My brief study of the textiles of the Wiener Werkstätte last week left me wishing I knew more, so I spent the last week mining some additional information and images to share with you. Here are some equally intriguing tidbits about the textile and fashion departments:

Wiener Werkstätte. Dress, 1924. Slik, print probably by Josef Hoffmann. Accession number 1982.52 at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Mixed prints? Tassel jewelry? Feather accessories? Bold black and white? I could be describing recent trends, or I could be describing the fashions and fabrics of the Wiener Werkstätte.

Active since the Workshop’s conception in 1903, the textile department of the Wiener Werkstätte was not formally organized until 1910. As I mentioned last week, Josef Hoffmann is credited with many of 1,800 designs the department produced, but he was only one of approximately 80 members who designed printed textiles for fashion and furnishings as well as custom textiles for more expensive interiors. As head of the department, Hoffmann oversaw the work of designers such as Dagobert Peche, Maria Likarz, Maria Vera Brunner, Jacqueline Groag, Carl Otto Czeschka, Max Snischek, Leopold Blonder, and Lotte Frömel-Fochler.

The fashion department of Wiener Werkstätte was also founded around 1910. Led by Eduard Wimmer-Wisgrill, the department saw significant growth in its first four years; this growth resulted in a restructuring around 1914 with the creation of new segments, including a special section dedicated to blouse design and construction. According to the Victoria and Albert Museum, it was in this same year that the Workshop first used patterned textiles as fashion fabrics.

Wimmer, Eduard and Ugo Zovetti. Blouse, ca. 1914. Silk satin lined with cotton and trimmed with net. Accession number T.47-2004 at the Victoria and Albert Museum.

The printed fabrics of the Wiener Werkstätte feature geometric compositions as well as colors and shapes inspired by the more temporal aspects of natural world. In many of the surviving samples, order and chaos coexist in floral designs reduced to the simplest representational shapes, while forests of repeated forms swarm over the surface of silk swatches. The designs of the Workshop refused to sit quietly on a couch cushion or a blouse; instead, they matched or exceeded the abrupt modernity of the interior or outfit of which they played a pivotal role.

Inspiration for these designs came from various sources, including regional folk art and modern art. As styles changed, so did the textiles, and when observed chronologically in Textiles of the Wiener Werkstatte, 1910-1932, the shift from Art Nouveau to Art Deco is easily visible.

Hoffmann, Josef. Eggs,
ca. 1907/8–14. Color lithograph, 13.3 x 8.3 cm. Accession number WW.5 at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Koehler, Mela. Mode mit Maske, ca. 1907/8–14. Color lithograph, 14.1 x 8.9 cm. Accession Number WW.270 at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Likarz, Maria. Fashion (Mode), ca. 1907/8–14. Color lithograph, 14 x 9 cm. Accession number WW.781 at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Zülow, Franz von. Narcissus, 1910. Accession number 1984.537.120a-h at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Unknown designer of the Wiener Werkstätte. Textile sample, 1910–28. Silk, 26.7 x 17.1 cm. Accession number 1994.549.20 at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Unknown designer at the Wiener Werkstätte. Textile sample, 1910–28. Silk, 19.7 x 27.9 cm. Accession number 1994.549.14 at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Likarz, Maria. Fashion (Mode), ca. 1907/8–14. Color lithograph, 9 x 14 cm). Accession number WW.559 at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Unknown designer of the Wiener Werkstätte. Textile sample, ca. 1920. Accession number 1984.537.118 at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Klimt, Gustav. Textile sample, ca. 1920. Accession number 1984.537.36a-f at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Unknown designer at the Wiener Werkstätte. China silk textile sample, ca. 1920. Accession number 1984.537.108 at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Peche, Dagobert. Wrong Way, 1922. Gouache on paper. Accession number 1984.537.23.

Likarz, Maria. Romulus, 1928. Silk, 27.9 x 18.4 cm. Accession number 1994.549.42.

In time, additional expansions of the fashion department led to segments focused on the design and production of hats, handbags, shoes, and other accessories, as well as trimmings such as lace. For a detailed timeline of the history of Wiener Werkstatte and its various departments, please visit this website.

Additional Resources:

1. Noever, Peter, ed. Dagobert Peche and the Wiener Werkstätte. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press in association with the Neue Galerie New York, c2002.

2. Rayner, Geoffrey. Jacqueline Groag. Textile & Pattern Design: Wiener Werkstätte to American Modern. Woodbridge, England: Antique Collectors’ Club, c2009.

3. Völker, Angela. Moda, Wiener Werkstätte. Firenze: Cantini, c1990.

4. Völker, Angela and Ruperta Pichler, collaborator. Textiles of the Wiener Werkstätte, 1910-1932. New York: Thames and Hudson, 2004.

Gender, Race, and Representation in Magazines and New Media

An interdisciplinary conference to be held October 25^th-27^th, 2013 at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, co-sponsored by Cornell University (Africana Studies) and Syracuse University (Women’s and Gender Studies)

 Conference website: http://cornellmagazinesconference.wordpress.com/

In June of 2012, scholars and magazine professionals from all over the world, and from a wide array of disciplines met at the “Women in Magazine’s” conference at Kingston University in London. “Gender, Race, and Representation in Magazines and New Media” seeks to continue the discussions of the “Women in Magazines” conference and extend them to a closer consideration of race in magazines, as well as the impact of new media and technology on magazines and raced and gendered representations. This conference hopes to broaden the scope of what is traditionally considered a magazine from the bound paper journal, to virtual magazines published digitally.

Magazines have long played a key role in the everyday lives of people of all classes, races, and genders and are a fertile space for the expression of social and political philosophies. The forms such publications have taken are staggeringly diverse—mass market publications, Xeroxed fanzines, cheap weeklies for the working class, so-called “smart set,” guides for the home economist, specialized trade publications, political mouthpieces and popular tabloids—magazines have served an astonishing array of audiences and purposes. In short, magazines are a particularly rich and potent sight for research as they so often serve as important outlets for identity formation, defining what it means to be a part of a certain community, class, or even generation through both image and text.

Now, with the increased availability of magazines to scholars through digitization initiatives, as well as the explosion of blogs, tumbler sites, and online magazines that at times enhance print versions of magazines, and at other times replace them entirely, the time is ripe for examining the role, meaning and place of magazines as sites to be mined for representations of gender and race.

