Setting a New Fashion in Pets. Los Angeles, California: Marian Nixon set a new fashion at the Universal lot by matching her new fur coat with her pet. She created something of a sensation when she was seen leading a pet leopard on a leash down a Hollywood boulevard. (c1925, via Corbis)
Clearly, any definition of fashion seeking to grasp what distinguishes it from style, custom, conventional or acceptable dress, or prevalent modes must place its emphasis on the element of change we often associate with the term. . . . Fashion, if it is to be distinguished from style and numerous other of its neighbor terms, must be made to refer to some alteration in the code of visual conventions by which we read meanings of whatever sort and variety into the clothes we and our contemporaries wear….”
— Fred Davis, “Do Clothes Speak? What Makes Them Fashion” in Barnard, Malcom (ed) Fashion Theory: A Reader. Routledge (2007)
"These comparisons between the ultrasmart evening gowns of today and those worn by the well dressed lady of fashion a century or more ago were made in the fashion wing of the Metropolitan Museum of art, where the costume institute's collection of gowns, depicting the evolution of fashions for several hundred of years, is on display. The 1954 fashions were designed by James Galanos of California, winner of the 12th annual Coty American Fashion critics Award. In the photo at left the Galanos creation (left) is a gold and black metallic evening gown built over a pellon and black silk taffeta. Compare it with the ball gown of cloth of silver vertically striped with blue silk and gold tinsel, brocaded in polychrome and trimmed with silver lace, beside it, which dates from the 18th century, Louis XV period. french, of course. Photo at right shows the Galanos creation" (October 11, 1954, Corbis)
Greta Garbo as Queen Christina (1933) designed by Adrian
To prove the point that he always lets mind rule the clothes he designs, Adrian pointed out the case of ‘Queen Christina.’ Research disclosed the real woman had no interest in clothes and spent most of her life pursuing freedom in a man’s doublet and hose. Yet she was Queen, and as such, opulence was purposefully manifested at court functions. So, in creating clothes for this picture. Adrian expressed the cleverness of the real Queen, as well as the originality of Garbo before the cameras.”
–Harrison, Helen. “Adrian’s Fashion Secrets” Hollywood, September 1934.
Queen Christina costume, in Sweden (via Garbo Forever)
Chanel by Cassandre, 1942 (as seen in Amy De La Haye's new book)
The story of Coco Chanel has been told in many, many books over many many years — and all biographers have trouble figuring out what was true and what she made up. It has been said that she changed her past to suit her mood. Here, two authors from different backgrounds attempt to provide new perspectives:
by Linda Simon (October 1, Critical Lives – Reaktion Books)
This slim, lightly illustrated (black and white only) is a new contribution to Reaktion books “Critical Lives” series. According to the publisher, in this version of Chanel’s life “Linda Simon here teases apart the myth that Chanel and her adoring public collaborated to create, and explores its contradictions.” Kirkus, a publishing industry magazine, interviewed her about the book, and in an amazingly short review The Independent said:
“Too much of this book is devoted to Chanel’s love life, and not enough attention is given to her astonishing talent, although Simon’s assessment of the designer’s legacy – her fashion helped redefine ‘femininity as a sort of adolescent insouciance’ – is nicely put.”
Simon, who is an English professor, has previously written biographies of Alas B. Tolklas and William James – but has little fashion history/studies background. I’ll be very interested to see what other fashion scholars have to say about this retelling.
By Amy de la Haye (October, Thames & Hudson/Victoria & Albert Museum
Alternatively, Amy de la Haye – who has written a number of fashion history text and reference books – has also just come out with a new book: Chanel: Couture and Industry. For those unfamiliar, de la Haye is a curator and dress historian. She has a Senior Research Fellowship at the London College of Fashion (University of the Arts) and from 1991-1998 she was Curator of 20th Century Dress at the V&A.
Of the two books, this is the one to get. Heavily illustrated, with sidebars and call-outs, it is still slim and concise – explaining key stages of Chanel’s career (and continuing briefly into the Lagerfeld years) and the issues she dealt with (in a textbook style-layout ideal for students). Of particular note are the introductory chapter “Chanel: Subject and Media” and the call-out section “1939-53: War and the Aftermath.”
Chanel: Couture and Industry includes a helpful chronology, as well as highlights of Chanel ensembles included in the Victorian & Albert Museum. Copious full-color photographs, illustrations, art depicting the clothing she designed provide excellent evidence of her design prowess. It is far from dry reading, and includes fascinating tid-bits, discussions of her fashion designs, in addition to her style and her life.
Here’s a mix of vintage and more contemporary Chanel fashions (and Chanel herself) to wet your appetite:
“I open a fashion magazine; I see that two different garments are being dealt with here. The first is the one presented to me as photographed or drawn–it is image-clothing. The second is the same garment, but described, transformed into language; this dress, photographed on the right, becomes on the left: A leather belt, with a rose stuck in it, worn above the waist, non a soft shettland dress; this is a written garment. In principle these two garments refer to the same reality (this dress worn on this day by this woman), and yet they do not have the same structure, because they are not made of the same substances and because, consequently, these substances do not have the same relations with each other: in one of the substances are forms, lines, surfaces, colors, and the relation is spatial; in the other, the substance is words, and the relation is, if not logical, at least syntactic; the first structure is plastic, the second verbal. Is this to say that each of these structures is indistinguishable from the general system from which it derives–image-clothing from photography, written clothing from language? Not at all.”
