fashion history

“Carelessness in dressing is moral suicide.”
---Honore de Balzac (1799-1850)

“Carelessness in workplace dressing is economic suicide.”
---Paula A. Baxter, 2008

The most significant social trend with implications for fashion in the Art Deco era, however, was the steady increase of women in the workplace. I remember my grandmother telling me how she was one of the first women to work in the 1930s in her upstate New York hometown, taking a secretarial job at Elmira College. She often recounted (with more than a little personal glee) how she was the object of envy and amazement. I also recall her saying one time that dressing properly for the job was a bit of a challenge. She wasn’t a natural seamstress (like her granddaughter), so she made a bus trip or two down to the Big City.

Fortunately, the growing retail clothing industry was hard at work in the 20s and 30s, building demand for readymade garments. The economic reality, however, for a vast number of women was that they needed to make their own clothes. Sewing patterns came into their own in this era, as the illustration above for Butterick shows. And these patterns and their ads in magazines are physical evidence of the recognition that women were taking jobs and needed to dress accordingly. The idea of clothing selection motives has come in for some recent study. Remember the subject heading Fashion—Psychological aspects when doing research. Women in that era were also drawing their own conclusions about the sociology of their dress.

p.s. When I get back from D.C., I need to head over to The Museum at FIT for their exhibition which is just opening, entitled “Seduction.” Sounds good!

Well, Santa pulled into Herald Square at the conclusion of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. This is the popular culture signal for the traditional Christmas shopping season to begin. What will it be like this year, with all the media worries about shoppers keeping their wallets firmly closed?

In the meantime, one of the best developments in the academic study of clothing and dress is the consideration given to the “culture of fashion.” One study, with the same title, addresses changes in clothing through the distinguishing social factors of the time period. The author sees the early twentieth century as a critical period for the transformation of everyday clothing. I’ve often wondered, however, why men chose to solidify the unity of their appearance through suits, while women did nothing equivalent? But, then, maybe I have the whole thing wrong. The 20s and 30s were responsible for a particular “look” to develop. Dresses and skirts did modify to occupy certain basic shapes. Pants came into the picture a little later. The Culture of Fashion makes one point that helps me see things a little more clearly: if you look past the decade approach to style changes, there is a growing democratization in women’s dress between 1920 and 1990.

The haute couture element can also be factored in. In The Golden Age of Style, changing silhouettes, hemlines, and decorative details are still subordinate to the growing uniformity of the feminine look. Sometimes, it takes a very basic picture book, aimed at young adults, to bring us back to reality. Fashions of a Decade: the 1920s, worth a trek down to SIBL, balances a portrait of the decade that shows how technological trends, increased manufacturing, and even fads (like those “talkies” introduced in 1927), influenced daily dress. Another recent reference book, Historical Dictionary of the Fashion Industry, can also be found at SIBL.

p.s. I’m posting early this week since I’m going to a conference in Washington D.C. The title of this event is “Images of the American Indian, 1600-2000.” More about this in the new year…

Where am I going with this recent riff on women attaining modernity in dress? I’d like to know what other women think about the long road to dress reform. The issue of fashion is ours to discuss, and there are still some ambiguities in where we are heading. Feminine pleasure in dresses is still strong, and rightfully so. Women deserve all the clothing options they desire. What matters, however, is that their choices are healthy ones. I make no secret of my disdain for stiletto heels. It doesn’t matter how “sexy” a woman looks in them—they still can seriously maim the foot and harm one’s posture.

What does emerge from investigation of the 20s and 30s is how women enjoyed the freedoms they now possessed: to wear shorter skirts, shed a corset, bob their hair, and don a realistic swimsuit. The pursuit of women’s rights in Europe and America played a key role in shaping dress reform. A solid academic study, Reforming women’s fashion, 1850-1920: politics, health and art, gives supporting evidence for these social changes.

What do scholars say about current dress reform? Fashion designers now employ novel ways of using corsets. Liberating ourselves from imposed fashions, like the constricting corsets and girdles of earlier decades means we can reinvestigate those items as new fashion statements. Irony has become part of our fashion birthright, I guess.

p.s. Hail to Ralph Lauren for bankrolling the conservation and restoration of the original flag that hung over Fort McHenry in 1812 and prompted the creation of our national anthem, "The Star-Spangled Banner." He did this to the tune of $13 million!

