I’m very pleased to present a review by my friend and fellow Costume Society of America Western Region Board Member, Brenna Barks.
“Back to …” By Brenna Barks
There is an intimacy present in objects of material culture that is often lost in exhibitions and academic studies. This can be especially true of clothing. It is not only worn on the body, but reflects an extremely personal choice either to express or hide identity, to reveal or armor ones self against the rest of the world.
This feeling of intense, almost uncomfortable intimacy permeates Amy Winehouse: A Family Portrait exhibition currently on display at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco. While raw and somewhat intrusive, it is an extremely relevant intimacy as the exhibition is designed to delve behind the tabloids and the public persona of a world-famous musician, to reveal the girl her family knew, loved, and lost.
It gives the feeling of going through Amy’s belongings in the way that her family must have done after her death. In addition to various family items, it includes her clothing from childhood through the height of her career. Things that she most valued and kept, and which her brother, Alex Winehouse, and his wife, Riva (as co-curators with Liz Selby of the Jewish Museum in London) decided best represented Amy to include in this exhibition.
First among these items are her school sweater and tie worn in both grade school and the Sylvia Young Theatre School. They could be anyone’s jumper (sweater) and tie, but they are displayed so that you can see the name labels sewn into them. The objects are shown next to private photos from Amy Winehouse’s school days. These photos reveal for visitors that even a young Amy knew what her style was, and how to express it despite a school uniform.
Cynthia Winehouse (“Nan”), Amy Winehouses’ grandmother. Photo credit: Winehouse family
The exhibition suggests that much of Amy Winehouse’s unique style could be traced to her grandmother, Cynthia Winehouse. Alex and Amy Winehouse’s “Nan” was a strong, larger than life personality whom they both felt they could talk to (and smoke a sneaky cigarette with behind their parents’ backs). She married towards the end of World War II, and believed strongly in looking her best. Evident inspirations in Amy’s style are reflected in pictures of her Nan from the 1940s through the 1960s.
Clothing displayed from both Amy’s private and public life, the theme of intimacy remains. Several portraits from early in her career, taken in her home, were displayed along with a smattering of her wardrobe. The exhibition design aimed to display objects in the same way that Amy would have seen them every day on her clothes rail at home. Her brother Alex revealed that while she often wore stiletto heels and mini dresses in public, she was happiest in the tracksuit bottoms and cut off shorts she wore at home – albeit, as the home photos show, with her hair and make-up impeccably done.
The clothing is a delightful mix of this casual attire, exquisite designer scarves from Louis Vuitton, Yves Saint-Laurent, Hermes and others mixed with fast-fashion and thrift shop scarves, comfortable bedroom slippers next to platform heels – including some by Christian Louboutin, all hanging alongside the thrift shop finds like a pink bowling jacket Amy had customized, or a pair of braces (suspenders) found in a charity shop. There seems to be a definite mix in Amy’s “closet” of her at-home clothes and some of the dresses she performed in, as though she didn’t have a true stage wardrobe. This revelation seems to reveal that despite her public persona she managed to remain true to her authentic self by wearing her own clothes on stage, not what a stylist or her fans wanted, but what she felt comfortable in. This variation of formal and casual helps present a more realistic picture of the woman, as any of our closets would do.
Installation view from Amy Winehouse: A Family Portrait, Jewish Museum London, July 3–September 15, 2013. Photo: Ian Lillicrapp. Amy Winehouse: A Family Portrait. On view July 23–November 1, 2015. The Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco.
Amy Winehouse performing in a Luella dress at Glastonbury in 2008
A couple of her outfits are set apart. The black and white gingham, Arrogant Cat mini-dress that she wore not only in the “Tears Dry On Their Own” music video, but for several on stage performances is set apart to demonstrate just that she often wore her own clothing on stage or in videos. To quote the catalogue, this dress, combined with the bowling jacket and other casual pieces she was often seen wearing in public “reflect the grass roots nature of her style and her down-to-earth nature.” Then there is the Luella Bartley dress she sang in at Glastonbury, which was apparently too small even for Amy. This is set apart to discuss her stage persona and how even with her “down-to-earth” style, fame enabled her some designer collaborations and perks, though in the end, she preferred her own clothes, it seems.
