ARTISTRY
81. Trompe L'Oeil
In some ways, fashion has always been smoke
and mirrors. Every detail of fashion can be
manipulated to fabricate a believable fa<;:ade.
With a history of misdirection, it's not surprising
that fashion designers also play with perception
and reality to create optical tricks for completely
aesthetic reasons. Many of those illusions can be
applied to the surface or woven into a textile.
Atmosphere
Aerial or atmospheric perspective is the place
ment and size of objects, the value of color, or
the use of highlights and shadows to produce the
illusion of three dimensions on a flat surface.
Convergence
Converging lines create the illusion of a shape
that is diminishing into the distance.
Distortion
Sometimes called the "Cafe Wall" illusion, paral
lei lines can be distorted by outlining offset rows
of black and white squares in gray.
Face
Human beings are hard-wired for face recogni
tion, so any configuration that closely resembles
the placement of facial features seems to be
staring back at us.
Illusory Contour
Objects that are configured in such a way that
their borders create the illusion of another shape
trick the brain into imposing the perception of an
object onto what is actually negative space.
168 Fashion Design Essentials
Ouchi Illusion
A circle with a pattern on the cross-grain, within
a square that places the same pattern on the
lengthwise grain, creates the illusion that each
is floating independently of the other. It is named
after the Japanese op arti st Hajime Ouchi.
Penrose Triangle
The impossible triangle, or the tribar, is a shape
that could not exist in the real world and was
inspired by the work of artist Escher.
Pointillism
Use of points of different colors that are set side
by side to generate the illusion of another color
was a technique used by artist Georges Seurat.
Stroop
The Stroop effect is a cognitive visual illusion
that creates a conflict in the brain when the
words used to identify pigments are rendered in
different colors.
Stroop effect bag