And then there was the idealization of woman at the hands of the artist. Women had some discretion over their choice of dress in earlier centuries, following fashion when they could. But masculine expectations would intervene from time to time, especially when artists got involved. Fashion as art became a means of turning a woman into yet another decorative object, as seen with the Pre-Raphaelites and the men of the Aesthetic Movement.

The perspective of scholarship allows one a look at the larger social context. Radu Stern’s Against fashion: clothing as art, 1850-1930, illuminates the couturier’s artistic impulse in dressmaking as a means of following the changing modern world. Voluptuous femininity was a comforting ideal until the Art Deco age. Perhaps the early modern couturiers understood that artful dressing—independent of the male artist, or in spite of him—could allow the woman in be in control. By the end of the twentieth century, fashion as art permitted women to grasp that control. Just look at the images in Artwear: fashion and anti-fashion to see the progress that was eventually made.

On the day-to-day level, we enjoy purchasing artfully-made clothing, garments that proclaim fashion as art, to make our own personal statements. I notice that holiday markets and major crafts fairs usually have booths with such garments. Yet we don’t really see this kind of clothing worn all the time by individuals, however. Is that because it would be just a little too much? What do you think?

“In olden days, a glimpse of stocking,
Was considered something quite shocking….”

Here’s evidence that sex was used to sell fashions back as early as 1915. In spending so much research time on the clothing of the Art Deco era, I did take notice of what was transpiring in the preceding decades. Voluminous garments were cut to suggest a very feminine shape. The Victorian and Edwardian fashion aesthetic favored the full figured, voluptuous woman, yet while her body was draped in layers of cloth, that innate eroticism was muted.
Yet ready to blaze forth at the right command of the canny couturier or dressmaker. The best study on the psychological aspect of women’s dress to date is still Valerie Steele’s Fashion and eroticism: ideals of feminine beauty from the Victorian era to the Jazz Age. To better understand the weight of historical repression that the modern woman had to shed, look in CATNYP under the subject heading Sex Symbolism.

Is it any wonder that today’s women prize their individual dress rights? After acquiring metal knees, I decided to make pants my preferred fashion choice. Thank heavens that the right to wear pants had ceased to be an issue long ago.

These hosiery ads take a slightly different approach. Here, the modish subject is still involved with a mischievous small animal, but now she is engaged in braving the elements. What does this say about the product being advertised? Yes, their stockings are reliable; they’ll hold up in the most difficult of conditions! Selling intimate apparel in early twentieth century America required practical social imperatives. In a time when stockings had to be moved from luxury to necessary goods, consumers needed to be convinced. 1921 is still a long way from the time of Victoria’s Secret.

But the story of women’s liberation could never have happened without the development of undergarments, including stockings, which allowed the wearer more physical freedom. The 1920s woman is the start of the march towards the feminine cigarette slogan coined in the 1970s: “you’ve come a long way, baby.” Fashion as a social force is the subject of an excellent study, An intimate affair: women, lingerie, and sexuality. And the turn away from the McCallum Company’s type of fashion merchandising to newer imperatives is best documented in Fashion brands: branding style from Armani to Zara.

I grew up in a kinder and gentler world (and I’m not that old) where I remember roaming the streets of the various towns I lived in wearing my Halloween costume and ringing the doorbells of strangers for my “Trick or Treat.” I’ve got a particularly warm and fuzzy memory of being a fifth grader when we lived in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and being dropped off in a posh neighborhood so I could collect great swag from the nice houses there.

Boy, those days are gone! No sane parent would expose their child to the mercies of strangers in these times, and as a result, Halloween has turned into a series of safe, bland events where parties are given and candy collecting is tightly monitored. Instead, over the course of the last decade or so, Halloween has become a holiday that caters to adults more than kids. I think deprivation may lay behind this trend; at heart, we all want to be young again and go get goodies that make our teeth rot and give us sugar shock.

The Library is the place to learn about the historical and contemporary trends to the holiday. Whether it’s tracking the All Soul’s aspect of Halloween, or discerning a postmodern influence, publications abound from the encyclopedic to the pictorial. You can read about the origins of Greenwich Village’s famed event, or treat yourself to an academic survey of the holiday’s development over the centuries.