The references to Amy’s Jewish heritage are very subtle, but that seems in keeping as it is meant to reveal the woman, rather than a perception of her. The exhibition opens with a family tree of the various Jewish, largely Eastern European emigres to London who make up the Winehouse siblings’ background, various name changes over the years as the family assimilated and became Jewish Londoners, rather than immigrants. The catalogue delves deeper not only into the family history but the history of Jewish London, a community that Amy was deeply connected to through cultural if not religious ties.
There are various objects throughout the exhibition that quietly reinforce this identity. A few pieces from her beloved Nan; photographs at her brother’s bar mitzvah, or other family gatherings at the synagogue; and a cookbook, The Book of Jewish Food by Cynthia Roden, which was a present from her brother with a message from him directing her to the recipe for chicken soup if she ever suffered “a loss of faith.” You get the impression that music was the central passion of Amy Winehouse’s life, with the large record collection, the guitars, the music school performances, but that her Jewish identity was strong and so much a part of her it didn’t need mentioning or overt displays.
The exhibition ends with a quote from Amy’s application essay to Sylvia Young Theatre School:
“I want to be remembered for being an actress, a singer, for sell out concerts, and sell out West End and Broadway shows. For being … just me.”
Respectful, intimate, and engaging, Amy Winehouse: A Family Portrait gives viewers a fuller picture of the iconic singer as a real person, so that you leave knowing that she accomplished just that.
The exhibition will be on display at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco through November 1, 2015.
Thanks so much to Brenna for this review! For anyone not able to make it to the exhibit, the Associated Press provides this glimpse of the London version of the show in 2013:
*Image credit: Mark Okoh, Camera Press London. Amy at her home in Camden town, 2004.
I am so excited to have been invited to speak at the Richmond Art Center’s symposium, accompanying the exhibition, “Body as Agent: Changing Fashion Art.” The exhibition opens on September 12, and the symposium will be on October 10, from 10am-4:30pm.
This symposium is held in conjunction with the exhibition Body as Agent: Changing Fashion Art. The exhibition shows wearable art, still featuring chic clothing and accessories, but has added the vibrations of upcycling which enhances the visual vocabulary of artists. In addition, this exhibition of California artists further expands notions of clothing to include works of art with garment forms serving as metaphors for social, political and social issues as found in painting, photography, print making and sculpture.”
I’ll be speaking right after lunch, and space is limited, so register now by following this link:
Today, the FIDM Museum launches the #4for400 project, a fundraising campaign for the acquisition of the Helen Larson Historic Fashion Collection. If successful, this remarkable collection will be kept in tact and available for research, exhibition, and inspiration.
The Helen Larson Historic Fashion Collection ranges from gowns worn by Queen Victoria (along with the clothing of 3 Empresses and 10 Princesses) to stunning couture creations of the twentieth century. It includes 22 haute couture designers including Paquin, Doucet, Chanel, Callot Soeurs, House of Worth, Fortuny, Lucile, Felix, Beer, and Lanvin.
These pieces were collected by Helen Larson, a successful Southern California collector and entrepreneur who understood the importance of fashion history. It is the only collection of this caliber in the world. The Helen Larson Historic Fashion Collection encompasses more than 1,400 pieces and represents 400 years of history (A man’s red velvet jerkin is the earliest piece, dating to 1600)– but this critically important collection could be broken up and lost forever. The Museum has until the end of 2015 to raise the remaining $2 million needed to purchase the collection for our institution. Without these funds, the collection will be dispersed or absorbed into another private collection, inaccessible to students, researchers, and the general public.
On 8/4 (TODAY!), donate $4, $40, $400, or $4,000 (or more!) by texting “MUSEUM” to 243-725.
Share, Like, Re-Gram, and Re-Tweet #4for400 posts from the FIDM Museum.
Forward this post to friends who are also interested in preserving fashion history.
Ask your favorite celebrities/politicians/persons of interest to support #4for400 on social media.
Join the #4for400 Open House (Today!) at the FIDM Museum, Los Angeles from 3:00 – 7:00 p.m. (with refreshments, raffles, music, and gallery tours).
All donations to the FIDM Museum are tax-deductible. If you would like to donate by check, make it out to “FIDM Museum and Library, Inc.” and mail it to
First published in 1989, Survey of Historic Costume by Phyllis G. Tortora would become a best-selling Fashion history textbook. For the 25th Anniversary edition, Tortora is joined by a new co-author, Sara B. Marcketti, an Associate Professor at Iowa State University.