Charles de Young Thieriot, editor-publisher of the San Francisco Chronicle, standing on trolley car with model; model wearing dress by Guy D. with shoes by Customcraft. (ca. 1961)Career Girl in San Francisco Barrie Tognazzini wearing pale blue Shetland wool suit by Elite Jrs., black patent leather bag by Roger Van S., and gloves by Wear-Right. (Feb. 1965)
They worked only seven weeks, preparing for the picture. The studio worked nearly a year. The research work alone took months. The making of costumes, more months. And if you don’t think a costume designer like Milo Anderson has his headaches, consider his problem with armor alone: After chain mesh armor was made for various knights and soldiers, the sound department discovered that the noise of the chain mesh in action was like that of a navy raising anchor. Anderson finally devised a realistic-looking substitute out of woven string, sprayed with metal paint.”
“Craig, Carol. “A New Robin Hood,” Motion Picture. Jan. 1938., pg 60.
Lifetime Television, in hopes of capitalizing on the success of Project Runway, is to begin a new series in November “Project Accessory” with Molly Sims as host. This got me thinking about the role that accessories have really played in the history and study of fashion. It’s not a foreign concept to me. This time last year, I asked a dear friend to write a book review of Accessories to Modernity: Fashion and the Feminine in Nineteenth-Century France.
While that book was through-written, a new publication from University of Minnesota Press plays directly into the zeitgeist and the newest recognition of the accessory in fashion. Released in August, Accesorizing the Body (edited by Cristina Giorcelli and Paula Rabinowitz ) is the first in a four-part series Habits of Being. The seires consists of extracts of the “best essays from the ongoing editions of Abito e Identita: ricerche de sortia letteraria e cultrurale, edited by Cristina Giocelli and published since 1995” now being published in English for the first time.
The first volume in the series, is wide ranging, and contributes research and theoretical discussions on various types of accessories-hats, shoes, vests, anklets, etc – but it is also deeply analytical, and for those who don’t speak Italian, will become a valuable resource for the analysis of accessories in a larger context. The essayists come from a variety of scholarly backgrounds – art history, semiotics literary studies, history fashion and even psychoanalysis. It is something I want to take my time in reading.
Zora Neale Hurston, photo by Carl Van Vechten (1938)
The essay “Coco, Zelda, Sara, Daisy, and Nicole: Accessories for new ways of being a woman” by Martha Banta, professor emeritus of English at the University of California, Los Angeles, is of particular interest and suggests connections between major figures in 1920s culture. Another essay on the poet Laura (Riding) Jackson, titled , “Precious Objects: Laura Riding, her tiara, and the petrarchan muse” is written by Becky Peterson – herself a poet and an alumni of the MFA program in English at Mills College (and now a graduate of the University of Minnesota). She looks at the role jewelry (and other precious objects) played in Riding’s poems. The essay, “Black Hattitude” looks at African American hat-wearing and attitude (specifically Zola Neale Hurston) and is written by Jeffrey C. Stewart, professor and chair of Black Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Cover of Report for a Corpse by Henry kane (New York: Dell Publishing Company Inc., 1949. Cover by Gerald Gregg.)
Still more essays intrigue: one looks at Spanish women’s clothing after the civil war, while another explores the image of the yellow Jewish star, and still another looks at the use of women’s shoes and anklets in images and film. There are more–on metaphysical sandals, cinematic jewels and futurist vests.
These are all relatively short essays, but extremely well written and thought provoking. The book covers a lot of ground and packs some pretty heavy hitting theory along with it, referencing Jacques Derrida, Karl Marx, Martin Heidegger, but also Ann Hollander, Joanne Entwistle, Colin McDowell, and James Laver.
It’s marvelous to read in such a digestible format, and I’m looking forward to the next volumes in the series.
Erwin Blumenfeld, Audrey Hepburn (1952), New York Audrey Hepburn is wearing a hat designed by Blumenfeld and made by Mister Fred, one of New York's most talented milliners. Blumenfeld here uses a system of mirrors showing the front and back of the hat and allowing infinite repetition of the motif.
“To write about fashion, to discuss its impact and importance, always means to transform the fleeting and transitory into the statue-like and permanent, if only through black letters on a white sheet of paper. Fashion as a topic remains embroiled and disputed because of its alleged lack of substance–in artistic as well as metaphysical terms. The profound and eternal are considered worthy of intellectual analysis; what is transient and fugitie will nearly always be equated consciously or unconsciously with the facile and futile. Yet herein lies fashion’s most absorbing fascination: it challenges us to transpose transitoriness, also the hallmark of modernity, into a medium of high regard, while maintaining its distinct characteristics; to theorize and analyze, yet not to petrify.”