But, most of all, I want to know if others feel the nostalgia I do, and if they think that there’s something behind the adult-ification of Halloween? Since the old-time American door-to-door Trick or Treat ritual has been replaced by less satisfactory options, are holiday celebrations really that relevant? Or are we merely readjusting to a changing world, and jettisoning something that was never really that germane to our culture?

“I like fashion to go down into the street, but I can’t accept that it should originate there.”
-Gabrielle (Coco) Chanel (1883-1971)

The Chanel brand is one of the most famous of all couturier names. Reams have been written about why Coco Chanel’s designs are so classic and immortal. There’s more to this story, however, than simple tribute to an amazing talent. The truth is that Chanel herself achieved a larger-than-life standing exactly because of her life. The person behind the label captivated the public’s imagination, as seen in the recent Showtime dramatization of her life with, of all people, Shirley MacLaine, depicting the designer.

After a youth spent in an orphanage, the young Chanel worked as a dressmaker and then a café singer, where she got the nickname “Coco.” She became the mistress of a wealthy man who bred racehorses and ran with a fashionable set; he set Coco up with a millinery business. Another lover, who raced motorcycles, bankrolled her first dressmaking business in 1910. She was a success by 1912. Chanel bobbed her hair before it was the vogue and was rather shockingly known for speaking her mind. In 1919, when her designs suddenly took off world-wide, she reported “I woke up famous.” Her couture house blossomed, producing everything from masculine-styled casual togs, to the jersey suit, and her vaunted little black dress. She was also known as a tough boss who worked her seamstresses hard. She closed her business for the duration of World War II, scandalizing Paris by going off with her German officer lover. In later years, she never lost her saltiness.

She’s one of the most written about designers in our Library’s collection, with over 37 entries in CATNYP. Looking at the literature on her, I see that the most interesting works capitalize on her notoriety. A French author says it all in his book’s lengthy title: Chanel: her life, her world, and the woman behind the legend she herself created. To balance such titles out, there is the worthy exhibition on her couture mounted by the Metropolitan Museum’s Costume Institute in 2005. And her life has been the fodder for more than nonfiction. Our Performing Arts Library holds a typescript of Coco: a musical play. An almost 400 page novel was published in 1990, and given the current state of the industry, more are sure to follow.

Back in August, I had the opportunity to do a little background research for a magazine writer who was investigating the origins of the white shirt and black tie. While the tuxedo’s beginnings date to around 1885 and the assistance of England’s then Prince of Wales, the future King Edward VII, it took the twentieth century for masculine formal wear to really take off. The black bow tie was an innovation of the 1920s and jacket lapels grew progressively sleeker into the 1930s.

In preparing my curatorial lecture on “Fashions of the Art Deco Era,” I reinvestigated the effect of Hollywood on fancy dress for men. “Black Tie” costume is still considered a variation of the tuxedo. The white shirt achieved its authority in 30s versions with the aid of pearl buttons or studs and an obligatory wing collar. Historian Alan Flusser still possesses the definitive word on the principles behind formal dress, in his Clothes and the man and Style and the man.

Mark van de Walle was kind enough to give me a fabulous link to a website called London Lounge. Check it out! And then he alerted me to another great site, The Black Tie Guide.

And, by the way, my predictions about the presidential candidates have proved true. They are too busy slugging it out in their rather dull suits and neckties; given the financial roller coaster ride of recent weeks, there is no room in this campaign for fashion to rear its head. There are other social forces of a much more serious nature at stake. And please don’t get me started on the so-called “Palin Chic…” Talk about desperate journalism!

The French word ‘couture’ represents needlework or sewing. The couture designer uses a toile, made in muslin or fine linen, from which the made-to-measure proportions were devised. France has a union called the Chambre Syndicale de la Couture with rules and regulations for how couture houses are to be staffed and when they exhibit their lines.

I recall reading in The Fashion Conspiracy that the absolute “prize” element of a couture garment was that it would be made from scratch for a client, require fittings so that her measurements were exactly determined, and would usually have an entire under-body created to support the exterior design in fabric. A couture client often has to endure numerous fittings in the shop, or in her hotel room, should she have flown to Paris for her shopping.