Keynote Speakers include:

Kimberly Foster, founder and editor of “For Harriet” http://www.forharriet.com/

 Ellen Garvey, professor in English and Women and Gender Studies at New Jersey City University. http://web.njcu.edu/faculty/egarvey/Content/default.asp

We seek papers covering any geographical region or time period and any kind of magazine/new media platform (blog, Tumblr, Pinterest, digital magazines) on topics including, but not limited to:

·         Methods and Methodology—Various approaches to using magazines as source material

·         Design and magazines, magazines and visual culture

·         Themes and conversations within magazines and new media (e.g. class, aspirations,  celebrity culture, relationships, entertainment and gossip, politics and citizenship, beauty and fashion, the home, work and career)

·         Representations of disease, health and wellness:

·         The magazine industry (e.g. editors, journalists, designers, photographers, illustrators)

·         Historical perspectives on changing technology

·         The ways that new media is changing magazine studies

·         The ways that different business models affect the politics and representation in magazines and new media?

Submission Guidelines:

At this time we are requesting abstracts that are no longer than 400 words; due by May 1, 2013 and should be submitted electronically as an attachment tocornellmagazinesconference@gmail.com.

Individual and panel proposals will be accepted. Presenters will be notified by June 1, 2013 whether their submissions have been accepted.

Abstracts will be selected based on best fit with the themes of the conference outlined in the CFP.

By Cary O’dell

In the world of fashion, the term “icon” is bandied about almost as frequently as the words “brilliant” and “fabulous.”  And, granted, innumerable women like Lady Gaga, Madonna, Cher, Sharon Stone, Sophia Loren and Charlotte Rampling (to whom Tom Ford has frequently paid devoted homage) have consistently made significant fashion statements over the years…but are they truly icons?  Well-dressed, yes.  Fashion-forward, no doubt.  But have any crafted a signature style, one all their own, one that will still look both “modern” and distinctly them long after they are gone, or at least departed from the limelight?  I think one is hard pressed to make the case of a singular enduring style from any of these women.

Yet, there are a handful of women—all from the past century—who do rank as true fashion icons: women of such unmatched personal style that, even now, often a decade or more after their passing, their collective influence on high fashion and everyday dress remains firmly intact.

So what was (is) their secret?

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis almost seems to have been born an icon.  Her regal upbringing, her flawless posture acquired via youthful horseback riding, gave her a model’s stature and grace.  Additionally, Mrs. Onassis just seemed to wear clothes so beautifully.  Jackie, like Princess Diana later, could dress down (in a trench coat and sunglasses for the late First Lady; in her son’s ball cap and jeans for the late Princess) and still look undeniably chic.  Jackie’s enduring style, her ability to “slum” it if you will, came from the long, solid, fashionable foundation she had already so firmly cultivated mainly during years in the White House.

Jaqueline Kennedy in Oleg Cassini

Of course, Mrs. Kennedy did not achieve this stature alone.  She had ample help from legendary fashion editor Diana Vreeland, to whom the then Senator’s wife turned to for advice early in her public life.  And, most importantly, from the rarefied vision of the too-often undervalued designer Oleg Cassini.

Dress by Oleg Cassini

Despite his occasional copying of specific looks from the French couture–always done at the insistence of Mrs. Kennedy–Cassini nevertheless crafted for the First Lady a brilliant and everlasting look.  Favoring straight lines, simple silhouettes, solid colors (usually pastels) and a near constant avoidance of prints rendered Jackie’s White House wardrobe a remarkable timelessness.

Similarly, the 20^th century’s other great style ideal, Audrey Hepburn, too, arrived on the scene bearing a dancer’s grace and a super-slim figure, perfect for the couture.  And couture is what she gave us for decades thanks mainly to the refined work of the great Hubert de Givenchy.  With Hepburn as both muse and client, Givenchy fabricated an elegant and rarefied persona for her.

Audrey Hepburn in Givenchey

Their ascent was mutual and simultaneous.  After working for Schiaparelli from 1947 to 1951, Givenchy founded his own house in 1952; Hepburn made her major film debut, in “Roman Holiday,” in 1953.  She would first be dressed by Givenchy, on film, the following year in “Sabrina.”  The rest, as they say, is film (and fashion) history.  For the remainder of her life and career, on screen and off, Hepburn would seldom wear anyone else.  With time, the two became fully intertwined; his style was hers and hers was his.

Audrey Hepburn in Givenchey

Like Jackie before her, Hepburn had found the perfect formula to achieve full fashion icon status:  find a designer and stick with them; find an over-arching style and stick with it; eschew fads and short-lived trends; and ward off any sense of dated-ness by evolving with your chosen designer.  The flitting from one style to another (i.e. Madonna, Lady Gaga), as these two ladies seemed to know, might get you attention but it does not create a style legacy.

Other women, other icons, have recognized this and employed this same recipe.  The amazing C.Z. Guest created and maintained a long, fruitful relationship with Mainbocher.  She admired his subtle style and perfect cuts.  And he seemed to see in her—like Givenchy had with Audrey Hepburn—the perfect envoy for his designs.  Isabella Blow, too, found a symbiotic relationship with a designer, the mad hatter Philip Treacy.  Though her looks were completely avant-garde (and an acquired taste), there’s little doubt that they were uniquely her.

C.Z. Guest in Mainbocher

All this is not to say that an icon cannot embrace a bit of designer diversity.  Even during her White House years, Jackie showed a willingness to discretely work Chanel and Givenchy into her wardrobe.  She was wearing a Chanel suit that day in Dallas.

After leaving public life, Mrs. Kennedy (later Mrs. Onassis) diversified even more.  Now able to more freely wear non-American designers, Mrs. O. became a regular patron of Valentino and Madame Gres.  Once, she even put on a typical, mod and multi-colored Pucci mini-dress.  Regardless of these diversions, her core minimalist style largely remained and, besides, by this time, it did not matter; she was already above reproach.

Along with their loyalty to particular designers, these ladies also knew that the best way to ensure their ongoing style viability was to completely commit to simplicity.  If Chanel once said, “Get fully dressed and then remove one item” (or something to that effect) then these women practiced that philosophy in the extreme.  The equally iconic Duchess of Windsor once said, “Clothes should be so simple and unobtrusive as to seem unimportant.”  It was a philosophy that the one-time Wallis Simpson followed devotedly.  Her world-famous 1937 wedding gown–slim, unadorned and originally dyed “Windsor blue”—was designed by Mainbocher.  And though she regularly wore a variety of couturiers (Balenciaga, Dior, Givenchy), she, too, seemed to favor a highly pared-away style,  only offset by carefully chosen pieces from her incredible jewelry collection.

