Fashion, art and Instagram — it’s an award-winning combination.
For the first time ever, the Council of Fashion Designers of America has named a Fashion Instagrammer of the Year from a pool of users with eye-catching accounts. Leading the pack is Pari Ehsan, aka @paridust, who matches über-chic clothing with complementary works of art in photos on Instagram as well as on her blog, paridust.com.
“It started as a means to capture the way fashion and art interact and inform each other,” Ehsan tells The Post.
“I want to educate readers about art through the lens of fashion.”
Surprisingly, unlike many of the other nominees — including winner Patrick Janelle (@aguynamedpatrick) — Ehsan doesn’t work in fashion or media. . The 30-year-old Indiana native is a full-time interior designer — aesthetically inclined, but not embedded in the industry or overly well-connected. Her impetus to start the now year-old art project sparked from a simple desire to do something outside the 9-to-5.
“I was seeking a more creative outlet to offset the architecture and interior design that I was doing,” Ehsan says, explaining how she spent years studying architecture at USC and UCLA before moving to New York two years ago to begin an interior design business.
“I’ve loved art and fashion for as long as I can remember, but I’ve never been able to fully do anything with it, except spur-of-the-moment shopping!”
It’s quite clear, however, that Ehsan’s fashion acumen extends well beyond cheap retail thrills. In the impressive group of CFDA-lauded Internet tastemakers, her account is the standout. Follow it and you won’t find the obligatory aerial shots of cappuccinos and artisanal cupcakes. No, the lithe brunette’s posts look like DIY versions of the highly polished editorials you see in Vogue — expensive and beautiful, only without the airs.
Her process is as simple as her concept: Every Saturday, the Chinatown resident goes on marathon gallery hops around the city, scouting for works that inspire.
“It’s very intuitive when I see something I like and get a good feeling about,” Ehsan says.
“At that point, if I’m really compelled to do an outfit pairing, I find the look and do the styling.”
The results are captivating digital tableaux that Ehsan posts on Instagram with simple captions and credits, though she annotates more thoroughly on her site to offer viewers thoughtful interpretations that enhance the obvious visual parallels. For example, in a recent post staged at Chelsea’s Gladstone Gallery, Ehsan stands in front of Keith Haring’s signature squiggles wearing a Rodarte dress that not only matches in color and style but, to her, corresponds with Haring’s “spirit of iconic innovation.”
While Gladstone and the city’s countless other galleries make up the Instagrammer’s artistic topography, don’t expect to see her posing with ancient Grecian sculptures at the Metropolitan Museum of Art anytime soon — Ehsan’s a modern girl. “I love minimal works,” she says, ticking off a who’s who of superstar names such as Anselm Kiefer, Sterling Ruby and artists of that contemporary ilk.
When it comes to fashion, her affinities are the same. Ehsan is partial to emerging romantic/minimalist designers like buzzy Brooklyn native Rosie Assoulin and understated, under-the-radar label Tome. Her high-designer staple: Stella McCartney, because, as Ehsan notes, “her pieces really lend themselves to be paired with art — the colors, the shapes, the forms.”
And although the Instagram beauty loves to feel fabrics firsthand, like a true millennial she’s taken to online shopping when sourcing her ensembles. Ehsan most often looks to e-tailers Net-a-Porter and Moda Operandi for finds with creative flair, both for their expansive luxury stock lists and to slake her learned sense of balance and order.
“A lot of times I’ll pull up the image of the art and do the pairings visually, side-by-side,” she says.
“I guess it’s my architectural brain.”