It is the one article of clothing that all women require, a failsafe basic that can be dressed up or down. When you find the right one you covet it. And now there is an exhibition in its honour.

Little Black Dress at the Fashion and Textile Museum in Bermondsey, London, explores the impact of this immortal item on fashion, with exhibits from Jean Muir, Julien Macdonald, Christopher Kane and even a black rubber number created for the artist Grayson Perry by the design team of Vin & Omi. But should fashion be exhibited and considered as art?

Fashion - or rather clothing - has been around as long as art: when you study a painting, you will be aware of the style and period of the subjects' dress. But I think the link goes farther than this. To me, fashion is art and art is fashion.

Jean Paul Gaultier once said of me, “She is quite like art - moving art”, and while I served his creative vision ours was a collaborative partnership: he designed the clothing with me in mind, then I brought to life his work of art.

Throughout my career as a model I have portrayed the work of many different artists: Caravaggio's Narcissus - peering into a pool - Klimt's Judith with the Head of Holofernes (the only time I have posed topless - the painting demanded it), and Millais' virginal Ophelia, a slightly arch version in a Roberto Cavalli dress, typically bold, typically uncompromising.

In these instances, the artist in fashion drew from the artist in paint. This season, John Galliano, the head designer at Christian Dior, has produced a collection with several references to Gustav Klimt but also to John Singer Sargent's Madame X.

Sometimes a painter will draw inspiration from fashion: Lucian Freud has painted two fashion icons, Kate Moss and Jerry Hall, in the past decade. He isn't interested in prettifying his subjects but paints them exactly as he sees them. He draws always on reality. The result is powerful but perhaps a bit, for those he paints, like having their innards on display.

The flesh for Freud seems to determine who his subject really is. Fashion uses the enhancement of clothing to represent who that person wants to be. In both areas, art is artifice.

The fashion designer uses the skills of an artist - the painter and the sculptor - to explore a three-dimensional figure. The result is haute couture. Here sales are not the primary object, it's more about the designer giving full rein to their imagination, using colour, shape - soft or architectural - sumptuous texture and, finally, living flesh to achieve their artistic vision.

To me, a designer such as Christian Lacroix is an artist: he seems to invent new colour, to produce an extreme palette; it's acidic, it's eye-popping, it's anarchic. You feel almost as though it's staring at you, defying you not to stare back - and that's the same effect that David Hockney's portrait Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy exerts on me.

In Little Black Dress, we see a static display of that essential item in every woman's wardrobe. Fashion is by definition ephemeral, while great art stands the test of time: both combine in the concept of the LBD. In the 1920s, Coco Chanel - the LBD's inventor - said: “Simplicity is the keynote of all true elegance.”

The LBD is a blank canvas, with chameleon qualities. Emblematic of celebration and also of mourning, it always makes an impact, fitting its wearer's purpose. Ever since Chanel produced what turned out to have been the prototype, designers from across the world have put out their own versions - Givenchy, Balmain, Jean Muir, Zandra Rhodes, Julien Macdonald and, most recently, Gareth Pugh and Hannah Marshall. The appeal of the LBD is ageless. It is art.

Little Black Dress, Fashion and Textile Museum, 83 Bermondsey Street, London SE1 (020-7407 8664), until Aug 25

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