The Duke and Duchess of Windsor ,1937. Wedding dress by Mainbocher now held in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
image credit: Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Interestingly, at the time of her premature death in 1997, Diana, the Princess of Wales, was also moving towards a new more streamlined image.  After beginning her public life at the tender age of 19 and quickly being used as passive, put-upon dress-up doll by a host of British designers, Diana would in time—especially post children and divorce—firmly take her own image in hand.  She too eliminated the frills and cheap thrills of ruffled, busy clothes in favor looks more sedated, even somber, but still undeniably elegant.  Her fashion progression became especially visible in the photo retrospectives published after her passing and via the two auctions of her gowns that have been held, the first in 1997, the second, posthumously, in 2011.

Diana, Princess of Wales, wearing Catherine Walker

Diana’s increasing reliance on a smaller group of designers near the end of her life (notably the late Catherine Walker) seemed to suggest that she too had found the tried-and-true equation to transform herself from merely “well-dressed” into international style icon.

Of late, Michelle Obama seems to be working towards icon status as well.  Though except for her early reliance on twin sets (which echo C.Z. Guest), the current First Lady has yet to establish a defining style for herself.  But with a few more years (if not many) still on the world stage and her willingness to work with a good, small team of notable designers (like Jason Wu), Mrs. Obama stands a chance of emerging as our latest, newest style goddess.  The First Lady has the tools—and the figure—now it just remains to be seen if she has the inclination.

First Lady Michelle Obama in Jason Wu

The winds buffet red sails as the sun sinks lower in the sky, almost suspended at the horizon above a purple sea, with white foam crowning the waves that reach towards the rocks and stretches of white sand. The scene is a memory, a jumbled mass of light, shapes, and color. Were the sails white? Were the buoys red?

Or is this design based on something else entirely, perhaps a street scene or a favorite song?

This textile, a perfect example of abstraction, bears an equally obscure title. A product of the 20th century, it shares its name with a pharaoh who ruled during the 18th Dynasty. Perhaps the design includes purple cap-crowns?

What erudite artist designed this lively textile? To what group did he belong?

Think you know? Submit your guess below; we’ll reveal the answer on Thursday!

Yes, this textile was designed by Roger Fry (1866 – 1934), a co-founder of the Omega Workshops.

Fry, Roger. Amenophis, 1913. Stencil-printed linen, 71 x 79.5 cm. Accession number CIRC.424-1966 at the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Founded by Roger Fry, Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell in 1913, the Omega Workshops became the first English organization to fully embrace Post-Impressionism. Though short-lived, the Omega Workshops were the English answer to Paul Poiret’s École Martine and the artistic complement to the well-known literary group in Bloomsbury. This group of artists grew to include Frederick Etchells, Wyndham Lewis, Paul Nash, David Bomberg, William Roberts, Mark Gertler, and others, all of whom found inspiration in the works of Cézanne, Picasso, and Braque.

Roger Fry did not care for Art Nouveau; he did not care for William Morris and his tenets, and he did not care for what he classified as “Northern Art”, or art that is easily confined within the perimeters of a canvas or a page of book. In creating the Omega Workshops, Fry’s goal was to establish an organization that provided an income and an outlet for English artists who ascribed to the Post-Impressionist aesthetic but not to socialistic ideals. If Impressionists merely explained the world, Post-Impressionists sought to change it, and Fry hoped that the Omega Workshops would support innovative English artists who, like him, found inspiration in the structure of primitive art and the urgency of brash colors. Under Fry’s direction, the products of the Omega would emphasize “the use of bold and brutal colour, the acceptance of pictorial conversations continued from the canvas around the room” (1). Around the room, on screens and table and chairs, and printed on brightly colored textiles – the canvas was the room, the home, and the hostess. The Omega Workshops would create four-dimensional works of art.

On May 14, 1913, the Omega Workshops were officially established at 33 Fitzroy Square in London near Tottenham Court Road. Over the next two months, the artists work tirelessly to create screens, rugs, ceramics, and furniture, and textiles in time for the Omega’s opening on July 8.

Fry, Roger. Margery, 1913. Block printed linen, 79 x 79 cm. Accession number T.386-1913 at the Victoria and Albert Museum.

In April 1913, Fry, Bell and Grant successfully finalized initial designs for Omega printed linens. Like those of École Martine, the textiles of the Omega Workshops possessed a simplicity and an authenticity. They were immediate and uninhibited, a purified expression of emotion composed of formal repetition and dramatic color choices. According to the Victoria and Albert Museum, “Fry believed that designs should not be too mechanical and should show evidence of the artist’s hand. The workshops produced six printed linens which were used by the most daring clients as dress fabrics.” As a fashionable woman and an artist, it was Bell who first saw the opportunity to use Omega linens as both interior and fashion fabrics.

Fry, Roger. Poster, 1918. Lithograph. Accession number E.738-1955 at the Victoria and Albert Museum.

In May 1915, mere days after the creation of the Omega, Vanessa Bell expressed interest in establishing a dressmaking initiative. Inspired by her recent trips to Paris and Turkey, Bell designed a series of hobble skirts, tunics, and robes in brightly colored fabrics that matched the colors Bell used frequently on her canvases. Though her designs were similar to Poiret’s popular and dramatic creations, her efforts received mixed reviews. One critic, Bell’s sister Virgina Woolf, wrote of a particular outfit: “What colours you are responsible for! Karin [Stephens]‘s clothes almost wrenched my eyes from the sockets – a skirt barred with reds and yellow of the vilest kind, an a pea green blouse on top, with a gaudy handkerchief on her head, supposed to be the very boldest taste” (2). Despite her strong reaction to one of her sister’s designs, Woolf remained a patron of the Omega and the unique clothing that Bell so passionately produced.

Bell, Vanessa. White, 1913. Printed linen, 85 x 79.5 cm. Accession number T.242-1931 at the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Bell, Vanessa. Pamela, 1913. Printed linen, 40.5 x 19.7 cm. Accession number T.238-1931 at the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Until 1917, Vanessa Bell managed all dressmaking and fashion accessories activities, and some cite the moderate success of the Omega to Bell’s clever and enthusiastic marketing. By 1916, select patrons had repeatedly returned to purchase the Omega’s imaginative hats and clothing, but the Workshops’ dramatic designs and prints had continually failed to resonate with a wider audience. Despite Bell’s efforts, she could not establish a strong public demand for the Omega’s fashions, through they remained a staple of those familiar with the Bloomsbury group. After a period of decline, the Omega workshops closed by summer 1919.

Gill, Winifred. Two sketches of a sleeveless tunic or waistcoat made of Omega printed linen. Pen on letter paper, 180 x 90 mm. The Bodleian Library, Oxford. Found in Source 3.

