Mae West on skinny women, c.1934

Actress Mae West, in "It Aint No Sin" c.1934 (Click for Source)

Author Maurice Leonard explains that for Mae West, “her rotundity was exaggerated by her shortness. Giving vent to her frustration to Ruth Biery, she complained that Hollywood had tried to alter her shape when she had first arrived, and viewed the slim Hollywood beauties around her with dissatisfaction:

“I never saw so many poles in my life! I wondered how Hollywood men could stand them. But everyone said I had to get thin. I figured they knew this racket and I didn’t, so I went on one of them Hollywood diets…It was pretty bad, but I’d been through a lot for art’s sake so taking off twenty pounds or more was just one more piece of the routine. I got down to 103 pounds. I stood in front of the mirror to study the results. I didn’t like it. I didn’t look—well, you know, voluptuous. And that isn’t all, I didn’t even look healthy. And man or woman, you got to look healthy to look right. Half-starved women can’t have no life in them any more than a half-starved dog.”* (141)

–Maurice Leonard in  Mae West: Empress of Sex. New York: Birch Lane Press, 1991. 141.

*Mae West in Movie Classic, April 1934.

 

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Exhibition Notice: Mottainai: The Fabric of Life (Portland)

Opening today at the Japanese Gardens in Portland, Oregon is Mottainai: The Fabric of Life, Lessons in Frugality from Traditional Japan.

“This exhibition of antique Japanese folk textiles from the Meiji period (1868-1912) is comprised of selections from the private collections of Stephen Szczepanek (suh-PAN-ecks) of Sri in Brooklyn and Kei Kawasaki of Gallery Kei in Kyoto. The exhibition demonstrates the remarkable ability of the Japanese to not only make do with the very little they had, but to make art with it.

For generations before the “Economic Miracle” took place in the decades following World War II, Japan was a poor country. People recycled everything. Nothing was wasted, and the word “mottainai” (waste nothing!) was a ubiquitous exclamation used by every frugal parent to warn children about wasting a bite of food or a scrap of cloth or paper.

All of the textiles and garments on view were made from bast fibers foraged from the forest, or patched and quilted together from second-hand scraps of cotton garments of city-dwellers who traded their hand-me-downs with the farmers for rice and vegetables.The exhibition represents a wide variety of traditional textile making and decorating techniques, including sashiko stitching, bast fiber weaving and dyeing, and patchwork quilting, the latter referred to as boro.”

This short exhibition only runs through November 27 – so see it while you can. Learn more about the textiles and objects included here.

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The Wednesday Word: from Mendes and De La Haye

“The ephemeral nature of fashion distinguishes it from other modes of dress such as ceremonial, occupational and ethnographic. . . . Fashion’s inherent obsolescence, whereby clothes are discarded on the basis of the desire for stylistic novelty rather than for utilitarian reasons, generates passionate response from consumers and theoreticians alike.  Fashion has been held up to ridicule, dismissed as a merely frivolous aesthetic phenomenon – since it is forever changing, it can be of no lasting value. . . Fashion has attracted the attention and endorsement of an expanding range of academics, increasingly fascinated by its multi- and inter-disciplinary significance. Thus the work of psychologists, anthropologists, economists, philosophers, sociologists, theatre and film designers, as well as dress historians, has bestowed an academic validity to fashion.”

— Valerie Mendes and Amy De La Haye, 20th Century Fashion (1999)

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October Books on Fashion

Halloween is next week… and it’s just a short leap to Thanksgiving and then holiday shopping will be upon us. Before we get to that – and all the requisite shopping for others that is required – here are a few books you might want to think about looking into for yourself. There are more than a few that I’m interested in:

The Rise of Fashion and Lessons Learned at Bergdorf Goodman (Oct 18, Fairchild)

By Ira Neimark

I’m particularly interested in this book, not only for his personal anecdotes, but because the study covers “the late sixties through the early nineties”. For those unfamiliar, Ira Neimark was Chairman and CEO of Bergdorf Goodman for 17 years, and previously worked at Neiman Marcus Group, B. Altman, and Bonwit Teller. He’s currently director of Hermes of Paris and director emeritus of The Fashion Institute of Technology Foundation. His insights into the history and business of luxury fashion seem like they might be useful to understanding the industry. For more, see this review in the Wall Street Journal.

