LAST FEBRUARY during fashion week in New York, noted illustrator Bil Donovan got a call from New York magazine asking him to document the backstage action. So, at shows from Carolina Herrera to Thom Browne, amid frenzied TV crews, photographers and Snapchatters, the gentlemanly artist pulled out his ink pots and went to work. When Mr. Donovan asked the editor why he was hired, she replied, “Because anyone can take a picture.’ ”
Anyone can take a picture (and thanks to filters and apps, a pretty professional-looking one at that). But not just anyone can draw or paint one. Which may be why in this high-tech age, illustration—which celebrates the personal, intimate and quirky—is having a moment, popping up on beauty packaging, as prints on blouses and bags, and all over Instagram as the latest form of fashion reportage.
Picture: red bridesmaid dresses ukAttend a chic dinner party, like the one jewelry designer Susan Foster recently hosted in New York, and the place card might be your portrait rendered by New York-based illustrator Justin Teodoro. Walk into Manhattan department store Bergdorf Goodman, and Estée Laudercreative director and illustrator Donald Robertson might be “art bombing” the place, which is Donald-ese for “painting on stuff.” And by “stuff,” he means anything you can buy that he customizes while you watch. Over the past year, he has also staged these happenings at Rebecca Minkoff’s new Los Angeles store and New York pop-up shop, Story. If you want to see Mr. Robertson in action, he’ll be back at Bergdorf from Dec. 3 to 6, working on-site and selling a collection of gifts that includes painted skateboards. The prolific Mr. Robertson might be the most zeitgeist-y illustrator of the moment, aided partly by Beyoncé who posted a selfie on her website, holding a Clare V. clutch with the Donald treatment, while wearing an Alice & Olivia blouse with a print he also drew.
“Illustration is a great way to telegraph warmth,” said Happy Menocal, the Brooklyn artist known for making whimsical watercolor stationery and dinner-party menus for chic hostesses like Aerin Lauder and photographer Claiborne Swanson Frank.
Pencil, pen and ink were the fashion industry’s original visual media. In the 1920s, Carl “Eric” Erickson sketched the news of the day from the ateliers of Mainbocher and Chanel, and produced 48 Vogue covers. Frenchman René Gruau helped usher in the New Look atChristian Dior. And don’t forget Andy Warhol, the kid who arrived in New York in 1949 and went to work drawing hats and shoes for Harper’s Bazaar and creating Christmas cards for Tiffany & Co. Ultimately, the camera prevailed. Many consider Vogue’s first color photograph cover in 1932 the beginning of the end for the painted page. By the ’70s, photography reigned supreme. But if technology killed illustration, it’s also helped revive it. Social media, said Mr. Robertson, has made his work go viral. “It’s like the ’30s,” he said. “I’m getting covers.”
Illustration is spilling over into interiors, too. Cassandra Grey, founder of beauty website Violet Grey, commissioned Mr. Robertson to cover her baby’s nursery with 9-foot giraffes. Tory Burch asked New York artist Kelly Beeman to create a series of watercolorsto hang in her Tory Sport pop-up shop. Ms. Menocal is having perhaps the most fun of all: She just did the murals for El Tucán, a new cabaret in Miami. “It’s styled on 1940s El Tropicana,” she said. “Guys in white dinner jackets, twelve-piece band.”
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