Like all of the Omega’s designs, this tunic designed by Winifred Gill is both functional and expressive, a fusion of art and fashion. Other designs commissioned by friends of the Omega include kimono-style cloaks, colorful silk stoles, waistcoats, and color-blocked swim suits.

Nina Hamnett and Winifred Gill, photographed in The Illustrated London Herald, October 24, 1915. The British Library. Found in Source 3.

In this press photograph, “Hamnett wears a cloak, which combines the fashionable shape of the kimono with a bold hand-painted design of abstracted sunflowers. Gill wears a waistcoat, also with sunflowers, over a printed blouse and a striped skirt” (3).

The Omega Workshops. Cracow, 1913. Jacquard-woven and block-printed wool and linen waistcoat, 46 x 46 x 6 cm. Accession number CIRC.1-1963 at the Victoria and Albert Museum.

This waistcoat, possibly designed by Joy Brown out of “Cracow” furnishing fabric, is a rare extant example of the clothing designed by The Omega Workshops.

Fry, Roger. Still Life with T’ang Horse, 1919-21. Oil paint on canvas, 356 x 457 mm. Accession number T01780 at the Tate Britain.

After the Omega’s closure, Roger Fry and other Omega artists continued their creative pursuits. In some artworks produced after 1919, like Fry’s Still Life with a T’ang Horse, elements of supposed nostalgia appear within the paint strokes. According to the Tate, the black vase, the paper flower, and the panel of handpainted paper were all made at the Omega Workshops.

Footnotes:

1. Collins, Judith. The Omega Workshops (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 1.

2. Sheehan, Elizabeth. “Dressmaking at the Omega: Experiments in Art and Fashion”  in Beyond Bloomsbury: Designs of the Omega Workshops 1913 – 1919. ed. Alexandra Gerstein (London: Fontanka, c2009), 54.

3. Ibed, 56.

Additional Resources:

Anscombe, Isabelle. Omega and After: Bloomsbury and the Decorative Arts. London: Thames & Hudson, c1981.

Collins, Judith. The Omega Workshops, 1913 – 19: Decorative Arts of Bloombury: Craft Council Gallery, 18 January – 18 March 1984: a Craft Council Exhbition. London: The Council, c1983.

It’s almost time for the Fashion and Textile Studies annual symposium. This year the relationship between fashion and the industrial revolution will be examined in thirteen  fascinating papers. I will be talking about the evolution of department stores in the greatest city on earth- New York.

Please join us if you can, coffee and snacks on us!

By Cary O’Dell

Almost as frequently as the fashion fleet rings the death knell for the couture, various writers and bloggers also chime in with another bit of fashion “news.”  Namely that fashion trends are now a thing of the past.

In late 2012, the UK’s “Daily Mail” ran an article titled “And the biggest fashion trend of 2013 will be… No trends at all! Industry experts predict style for the year ahead” while Australia’s “Daily News” reported, “Fashion trends look like no trends at all.”  America isn’t immune either.  In August of last year, the “New York Times” ran the story “Freedom of Choice:  In Fashion, Are Trends Passe?”

Additionally, for years, in its entry on “Fashion,” the “World Book” encyclopedia, after recapping the predominate styles of prior decades (shoulder pads for the 1940s, bell-bottoms for the ‘70s, etc.), have pronounced that “contemporary” fashion is in a perpetual state of “do you own thing.”

So is it true?  Are fashion trends off trend now?  If it is, then we have fully entered into a brave new world of post-fashion fashion:  dressing without key, popular elements which each season easily designates us as “fashionable.”

What does this no-mode fashion world look like?  It would appear to be hundreds of designers, thousands of looks of beautiful, well-made clothes but no central theme or themes to anchor them around.  A stunning, creative and potentially overwhelming cacophony of styles that might border on schizophrenia for both the industry and the consumer.

In an post-trend world, it will only be designers with a truly trademark style (Chanel comes to mind) that will convey one’s fashion savvy.  Trend-less fashion will also, no doubt, bring about the revenge of conspicuous label, wearing pieces that proudly scream, by name, Versace! or Lauren!

Certainly, to some extent, the decline of trends is true.  Though there are certain “macro trends” that we all adhere to–after all, we are not all walking around in hoop skirts and Nehru jackets–

the days of dictatorial fashion (when Dior’s changing hemlines and skirt widths kept a generation of women continuingly updating their wardrobes) are over.  And sometimes the designating of true trends is not easy to suss out with the process not aided with a few too many beautiful but unfocused photo stories in even the most prestigious of fashion bibles.  Also not helping is the spreading out, but ultimate diffusion of, fashion news resources thanks to everything from the internet to the home shopping channels.  (The latter who love to have their hosts blather on about all sorts of alleged trends from “the New York runways,” all the better way to shill poorly-made pant suits.)  Recently as well, some major retailers—H&M, Forever 21, among others—are stepping up their role in the trend-setting aspect of contemporary fashion.  As detailed in Elizabeth L. Cline’s book “Overdressed:  The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion,” big retail chains work fast to flood their stores with particular styles thereby creating in the mind of their customers a current existing mode.  With alarming quickness, these same stores yank their floor inventory and replace it with a new fleet of looks (pseudo-trends? Micro-trends?), giving consumers an excuse to shop and buy more.  It some ways, it’s very good business; stores are now setting trends, not just following them.

But, this said, real, smaller but still notable trends do emerge and take a hold within fashion and within the culture.  The resurrection of the omnipresent peplum as one of fashion’s most dominant recent style accents is proof of a trend’s emerging and enduring power.

By its very definition, fashion is about trends; one is either in or out of fashion.

That trends emerge at all in any sort of organic way is always a minor miracle.  With over 200 shows during New York Fashion Week alone, editors and observers have to deal not only with a sensory overload but also a cacophony of styles and statements.  Still it is the job of the fashion press to distill what they see and to pluck out the season’s most prevalent and “correct” looking looks.  Thankfully, with the wide palette available before them—and even with such rampant individualism and creativity on display—there can still be found enough commonalities to achieve a quorum, a few key colors, patterns, silhouettes, or historical resurrections to hang our fashionable hat upon.

Dress by Alice + Olivia.

I have long thought that fashion is only peripherally about making one look beautiful or glamorous.  Fashion’s role, rather, is to make you look exceedingly, strikingly of the moment, conveying, if only for a instant or two, that the wearer is socially savvy, cosmopolitan, and cosmically in-the-know.  That is the power of fashion.  And that power can only be communicated via constantly shifting fashion trends; beauty ideals don’t change fast enough for that.

