design in Milan), I kept saving and saving pictures on my laptop until one day I tried to put them properly together, as pairs. I really liked how they looked so I decided to start a blog, and that when WISF was born!

Match #159

Benjamin Jarvis by Thomas Cooksey for HERO Magazine | Building in Eindhoven, Netherlands photographed by GIJS LEUSSINK

When did you originally start seeing the connections, primarily visual, between fashion and art/nature etc?

I've always knew since I got interested in fashion that designers are often inspired by art or nature when creating their collections, and as a fashion design student I've learned how important it is to look for inspiration before starting a project. Now whenever I see new collections I can't help but wonder where the designer took the inspiration from, and that's what I love to show on my blog!

Match #181

Dolce & Gabbana Fall 2014 | Interiors of the Duomo di Monreale in Sicily, Italy

I’ve personally always believed that fashion is an art, how do you feel about this? What makes fashion an art for you?

I strongly believe fashion is a form of art! The definition of the word 'art' in the dictionary is the following: “the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power”. I just think fashion fits right in this definition, we may call it decorative or applied art, but to me there's no doubth that it is an art form.

Match #153

Elena Sudakova in “Invitation à la Danse” by Sølve Sundsbø for Numéro Magazine #91 March 2008 | Prometheus Bound by Nicolas-Sébastien Adam, white marble, 1762

How do you make your matches? Is it something that comes naturally and spontaneously to you, or is it more of a process that takes a lot of time?

I have built a sort of image archive where I keep all the pictures I find beautiful and interesting, I save many photos every week and I use this archive to create my matches. It's a process that can take a second or weeks, sometimes I’m lucky enough to find two photos at the same time that perfectly go together but usually I find the perfect pair after a few days. Or maybe I don’t find anything for a week and then I create 15 matches in a day! It’s not a regular process, it kind of just happens when it’s time!

Match #176

Details at Céline Fall 2013 | Forest with green moss and white trees

Where do your source the majority of your images from?

Almost every picture I use is from Tumblr, which I love very much as image source and as community! Sometimes I also use Pinterest or Google, but it's rare.

Does your blog help to influence your work in fashion?

It's definitely a great source of inspiration for me even when I'm just working on it, when I look for and save pictures to pair, I get a lot of inspiration from this. So yes, running this blog definitely influences my creative projects!

Match #171

Christian Dior Haute Couture Spring 2007 | The Great Wave of Kanagawa (as known as The Wave) by Hokusai

Within your own, personal work, does art/nature etc help to influence it? Are they all strong elements of your work?

As I said before, the art world and the nature world are important sources of inspiration for every designer, and for me too. But I can be influenced by anything around me, especially when I travel I love to discover new landscapes and cultures, it's amazing!

Do you have any influences within fashion and art ie. people?

This is a hard question, I could write an endless list of people that influence me! At the moment my biggest inspirations are fashion photographers Tim Walker (my all time favourite), Sølve Sundsbø and Pierre Debusschere. It would be a dream come true to become a fashion photographer even half as big as they are now, I admire them very much.

Match #141

Jeneil Williams by Txema Yeste for Numéro February 2014 | Statue of Egyptian God Osiris

Where do you hope to see WISF in the future?

To this day I can't believe how far WISF has gone, my dream has always been to inspire people and it's still hard for me to realize that it's actually happening. So I really have no idea what to expect from the future for WISF right now, anything could happen!

Match #130

Yiqing Yin Haute Couture Fall 2013 | Mountain Lake by Michael Creese, 2014

You can check of WISF here to see all of Bianca's other matches.

(All the images are taken from WISF Blog with permission)