But, after 25 years, what could really be that different? It seems the publisher has been listening to professors feedback about the volume, and now authors have “decreased the length of part openers and made chapters a more manageable length.” In addition to adding a new Chapter 20, “The New Millennium,” which “places greater emphasis on major fashion events of this century, making this book as current as possible and more relevant to the study of fashion today.”
Additionally, the book comes with a new online student resource, “Survey of Historic Costume STUDIO.” It includes chapter videos, self-quizzes, flashcards, maps, a Fashion Designer index, and links to fashion museums, costume collections, and online resources. For the professor, STUIDO includes an image library, PowerPoint slides for each chapter, a test bank, and an instructors guide (including sample Syllabi).
More information on this resource (available to students in July 2015) is provided in this video :
Discussions and depictions of fashion in France on the eve of the Revolution have long focused on the visible extremes of the era and have often heaped blame for the extravagances directly on the ill-fated head of the Queen. In folklore and many traditional histories, the fashions, particularly those of the court, are dismissed as excessive frivolities, the Queen as vain, and the Revolution is justified as the inevitable means of righting these wrongs amongst others. Only in recent decades has an academic approach been applied to better understand the extraordinary complexities of the relationships between fashion, politics, economics, industry, media, celebrity and the makers, wearers, and observers of la mode Ancien and le mode Révolutionnaire. In her new book, Fashion Victims: Dress at the Court of Louis XVI and Marie Anoinette, Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell masterfully discusses and explains these complexities with the familiarity of an eyewitness and the hindsight of the best of historians.
In Fashion Victims, Chrisman-Campbell seamlessly reconstructs the most complete depiction of the glitter before the gore, but she is not blinded by it. Fashion, both the manufacture and the consumption of it, is proven to be a powerful political machine. La mode was simultaneously reflective of and influential upon the shifting morals, philosophies, and alliances that resulted in the great social and governmental changes of the Revolution. The changes in French fashion- sartorial, ideological, and political- resonated globally. Chrisman-Campbell does not rely on her own words to convince the reader of the scale and importance of fashion, but draws from an impressive array of period authors, including many original manuscripts, as well as works unpublished since the eighteenth century. Her depth of understanding adds new insight to more familiar sources. Chrisman-Campbell skillfully translates old French, maintaining the nuance of the original commentators, and adds to these a compelling narrative and analysis of her own. The result is unrivaled.
The depth and quality of Chrisman-Campbell’s research and the intelligence of her interpretation is exemplified by her sustained discussions of particular phenomena and influences within fashion. The chapters on à l’Américaine and Anglomania, prove these trends to not be quaint mimicry but reflections of France’s international dialogue. Chrisman-Campbell teases-out the origins and importance of the coiffeur confections known as poufs, and the overt fashion victims who were les petite-mâitresses, and shows them not as mere fancies and faddist but as three-dimensional commentaries on the age, as timely, ephemeral, yet influential as the modern magazine cover and celebrity. The chapter on Figaro brilliantly demonstrates the circular relationship between fashion in media and fashion in reality.
Fashion Victims is as elegantly illustrated as it is written. The author tirelessly sought out every garment and scattered fragment purported to have association with Marie Antoinette; the best documented pieces are shown. The cast of the Court and the Revolution are introduced in countless portraits, some familiar and many not. The careful pairing of period prints with images of related extant objects and contemporaneous descriptions adds greatly to the reader’s ability to visualize the detailed styles…and the personalities, discussed. It is Chrisman-Campbell’s intimacy with these personalities, politics, and fashions that enables her to make them again understandable, and perhaps even desirable.” — Mark Hutter,
The Costume Society of America’s 41st Annual National Conference “Alamo a la Mode: Defending the Importance of Dress” is being held in San Antonio, Texas this year, May 27-30 and I’m happy to count myself among the presenters !
My paper, “Hidden Treasures: The Importance of Dress atTurtle Bay Exploration Park” (3:20pm on Friday, May 29) will include a wide swath of history related to local, state, national, and even international fashion trends, as well as some Ethnographic and Archeological ‘clothing’ (and a good, but surprising, dose of honest-to-goodness Couture!) Also, Nadine Stewart who contributes exhibition reviews regularly to Fashion Historia is presenting “The World According to (the Men of) The Illustrated Milliner, 1900-1920” at 8:30am on Friday.