Furthermore, trends, organic or manufactured, will continue to define fashion if only due to the extraordinary need within the framework of the industry (i.e. the dollars, the financial bottom line).  The goal of fashion has always been to make you out of fashion.  Like the Forever 21 business model described above, the business of fashion cannot survive without, frankly, people buying far more clothes than they need and fashion’s season by season constantly shifting styles is what greases the wheels of this important cycle.

Despite the negative press, fashion trends will endure as we seek out ways to dress to simultaneously stand out and belong and as long as the fashion industry wants to stay in the red.  And you can bet your black-and-white peplum on that.

With a turned leg, a pair of trousers displays the athletic curves of a calf. The garment, a tribute to fine tailoring, was constructed from broadcloth, a rich fabric that retains its shape despite its age. Though sedate and small, this pair of trousers defines the dandy at  Artist/Rebel/Dandy at the RISD Museum.

From alexaadams.blogspot.com

An initial, towering image of George “Beau” Brummell reminds visitors of his unforgettable presence in the 1800s. Brummell, with both a tall stature and the grandest of personalities, rose through social ranks with the help of daring, innovative fashions, and his tenuous standing within society was founded on fashion’s vacillating fascination with novelty and singularity. Though his life was both recorded and ridiculed by his contemporaries, Brummell’s highly constructed image became the foundation for all men seeking sartorial individuality and expression.

Brummell’s impact on fashionable society is best understood while reading the critiques of those outside his social circle. Many portrayed Brummell and other dandies as effeminate and foppish, but critics were clearly fascinated by their looks and lifestyle. The words of these critics share exhibit space with the words and effects of notable dandies including Oscar Wilde, Mark Twain, Andy Warhol, and Max Beerbohm. As with Brummell, critics admired and chided these men for their attentiveness to dress and their uninhibited lifestyles; lifestyles that occasionally led to exile and penury.

From risdmuseum.org

Amidst the stripes and checks and the names of famous designers, the exhibit unfolds not chronologically but thematically, while exploring various interpretations of dandyism through the 19^th century to the present day. Punk jerseys are in proximity to letterman jackets, while Fred Astaire’s white bow tie is only yards from recent works of Sruli Recht. This collection of suiting and accessories exemplifies the romanticism, the historicism, and the impetuous innovation of dandies throughout time. Artist/Rebel/Dandy affirms the admirable role of creatives who continue to secure a place for individual expression within menswear.

From risd.edu

“Dandyism isn’t image encrusted with flowers. It’s a way of stripping yourself down to your true self. You can only judge the style by the content and you can only reach the content through the style.”
– Sebastian Horsley

From risdmuseum.org

So rarely do we see an exhibit devoted to the development of menswear, one that so thoughtfully presents each collar, button, and the magnetic personalities that carefully chose them.  Artist/Rebel/Dandy is on view in the Chace Center Galleries at the Museum of Art Rhode Island School of Design until August 18, 2013.

RISD Museum
20 N Main St
Providence, RI 02903
Phone: (401) 454 6500

Hours
Tuesdays through Sundays, 10 am–5 pm
Thursdays, 10 am–9 pm

The punk aesthetic has always solicited strong reactions, for it seems that the music, the fashion and the lifestyle thrive only in moments of internal or external adversity. The latest exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art has incited cries of both praise and protest, and it is these conflicting reviews that hint at the possible success of PUNK: Chaos and Couture.

D.I.Y.: Graffiti & Agitprop. Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

It is worth noting that this exhibit not about the history of punk. It is not about the fascinating individuals behind the movement, it is not about the music, and it is not about how punk impacted society. This is a fashion retrospective, one that primarily illustrates how the punk movement inspired haute couture. The exhibit documents the elevated use of safety pins and of found material, as it illustrates the mimicry that will always exist in the fashion world. What is surprising is the beauty that the punk movement inspired – multiple decades of creation inspired by destruction.

D.I.Y.: Hardware. Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Viewed at the right pace, PUNK: Chaos to Couture, fades into the memory as a brief, pulsating music video – predominately black and white, with spatters of neon color and a blurred, creative focus on calculated carelessness.  From the music to the facsimile of CBGB’s restroom (at its height of sordidness), sound and texture are an integral part of the exhibit. Walls of draped vinyl play the supporting role to many of the designs sold in Sex and Seditionaries at 400 Kinds Road. With names like Brutal, Rape, and Sperm, the tee shirts are a strong reminder that the punk aesthetic was not always a welcome addition to the runway. As the grainy video violently changes, images whip across the screen, diverting attention from some modern interpretations of punk design by Balmain, Burberry, Wantanabe, and others. These sweaters and jackets in decorated plaids and uneven stripes have risen to couture standards with careful tailoring and fine fabrics; these haute couture garments are a successful combination of elements of punk fashion and the creativity that is found in the learned craft of clothing construction.

Facsimile of CBGB bathroom, New York, 1975. Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The use of high contrasts continues into the second space, a temporary temple to studs, chains, and asymmetry. The hall is mock-grand, with pillars and enclaves carved from Styrofoam, and etched with pseudo-graffiti that exposes the fragility of the design. In this room, Versace’s golden safety pins and Givenchy’s cashmere and studs replace the rips and tears of original punk fashion. Rebellion is again contained in couture finishing techniques and the loveliest of leather. This coupling of punk references with more successful elements of formalized fashion design is the dichotomy that provides the aesthetic with a lasting appeal.

D.I.Y.: Bricolage. Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Over time, studs, chains, pseudo-bondage have evolved to become a harmless representation of anger – a rebellion packaged as sexy and dangerous with a hint of forbidden passion. These clothes allow others to play a role and to safely express emotions that can be shed as easily as a coat or unzipped as easily as a dress. Designers have captured the creativity of the punk music; they have removed the wrath, but have left a sprinkling of seduction and rebellion in the form of a raw edge or possibly indecent show of skin. Fashion is a pivotal part of the performance!

In the next gallery, white Styrofoam changes to shining, molded plastic walls – the backdrop for recycled fashion or bricolage. By far the best display of creative work, this collection of D.I.Y. artworks includes pieces by Maison M. Margiela, Alexander McQueen, Comme de Garcons and other designers who have transformed broken porcelain, plastic bags, pearls, paper mache and paper into truly interesting and sensuous works of art. One has to actively resist touching the materials of these pieces – just listen to the ever watchful guard! Most notable is Margiela’s minimalistic bodysuit constructed from a white shopping bag, with handles lying close to the chest like two, hard plastic pendants. The elegance of this bodysuit, the pearl vest, and the porcelain necklace seem to be an incongruous extension of the many of Vivienne Westwood’s and Malcolm McLaren’s ideas; while their inclusion in the show is questionable, it is appreciated.