In this respect, the couture wearer is clad in a one-off; no one else will have a garment quite like hers, and she earns its uniqueness by enduring the labor-intensive work that allows her to become the item’s possessor. No wonder, then, that fashion designers of the later twentieth century needed to launch ready-to-wear labels or “brands” in order to make their fortunes. Therefore, haute couture is the idealization, the bespoke aspect of fashion culture. The entire fashion industry is built around delivering the (delusional) dream of a unique garment for its wearers. Only real, existing haute couture provides that dream, however.

And for my favorite way to peek in at Parisian fashion, especially the recent shows, go to www.pretparis.com.

Jacques Doucet, grandson of the founder of the House of Doucet in Paris, was a spirited champion of the new Art Deco style. Doucet was a remarkable art connoisseur and collector of eighteenth century and contemporary French arts. By the time he became active in the firm, around 1874, his encyclopedic knowledge of historic dress expressed itself in fashion references in couture garments. Although in the 1920s he was aging and his couture house merged with another lesser firm, and eventually closed, he never lost touch with foreseeing the needs of the French luxury goods market.

Doucet’s championing of the emerging Art Deco style was manifested in his support for artists working in that mode, like the bookbinder Pierre Legraine. Yet he remains better known as an exponent of the “opulent era.” In 1984, he finally received the weighty biography he deserved. As a teacher and mentor, however, he was unparalleled. Doucet also understood that France needed to rise above the devastation of the first World War. His patronage of the arts meant a great deal to struggling painters attempting to get back on their feet.

Tomorrow, a most intriguing exhibition opens at The Museum of the City of New York. Entitled “Paris/New York Design, Fashion, Culture 1925-1940,” is housed in the museum’s new pavilion gallery for temporary exhibitions. There are sure to be stunning objects on display, so plan like me to head up there very soon. I’ll just put on those armorial gladiator ankle boots and go…

Check out the new NYPL exhibition, Art Deco Design: Rhythm and Verve, on view at the Humanities and Social Sciences Library (5th Ave. and 42nd St.) until January 11, 2009.

Art Deco's Couturier Patrons, Part 1 »

The first World War was truly traumatic for France, and its great designers were among the first to attempt to rally the nation’s arts in the war’s aftermath. The luxury goods trade had all but disappeared during these years. One of these designers, Madeleine Vionnet (1876-1975), closed her couture house at the onset of the war in 1914 and went to Rome for the duration.

Upon her return, she pressed forward with the revolutionary, often avant-garde direction of her clothes-making. She had apprenticed with lingerie makers, spurring a life-long fascination with the interplay of body and fabric. She introduced the bias cut for whole garments, in which the fabric was cut diagonally across the grain to make a springy type of drape. Vionnet’s clothes were considered very moderne, and many of her clients were celebrities and theater folk. The Art Deco style owes much to her vivid interpretations of the body in motion, especial the control and manipulation of fabric for Cubist and other modernist effects.

Take a look, too, at her official website. Items like the cowl neck, halter top, and handkerchief dress owe their inspiration to this designer. Read about her in the classic study by Sophie Dalloz-Ramaux. Interestingly, Vionnet’s skill in sewing seams and making bias cuts created huge problems for copyists and pirates, always a problem for couturiers then and now.

p.s. As a break from daily tasks, I’ve been revisiting a grand site with a fine blog, www.dandyism.net. I did a blog interview with them a few years ago while “A Rakish History of Men’s Wear” was on exhibition.

Check out the new NYPL exhibition, Art Deco Design: Rhythm and Verve, on view at the Humanities and Social Sciences Library (5th Ave. and 42nd St.) until January 11, 2009.

“There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.”
-Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

What about the impact of the great modern art movements on fashions of the times? Perhaps the most influential of those movements was Cubism. Fortunately, a long-sighted costume historian addressed this topic in a small but influential exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum’s Costume Institute back in 1998. Richard Martin organized “Cubism and Fashion” to contrast the striking similarities between clothing silhouettes from 1908 to 1925 and the artistic revolutions of that period. Marshalling the formidable resources of the Costume Institute, his exhibition permits viewers to see the direct and subtle transformations in modern dress. High and low (popular) culture contributed to these changes, but the designers involved were powerfully impacted by the artistry of their times.

