How the crossover between fashion and art inspires creations on canvas and the catwalk

Even the most rarefied of fashion designers is unlikely ever to describe him or herself as an artist. That would be rushing in where angels fear to tread. Art is art – a highbrow and only ever a coincidentally commercial pursuit – fashion is fashion, catering to the pretty, privileged and vain. Or so any purists out there might argue. It's a far from modern view, though. Witness the Louis Vuitton flagship store that opened on London's New Bond Street earlier this year with its Michael Landy kinetic sculpture, Damien Hirst monogrammed medicine chest and hugely successful bags designed in collaboration with Takashi Murakami to see how these two apparently very different disciplines benefit one another. Or how about the Prada Foundation in Milan, home to some of the most innovative artworks of the age. The brains behind it – Miuccia Prada and her husband, Patrizio Bertelli – are presumably more than a little aware that if designer fashion is aspirational, fine art is even more so and any association only serves to heighten the outside world's perception of a brand's status and power.

On a more individual level too, practitioners from the world of art and fashion appear to be exploring one another's territory more than ever before. With this in mind, perhaps, next week, Aware: Art Fashion Identity opens at the Royal Academy featuring the work of both artists with more than a passing interest in fashion's expressive powers and fashion designers who demonstrate a cross-disciplinary approach that reaches beyond the creation of pretty clothes for pretty clothes' sake. Work by Marina Abramovic, Grayson Perry, Gillian Wearing, Maison Martin Margiela, Cindy Sherman, Helen Storey, Sharif Waked, Alexander McQueen, Yohji Yamamoto, Andreas Gursky, Yoko Ono, Yinka Shonibare and Hussein Chalayan and more is included. All approach the subject very differently – from Sherman's famous studies of her own identity through clothing to Wearing's exploration of uniform, and here specifically police uniform, as the ultimate coding of cloth. At least part of the strength of the show also lies in the fact that, for at least some of those involved, the very concept of any art/fashion crossover, as well as the notion of both fashion and art as central to a more consumer-driven society, is questioned.

Take Perry whose 2004 Artist's Robe is in pride of place as a prime example. His alter-ego, Claire, we all know, is a permanent fixture on the fashion scene. Any interest in fashion – or indeed anyone moving in art circles who deems themselves fashionable – is tempered by much of his output, however. The title of one pot in particular – Boring Cool People – is a case in point. The Walthamstow Tapestry, meanwhile, that went on display in London in 2009, features as its centrepiece the "Madonna of the Chanel Handbag", a weeping fashion victim with Virgin head-dress (Hermes scarf?) clutching a quilted 2.55 bag. "Maybe she's just realised how bleak the orgasm of purchase actually is," Perry has said.