The exhibit ends with a collection of painted garments and a mangled mass of useless, extra sleeves. Comme de Garcons’ elegant statement pieces are lost among the paint splatters and politically charged slogans, confirming that this setting may not be the best stage for Kawakubo’s work, which usually has a more powerful presence. Throughout the exhibit, the most effective pieces are the subtle reinterpretations, the minimalistic designs that provides a brief respite from the rapid pace of the music and the strobe-like, large-scale videos.

D.I.Y.: Destroy. Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

PUNK: Chaos and Couture celebrates rebellious fashion, embracing an anthem of “no future” in one of the finest and historic art institutions in the world. It is this tension between tradition and rebellion that makes many of the garments on view interesting. These garments are not pure punk, but instead are subtle jabs at the industry – a poke of a safety pin, perhaps. Or maybe a brush against a metal stud.

By Cary O’Dell

Carmen Dell’Orefice (or simply Carmen, as she is often billed) is a glorious, living contradiction.  She earns her living as a fashion model; she is 80 years old.

Her very existence defies logic, or at least assumptions.  With the possible exception of a 70-year old football player (which, so far, doesn’t exist) or a 7-foot tall jockey (also not yet in existence), nothing else is more of an anomaly.

According to popular thought, fashion models are supposed to have the life spans of Mayflys.  Women in the field are, supposedly, destined to be “over” by the age of 21, 25 at the most.  But anyone who still thinks that hasn’t been paying attention.  Kate Moss is almost 40 and is still working; Naomi Campbell is 42.  Other mannequins are also defying the age stereotype:  Christy Turlington, Lisa Taylor, Lauren Hutton and China Machado.

But Carmen predates them all, and brings with every one of her appearances half the history of American fashion.

She began gracing magazine covers, advertisements and catwalks when she was 15 years old in 1946.  She scored her first cover of “Vogue” a year later, in October of 1947.  She was part of the original group of supermodels–along with Lisa Fonssagrives, Dorian Leigh and Dovima—that existed before the uber term was even coined.

From behind the lens she has been photographed by a who’s who of history’s greatest photographers Irving Penn, Avedon, Scavullo, Cecil Beaton, Horst, Melvin Sokolsy, and Erwin Blumenfield.  Many of her images are now fashion touchstones, images transformed into icons.

She began being celebrated as fashion’s “older” model when she fully reentered the industry in her 40s.  And that was over 40 years ago.

Yet despite several high-profile, well-chosen print appearances in advertisements for Isaac Mizrahi and a gorgeous campaign for Rolex, and some celebrated runway appearances, the world doesn’t see enough of Carmen.

Not only does she look as good as any 20 year-old working today, she’s an inspiration.  She’s a living, breathing (and well-spoken) advocate against not only ageism in fashion but ageism in any field, in society at large.  Think of the message that could be sent if one of the major fashion bibles (“Vogue,” “Harper’s Bazaar,” et.al.) were to return Carmen, today, to one of their covers.  Along with a reeling rash of positive publicity, it would upend innumerable criticism and assumptions held by the fashion flock, fashion onlookers and fashion criticizers.

But it is more than just good will that should compel brands and publications to incorporate Carmen more.  It’s also good business.  After all, it’s not just 21 year-old girls who buy clothes and cosmetics.  Real adult women could greatly benefit—and respond—to the images of other real adult women looking back at them from the magazine page or from the television screen, visual proof that these clothes, these accessories are wearable to a “mature” woman, not just a high-schooler.  According to the latest US Census the median age for the US population is the highest it’s ever been and will only rise further as the Baby Boomers continue to exit middle age for their so-called “senior” years.  Carmen, and other over 40, over 50 models, can serve as role model and inspiration, in short, the very role we’ve always wanted fashion models to be.

Carmen is already listed in the “Guinness Book of World Records” as the world’s oldest working model.  She was also in the news a few years ago when it was revealed she was among Bernard Madoff’s many victims.  So, along with everything else, she’s a survivor.  Yet another way her visage and her image could be used to excite and influence.

Carmen will be turning 81 on June 3^rd.  Thankfully, she shows no sign of retiring any time soon.  In fact, I think she’s just getting started.

By Cary O’Dell

Next to “wearable” and “practical,” her name might be the two most controversial words in fashion today.  When it is spoken—if it is spoke at all—it’s often whispered.  Such is the still lingering pall over her.

Her.

Grace Mirabella.

From the day she was named the controversial successor to Diana Vreeland as editor in chief of Vogue in 1971 until her departure from the magazine in 1988 (to make room for Anna Wintour), through the lifespan of her eponymous monthly “Mirabella” to her current life, Grace Mirabella has often inspired a certain amount of disrespect.

Grace Mirabella in an undated photo

Andy Warhol called her “middle class.”  Vreeland was once alleged to have dismissed her as “the secretary.”  And her era at the helm of the fashion bible is sometimes today degradedly referred to as “the beige years,” named for the middle-of-the-road color of paint applied over the shocking colors that once adorned Vreeland’s office after Vreeland vacated.  (There is actually some controversy whose idea the beige was—Mirabella’s or someone at Conde Naste’s.  But, regardless, no one ever seems to mention the color of Anna Wintour’s work walls.)

Mirabella’s controversial memoir, In and Out of Vogue, Doubleday, 1995 (Courtesy Doubleday)

Granted, some of the Mirabella backlash has been brought on by the lady herself.  In her very informative, entertaining 1995 memoir, the aptly titled In and Out of Vogue, Mirabella doesn’t hold back.  Within its pages, she has some very blunt and not so kind things to say about Anna Wintor, Polly Mellen, Christian Lacroix and others.  Perhaps as bad, Mirabella dared to not worship at the Cult of Diana.  Not that she says anything negative about the incomparable Vreeland, only that the Vreeland Mirabella presents in her book is focused on the woman and not the image Vreeland carefully crafted around herself.  Actually, if anything, Mirabella’s recollections about her former boss/predecessor are the probably the most fascinating remembrances of the great fashion doyenne ever put down.  That Mirabella was excluded from the recent Vreeland-related work “The Eye Must Travel” is probably that book and film’s most egregious short-falling.

But, as tough as she might be on other, Mirabella is equally candid about herself.  She bemoans her own occasional passiveness and her life-long reluctance to play the fashion game.  She also bravely charts the moment she knew that her idea of fashion was no longer in keeping with the culture.  After witnessing a 1980s Met gala where all the women were outfitted in outrageous Lacroix confections, Mirabella observed:

 [O]ften they were tortured:  their crinolines didn’t permit them to sit down and they had to turn sideways to fit through doorways.  When I saw this, and the glee with which so many women swallowed it up, I realized that it wasn’t Lacroix, it was I who was falling out of step with them.

