Op Art Returns.(Brief Article)

Driving down Madison Avenue in 1965, artist Bridget Riley noticed storefronts filled with eye-catching frocks whose prints had been lifted straight from her wild, colorful paintings. Horrified, Riley threatened a lawsuit, telling newspapers later that she was afraid she wouldn't be taken seriously by critics. Her fears weren't justified. Thirty-eight years later, the eye-popping op-art style which Riley helped pioneer is the hottest look on the catwalks for this autumn. Her work is also currently the subject of a major retrospective at London's Tate Britain gallery.

Catwalk photographer Christopher Moore, who was there for op art's first trip down the runway in the 1960s, says the style, known as op art because of the optical illusions it creates with tricks like parallel stripes and concentric ...