Though I’m only going to be there for one day, I’m still eager to see the presentations by my colleagues. Here is a run-down of those presenters headed out from my own ‘golden state’ of California. I hope to see you there (Seriously! please leave a note in the comments, I’d love to meet readers!)
Paper Presentations:
Shu-Hwa-Lin (with Li King) “Street Fashion styles influence by Chinese culture”
Shelly Foote “The Growth of the Ready-to-Wear Industry in California”
Meghan Grossman Hansen “The Michel Arnaud Fashion Photography Archive” (at FIDM)
Judi Diwanis “Men’s Nineteenth Century Period Patterns: Preserving the Craft”
Anne Bissonnette “Chemise Dresses and Embodiment Practices in France 1778-1799”
Sarah Woodyard “‘To her Ribbands and Lace, and Caps give a Grace’: Fashioning Gender in Eighteenth-Century Women’s Caps”
Kelly-Reddy “Best The Politicization of Fashion in Virtual Queer Spaces: A Case Study of Saint Harridan and Tomboy Tailors”
Heather Vaughan Lee Hidden “Treasures: The Importance of Dress at Turtle Bay Exploration Park”
Poster Presentations:
Beverly Chico “The Importance of Hats in Children’s Literature”
Shu-Hwa-Lin “Exploring Chinese Design theory from Dragon Robes”
Helen S. Koo (with Seoha Min) “Exploration of 3D Texture Design Technique with Organza Fabric”
Casey Stannard “Robe de Style Revisited”
Marie Bodtkin “The Feminine Gaze: Female Fashion Photographers from Midcentury America”
When I became the Archivist for CSA Western Region, I inherited seven boxes of files on our region’s 39 years of history and activities. These boxes have been added to and passed along to each successive Past President/Archivist for many years, and I thought it was high time we digitized them. The board agreed, and I have begun the long scanning process. I’ve just started on “Book 1” (a large three-ring binder), and I’m learning so much.
Here are five fun facts from the Archives:
The Western Region was established as the first region of CSA in 1976.
Mary Hunt Kalenberg, curator of Costumes and Textiles at LACMA was along with Jack Handford were co-chairmen of the board set in place prior to the first Western Region election. Kalenberg, “was instrumental in the organization of CSA and one of its 15 charter members. She served on the original National Board of Directors.” (CSA-WR Archives, Folder one, “Founding of CSA and the Early Years of Region V—Phylis Specht”). LACMA was generously supportive of the region during this period.
During the first 10 years (1976-86), the region hosted a whopping 66 programs. Subjects included:
Folk/Ethnic (18); Art & Fashion (13); Western History (17), Theatre & Film (10); Conservation (1); Academic (4); and Miscellaneous (3).
The region operated solely as a Los Angeles chapter, with programs held bi-monthly, until 1981 when Inez Brooks-Myers was elected to the board and membership expanded to all the western states.
The first Symposium was Fashion and the Doll, held in November of 1985 at the Manhattan Country Club in Manhattan Beach. A ‘mini-symposium’ on costume for work and travel was held in February of the following year at the California State Railroad Museum in Sacramento. An impressive number of these kinds of events were held over the next several years.
As I go through more of the material, I plan to share more information about the impressive history of
the Western Region.
This article was first published in the Newsletter of the Costume Society of America Western Region, Spring 2015 issue. Click here to read the full issue: Spring+2015+CSA-WR.
Vicomtesse De Fontenay (Nee Pichon) in Les Modes, November 1909
For some research I’m doing, it has become incredibly helpful to have access to the National Library of France (Bibliothèque nationale de France). They have a vast online collection, including searchable Les Modes (where the above image came from). It’s a marvelous resource for anyone doing research on Haute Couture. Happy Hunting!
*
These pieces were collected by Helen Larson, a successful Southern California collector and entrepreneur who understood the importance of fashion history. It is the only collection of this caliber in the world. The Helen Larson Historic Fashion Collection encompasses more than 1,400 pieces and represents 400 years of history (A man’s red velvet jerkin is the earliest piece, dating to 1600)– but this critically important collection could be broken up and lost forever. 
The Museum has until the end of 2015 to raise the remaining $2 million needed to purchase the collection for our institution. Without these funds, the collection will be dispersed or absorbed into another private collection, inaccessible to students, researchers, and the general public.
FIDM Museum #4for400
My paper, “Hidden Treasures: The Importance of Dress at 