Throughout her career, Mirabella was never the archetypical fashionista.  She was never a size zero.  And even Vreeland, her one-time mentor, considered her too “approachable,” not possessing of the regal air that both DV and Anna Wintour either possessed or carefully cultivated.  Furthermore, Mirabella hailed from New Jersey, not the exotic locales that other up-and-coming editors either came from or, in the case of Vreeland, pretended to come from.  She was the daughter of two working class parents, not a debutante.  She worked her way up the ranks in fashion and at Vogue, slow and steady, gaining respect for her diligence and common sense.  Probably only in fashion can someone’s solid work ethic and practical nature be held against them.

Cover from Grace Mirabella’s tenure at Vogue (Courtesy Conde Nast)

When Mirabella was named editor in chief of Vogue in 1971, after the firing of Diana Vreeland (who had been in the magazine’s driver’s seat since 1963), she was not only attempting to fill a pair of larger than life shoes, she was also about to embark, with the book, into a challenging new epoch, perhaps one of the toughest eras ever for fashion.

By the dawn of the 1970s, the “ladies who lunched” were giving way to women entering the workforce.  The rise of second-wave feminism (temporarily?) marked fashion as the enemy.  If bras weren’t necessarily being burned, then surely most of the Vreeland-sanctioned fantasies that “Vogue” had been showcasing up to that time were being rapidly discarded.  Fashion was at a crossroads.

Mirabella bravely took on the challenge and broadened the magazine’s focus, introducing more text into the publication and elevating its overall content.  She ran stories on women’s health, politics, the then pending ERA and other topical issues.

Cover from Grace Mirabella’s tenure at Vogue (Courtesy Conde Nast)

But fashion was not excluded.  Mirabella just strongly believed in an easier more effortless (and dare we say it?) American type of style.  Under her tutelage, “Vogue,” along with continuing to celebrate the work of YSL and Ungaro and other masters, also became an early advocate of Halston, Ralph Lauren, Calvin Klein and, early in his career, Isaac Mizrahi.

Mirabella’s Vogue also helped to redefined (or revived) the American beauty standard by giving steady exposure to a host of American-bred beauties like Lauren Hutton, Karen Graham, Patti Hansen, and Lisa Taylor.  It was also during her tenure that “Vogue” placed its first woman of color on its cover; model Beverly Johnson became that inaugural cover girl with the August 1974 issue.

If some of the fashion-flock objected to Mirabella’s evolution of the magazine, consumers didn’t.  During her almost two decades in the editor’s office, circulation of the magazine rose from 400,000 to 1.2 million.  Hence, when Wintour took over in 1988, she inherited a very healthy vessel.

Meanwhile, the changes Mirabella imposed in fashion journalism have remained.  No fashion monthly today limits itself to just clothes coverage.  They assume—rightfully—that their readers are interested in fashion AND the world around them.

Mirabella magazine, debut issue, June 1989 (Diandra Douglas in extreme close-up) (Courtesy News Corp.)

I won’t go so far as to say that fashion would have died if Mirabella hadn’t come along when she did.  But I do wonder if Vogue would have survived the 1970’s without her.  And, yet, today, despite her powerful Vogue legacy and the subsequent artistic and philosophical success, if not long term financial success, of her own Mirabella magazine, which was on stands from 1989 to 2000, Grace Mirabella’s contributions to fashion seem regularly ignored or dismissed by many.  She is not seen on the red carpet of the Met’s annual fundraiser.  She has yet to be feted by the CFDA, though other lesser luminaries have already been honored.  And, as mentioned before, she has been largely excluded from any Vreeland retrospectives or tributes, though few knew Vreeland better or worked with her longer.  And except for a February 2012 fete hosted at The Mark in New York in her honor (attended by Isabella Rossellini, Carmen Dell’Orefice, Mary McFadden, Vera Wang, and others), few other appropriate tributes truly celebrating the revolutionary now 83 year-old former editor or her contributions to fashion.  Perhaps too many contemporary fashion power brokers are not aware of Mirabella’s mighty influence or are too scared to potentially vex Anna Wintour, the woman who poached Mirabella’s “Vogue” perch back in 1988, to pay proper homage.

In any event, regardless of multiple career accolades or none, even in the mercurial world of fashion, Grace Mirabella’s influence as a style arbiter and magazine visionary will be felt for decades to come, if not in perpetuity.  We are still very much operating and existing within Grace’s world, whether we choose to acknowledge her by name or not.

This is a two parts post,  presented first in May 2013 at the our annual symposium.

In 1835, the wealthy merchant Seabury Tredwell bought the house on 29 East Fourth Street in New York City. “The elegance and beauty of this section cannot be surpassed in the country,” said the Morning Herald of the neighborhood. Indeed, the wealthiest and most fashionable families in the city chose the Bond Street area as their place of residence, away from Lower Manhattan’s congested streets.

However, in just a few years, Tredwell’s once fashionable residential address found itself in the heart of another commercial center, with hotels, theaters, stores and restaurants surrounding it on all sides. New York City’s former mayor, Philip Hone, lived not far from the Tredwells. In 1850 he noted in his dairy that “The mania for converting Broadway into a street of shops is greater than ever.”

Bond Street, 1857
http://merchantshouse.org

29 East Fourth Street
The Merchant’s House Museum

Between the 1850s and the turn of the century, the industrialization of America made many Americans money more quickly than they could spend it.  In New York, the architects McKim, Meade and White erected magnificent palaces along Fifth Avenue for those who wished to display this wealth. Commerce chased wealth and fashionable residential neighborhoods kept one step ahead of commercial centers in a steady northern migration up the island of Manhattan.

Beginning near Bond Street, commercial palaces were built to replace the residential ones. Eventually, the northern march of commerce reached Union Square. One of the stores to follow this path was Lord and Taylor.  On Monday, November 28^th, 1870 the new Lord & Taylor department store at 901 Broadway, opened its doors. 10,000 costumers were said to use its elevator in the first three days of operation. The steam elevator, still a novelty in New York City at this time, enabled shoppers to arrive at ease on higher floors, where thanks to the advent of industrialization, more and more merchandise waited for their heart’s content.

The steam elevator at the new Lord & Taylor store on opening day, November 28th, 1870.