High Heels: Fashion, Femininity & Seduction (Goliga, Oct. 31, 2011)

By Valerie Steele, Tim Blanks, Philip Delamore, James Crump, and Ivan Vartanian (Editor)

While provocative, the cover is not what drew me to this book: Valerie Steele is. Though this is an edited book of essays on high heels, Steele’s name has such cache in the world of dress studies, that simply being associated with the book makes me want to read it more. That said, the book also includes well-known photographers such as Guy Bourdin, Juergen Teller, and David Lachapelle. The essay topics are intriguing, and are likely to hold some amount of controversy. Along with Steele (on the industry forces behind high-heel design) are contributions from Stella Bruzzi on High heels on film; insights from designer Manolo Blahnik, and a discussion of the use of high heels in fashion photography.

Bals: Legendary Costume Balls of the Twentieth Century (Assouline, October 2011)

By Nicholas Foulkes

Likely to be photo-heavy, the concept still intrigues me. “From the twilight of the Romanov dynasty through les années folles of Art Deco Paris to the jet-set seventies, Bals explores the nine most exceptional private costume parties of the twentieth century.”

The book includes both first-person accounts from and insider stories about Paul Poiret, Truman Capote, Cecil Beaton and Marisa Berenson, among others. Want more? Check out the 20 minute (French subtitled) video below.

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Wednesday Word: Defining Dress

1920s Sporting Attire (via UVM)

“The terms ‘dress’ and – even more so – ‘fashion’ have many different meanings, and the contemporary study of dress testifies to this diversity and to the importance of what we wear at every level of society. The manufacture and sale of clothing is a huge industry, both in Britain (where it is the fifth largest) and worldwide; it is therefore of major economic importance. At the same time dress performs a wide variety of important social functions.”

— Elizabeth Wilson and Amy de la Haye, Defining Dress as object, Meaning and identity.

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Mrs. D.W. Griffith on early film costume practices

Linda Arvidson (Mrs. D. W. Griffith) circa 1910-1915

“Any one with ‘clothes’ had a wonderful open sesame. A young chap whom we dubbed ‘the shoe clerk’ – who never played a thing but ‘atmosphere’ –got many a pay-check on the strength of his neat, tan, covert cloth spring overcoat—the only spring overcoat that ever honored the studio (An actor could get along in the spring with his winter suit and no overcoat!)

Clothes soon became a desperate matter, so Biograph consented to spend fifty dollars for wearing apparel for the women. Harry Salter and I were entrusted with the funds and told to hunt bargains. We needed negligees, dinner dresses, ball gowns, and semi-tailored effects. The clothes were to be bought in sizes to fit, as well as could be, the three principal women. (71)

In that day, on Sixth Avenue in the Twenties, were numbers of shops dealing in second-hand clothing, and Mr. Salter and I wandered among them and finally at a little place called ‘Simone,’ we closed a deal. We got a good batch of stuff for the fifty – at least a dozen pieces—bizarre effects for the sophisticated lady, dignified accoutrements for the conventional matron, and simple softness for young innocence.

How those garments worked! I have forgotten many, but one—a brown silk and velvet affair—I never can forget. It was the first to be grabbed off the hoot—it was forever doing duty. For it was unfailing in its effect. Arrayed in the brown silk and velvet, there could be no doubt as to one’s moral status—the maiden lady it mad obviously pure; the wife faithful; the mother, self-sacrificing.

Deciding, impromptu, to elaborate on a social affair, Mr. Griffith would call out: ‘I can use you in this scene, Miss Bierman, if you can find a dress to fit you.’ The tall, lean actresses, and the short ones found that difficult, and thus, unfortunately, often lost a day’s work. Spotting a new piece of millinery in the studio, our director would thus approach the wearer: ‘I have no part for you, Miss Hart, but I can use your hat. I’ll give you five dollars if you will let Miss Pickford wear your hat for this picture.’ Two days of work would pay for your hat, so you were glad to sit around while the leading lady sported your new head-piece. You received more on a loan of your clothes, sometimes, than you did on a loan of yourself. Clothes got five dollars always, but laughter and merry-making upstage went for three.” (72)

–Linda Arvidson (Mrs. D.W. Griffith). When the Movies Were Young, New York: E.P. Dutton & Company, 1925. pgs 71-72

Below is an early film (by D.W. Griffith) The Adventures of Dollie, starring Linda Arvidson and Harry Salter.

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