What is remarkable is how designers did not stay satisfied with the status quo, but were willing to take risks. Being avant-garde in those days meant finding a clientele that would be open to changes in apparel, often well before the mainstream could acknowledge that those changes were appropriately modern. My research on modernity in clothing shows that the avant-garde stance of the early twentieth century was very important in developing those freedoms we appreciate today. Brave, too, were those designers and clients who adopted other movements, such as Surrealism, and purchased garments that were wearable art.

If everything old is truly new again, this means we need to keep our eye on today’s avant-garde clothing designs for a hint to the future…

p.s. Want some good current exhibitions on fashion? Go over to The Museum at FIT and view “Arbiters of Style: Women at the Forefront of Fashion,” and the special exhibition “Gothic: Dark Glamour.” I’d love some reactions to the latter.

“Is not the most erotic part of the body wherever the clothing affords a glimpse?”
-Roland Barthes (1915-1980)

Social morality and how women dress has greatly affected fashion. Therefore, the modern era has been revolutionary for changes in feminine dress. The most critical development of all—the gradual revealing of the body. A feature story from the website at the University of Texas at Austin sets up this scenario. The Victorian era was deeply invested in preserving feminine morality and wearing clothing that covered the body. A glimpse of a lady’s ankle was shocking in itself in this period.  read more »

A lot of the stories in The Fashion Conspiracy describe the means whereby the various designers and companies establish their brand. Product branding is extremely important these days, as more and more consumers—especially young ones—pledge allegiance to specific brands. Sneakers are a famous example. Linking fashion and beauty products with famous faces is another time-honored device. If you want to get a good idea of the business process involved in all this, the SIBL Library has a great work: Packaging design: successful product branding from concept to shelf. While researching brands as a subject, I discovered to my surprise that this topic has not been greatly written about. I wonder why?

There is also something online that proves to be great fun. The Origins of Brands Blog makes a lot of connections with the same wryness that Nicholas Coleridge displayed in The Fashion Conspiracy. I’m bemused myself over my predilection for national brands. For example, I remain loyal to English perfume (Penhaligan) and French purses (Longchamps), and always, always wear only authentic American Indian-made jewelry.

Do any of you who might be reading this post have these kinds of loyalties? And do you think they’re an inherited or acquired trait?

Reading The Fashion Conspiracy reminded me how the fashion industry has produced its own versions of the Cinderella story. Moving from conspiracies to happy-ever-after stories, I was struck again by the career beginnings of a young guy from the Bronx named Ralph Lifshitz, son of an Orthodox Jewish immigrant from Minsk. He lived in the Mosholu Parkway section and attended DeWitt Clinton High School in New York City. By this time, he’d changed his last name to Lauren. From the very beginning of his modest start in the clothing trade, he preferred the preppie style.

His rise to fashion designer stardom is straight out of the best fiction, and was undoubtedly based on hard work. Ralph Lauren had a persistent dream that became reality. “We sell a way of life” was his mantra, and in this he has been wildly successful. What I like about his brand is the consistency of its visualization, down to selling a fantasy lifestyle (how many polo players do you know?). The Art Reading Room has two biographies on his life and work, but the more recent title says it all - Ralph Lauren: the man, the vision, the style. Perhaps I also have a bit of a bias towards a designer who uses Southwestern Native American textile themes in his leisure clothes. I still remember the Fashion Week in the late 1990s when his models all wore exquisite turquoise squash blossom necklaces and heavy silver concho belts...

“Things are entirely what they appear to be and behind them...there is nothing.”
-Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980)

One weekend this summer, I bought a paperback copy of an amusing book in our collection, The Fashion Conspiracy by Nicholas Coleridge. Published in 1988, the book is still relevant today in the portraits it draws of fashion wealth, 80s excess, and the striking contrasts between high-end designer showrooms and Asian sweatshops. Coleridge, a British journalist and novelist, uses a form of the then-developing creative nonfiction to make his profiles and encounters more interesting. I find him a bit too credulous as a reporter, however; he recounts the story of Oscar de la Renta as the inventor of the “fashion victim” term without any demur, and repeats similar questionable anecdotes as a matter of course.

