“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.”
Athapascan Hupa woman from northwestern California, half-length portrait, standing, facing front, wearing shell headbands, necklace, and holding up two baskets. Photo by Edward S. Curtis, c1923. Library of Congress
Clara Bow In "IT" 1927, costume designed by Travis Banton
As I have said and repeat, my aim is for the legitimate. When a woman is required to dress for golf in a certain scene there is really no point in making her seem ready for a dance at the country club. When she is fitted with a bathing suit it should at least look suitable for water. Keeping this in mind,… I then muster new fashions which are the outcome of many trips to Paris, London and other points of fashion and modify and adjust them to the needs of the role.”
–Travis Banton quoted in Harrison, Helen. “Hollywood’s Own Revolt,” Screenland, March 1935, 33.
Edward Steichen (1819-1972), Fashion photograph, Vogue, 1930.
Western dress requires the body to give clothes meaning, and Western art had always accommodated itself to this need until the possibilities of abstract vision made themselves available to Western eyes, After that, clothes could aim at an ideal shape of their own, to which a body was truly subordinate — a box, a cylnder, a pyramid–and they could be shown to achieve it in a painting or a fashion illustration. Actual bodily shapes, always apt for distortion, now had the further task of turning themselves into detached patterns of their own mind’s eye. This is harder discipline than corseting and padding. Fashion photography, now advancing in the hands of masters such as Steichen and De Meyer, was able to aid the trend and offer black-and-white compositions of compelling authority — all the stronger because the camera now officially represented truth and such creations could not be considered distorted in the same way a drawing could. The ideal simplified shape of a sleek body was now not only indicated by the trend of abstract graphic design but confirmed on film. Since that time, women have had to be slender.”