Having just finished the book, I’ve found that his title stretches the point a little. An avid reader of murder mysteries, I like to think of myself as an expert on conspiracy theories. Coleridge’s thesis really denotes a nudge and wink conspiracy, in which market players all work together to make the couture garment an amazing piece of expensive sleight-of-hand. If you want to read about someone ready and willing to link fashion with terrorism, look at this interview with Bret Easton Ellis.

I’ve always believed that diversity makes for a more beautiful world. I also thought that most people felt that way, these days. Imagine my surprise when word began to leak out this past year that the fashion shows were employing more and more white models, and less of those of other colors. Having only skinny white girls on the runways is far from completing fashion’s dreamscape. I know Naomi Campbell is bad-tempered, but honestly—we need black, white, Hispanic, and Asian (and would a Native American hurt, either?) women to represent our global world.

For years now, Saudi, Middle Eastern, and Asian women have been major couture buyers. The big designers have customers in all shades of the rainbow as a result of the global economy. Furthermore, as Cathy Horyn says, who writes for the New York Times blog On the Runway, diversity can be a means for “Beauty and Soul.” I hope the Fall 2008 New York Fashion Week organizers are listening: put more models of different races out there for all to see. Fashionable fantasies shouldn’t be for just one group.

Josephine Baker had to leave 1920s America for France in order to receive the acclaim she deserved for her talent. Do we really wish for a return to those times? This is a clear-cut case of NOT wanting everything old to be new again…

“A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of.”
-Jane Austen, Mansfield Park

Of course, there’s the little matter of how will we pay for our new fall fashions? You’ll be reassured to know that this question won’t bother that sector of the population that attends fashion shows and buys directly from couturiers. For the rest of us who await the trickle-down of readymade fashion must-haves, the question is a little more acute.

One secret of success is to pick and choose. Picking a new accessory—which the Vogue editors pushed as an idea—has always been a way of getting a modish look without too much financial pain. There are bound to be a lot of inexpensive costume jewelry knock-offs of statement necklaces and faux bijoux. I admire those who can sew and adapt the latest outlines or features, whether they are the new silhouettes or an alluring bias cut. One of my favorite books, available at the reference desk in the Art Reading Room is a wonderful resource, full of pictures and retro chic suggestions, called Collectible fashions of the turbulent 30s. Now, those were the days when your dress dollar had to go a long way! Unless you were Marlene Dietrich.

Those who know how to do canny shopping will benefit this year. If you live in the metro New York area, check out two sites that offer ways to shop frugally: TheElegantTightwad.com and fashionswapandmeet.wordpress.com

Well, the September issue of Vogue has hit the stands. I’ve been scrutinizing it, as I do every year, to see what will be on the runways and in the stores this fall. What I encountered is pretty much what I expected: cautious optimism and a whole lot of conservatism. Economic slumps don’t inspire risk-taking or an emphasis on the extraordinary. Clothes with good, classic lines were shown, and there were less retro looks than expected. The slim line in dressing discounts room for breasts and hips, not unlike the body aesthetics of the 20s and 30s. Colors favored were red and blue (election year, surprise!) followed by black and white. Muted metallic tones appeared plentiful, a hangover from last season. Dries Van Noten and Alexander McQueen provided the necessary alternative avant-garde looks. Armani followed the other established designers in subdued clothes, but utilized a winning bias cut.

There were few remarkable photographic studies, other than a radiant Gwyneth Paltrow hawking Tod’s leather goods. The Vogue editors’ concession to the weak economy was a number of articles on the value of accessories, including faux jewels and a statement necklace. In the area of shoes, things looked frightening. Nothing but wickedly threatening stilettos, which Christian Louboutin calls the “skyscraper pump,” except for one page of handsome flats- which made me want to either applaud or cry. I was informed, however, that the flat jazz lace-up shoe is in fashion now. Much more intriguing was mention of the “armorial gladiator ankle boot” as a must-have. Whatever that is…

Vogue, the magazine, has been the subject of some interestingly speculative publications. Academia has begun examining the magazine’s effect on the American fashion industry. One title, As Seen in Vogue, evaluates the effect of its advertising on consumers. Another viewpoint investigates Beauty Photography in Vogue, while drawing some rather bland conclusions about the social impact of fashion photography. Much more amusing—and revealing—is former editor Grace Mirabella’s take on the magazine in her In and Out of Vogue.