This highly ornate cast-iron, five-story palace, joined other downtown businesses that sought to establish themselves among the smart set, like Tiffany and Company and the downtown dry goods store Arnold Constable. The  New York Times described the building as honest, “proclaiming itself to be iron at first glance. Its wealth of filigree acknowledges with all honesty what it is made of and could not have been in stone for millions. The decoration is sparse, though airy and graceful, and merits more than anything else the appellation of iron lace-work.” By not attempting to imitate the appearance of stone, like some other stores, Lord & Taylor’s new cast-iron façade communicated both innovation and modernization.

Lord and Taylor at Broadway and Twentieth Street, 1870-1904. Special Collections and FIT Archives

Lord & Taylor’s history begins in the early decades of the Nineteenth Century. In 1826, with a $1,000 loan from his wife’s uncle, the English immigrant, Samuel Lord opened a dry goods store at 47 Catherine Street. In those days, Lower Manhattan was the center of New York City, and Catherine Street its hub for shopping and socializing. Just a few years earlier, across the street on the corner of Cherry, Henry Sands Brooks opened his men’s clothing store, named at first H. & D.H. Brooks & Co., and later simply Brooks Brothers. Not far from there, on Chambers Street, the twenty two years old Alexander T. Stewart opened his dry goods store in 1823. It would later become one of the most successful department stores in New York.

The Catherine Slips, early 1830s.
Special Collections and FIT Archives.

Catherine Street was ideal for commerce because of its proximity to the Catherine Slip and the Brooklyn horse ferry. By the time Lord & Taylor opened their doors, the bustling Catherine Street was already lined with “furniture shops, shoes shops, tin shops, cloak shops, meat shops, bread shops, candy shops, crockery shops, pawn-brokers shops, sugar shops, hat shops, dry-goods shops, groceries and markets.” These stores hired “pullers-in,” young, tenacious men who aggressively hustled costumers in.

To distance themselves from the market mentality of the street, Lord  &Taylor had a strict no “pullers in” policy. In addition, prices were not negotiable. In two decades this practice would become a standard for department stores around the world, but in the 1820s and 30s it was quite an innovation.

Catherine Market, 1850.
NYPL Digital Gallery.

Lord & Taylor Sales Slip, 1838.
The History of Lord & Taylor, 1826-1926.

Lord & Taylor was almost an instant success. In the next few years it grew rapidly, first expanding to the adjoining building on 49 Catherine Street, and later moving into a four story building down the street, where shelves were full to capacity with bolts of English fabrics for women’s dresses, and with blankets and linens.

The fast growing population forced the city residential areas to expand north,  a trend that must have been felt by Samuel Lord, who, while still on Catherine Street, purchased a coal yard at the corner of Grand and Chrystie Streets. In 1853 he opened the new Lord & Taylor on that site. The building featured the first large glass-domed central rotunda in the city, an innovation that flooded the shopping floor with natural light. Lord & Taylor were among the first dry goods stores to sense not only that the fashionable crowd had started moving uptown, but also that it was looking for a new kind of shopping experience.

Lord and Taylor store at Grand and Chrystie Streets, opened 1853.
The History of Lord & Taylor, 1826-1926.

Lord and Taylor ‘s second location on Grand Street, corner of Broadway,1860-1874.
Special Collections and FIT Archives.

The great world fairs, such as London’s Great Exhibition at the Crystal Palace in 1851, and the New York Crystal Palace in 1853,  were the stimulus, if not the inspiration, for the growth of dry goods stores into department stores. The display of quantities of goods in a large well- lighted space, in addition to the high ceilings and architecture of iron and glass, simulated the experience of the world fairs, with the advantage of being able to actually purchase the goods.

In addition, urbanization, mass transportation, and mass production were key factors to the development of department stores. The Industrial Revolution enabled all of these factors to exist at the same time, reaching a new peak in the mid-nineteenth century.  In New York, A.T. Stewart was the most innovative of the bunch, erecting in 1846 a six story marble building on Broadway at the north side of City Hall Park. The “Marble Palace,” as it was called by New Yorkers, featured plated- glass windows along its façade and was hailed by the Tribune as “a real sensation.” Carriages, transporting costumers to and from the store, lined the street, most likely contributing to the already chaotic traffic on Broadway.

A.T. Stewart’s Marble Palace, 1851.
The New York Historical Society.
v

Further uptown, at Grand Street, Lord & Taylor also enjoyed the “carriage trade,” as evident from the following advertisement, from August 2, 1854:

SPECIAL NOTICE TO THE LADIES- The paving of Grand Street with Belgian pavement is now completed from Broadway as far as the store of the undersigned, and Ladies who have been prevented during the last three months from reaching our store in carriages, are informed that the interruption is now removed.

Afternoon dress, ca. 1850-55.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

How hard it must have been to board and descend these carriages in the fashions of the 1850s,  when several layers of stiff petticoats and a horsehair crinoline were necessary to achieve the fashionable full skirts, reaching sometimes seven yards in circumference.

The Lord & Taylor advertisement shows us not only that Grand Street has become an important commercial area but also that retailers were targeting women shoppers in particular. A.T. Stewart, for example, employed handsome young clerks to “please the ladies.” Spaces like the “Ladies’ Parlor” on  the second floor where shoppers could study their appearance in full-length mirrors, offered  ideal environment for women to leisurely shop and socialize.

Afternoon dress, ca. 1855.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Afternoon dress, ca. 1850-55.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

That shopping became an important social status is evident from a poem written in 1857, titled “Nothing to Wear”:

Nothing to wear! Now as this is a true ditty,

I do not assert- this, you know, is between us-

That she’s in a state of absolute nudity

Like Powers’ Greek Slave or the Medici Venus;

But I do mean to say I’ve heard her declare,

When at the same moment, she had on a dress

Which cost five hundred dollars and not a cent less,

And jewelry worth ten times more I should guess,

That she had not a thing in the wide world to wear!

 Referring to a young lady of Madison Square, this poem illustrates that wealthy New Yorkers had become obsessed with shopping for luxury goods. One’s clothing, house, furniture and leisure activities determined her social standing. In addition, promenading had also become a symbol of wealth and status. As James Fenimore Cooper noted in a letter to his wife in 1850, New York City is “a great arena for women to show off their fine fathers in.“ The industrial revolution provided not only more wealth to more families, but also cheap immigrant labor, which in turn freed mother and daughters to spend more time outside the home in leisure activities.

Broadway, 1868.
Harper’s Weekly, February 15, 1868.

Madison Square, 1889.
Harper’s Weekly, November 23, 1889.

Please come back next week for part two of this post in which I will continue to explore how department stores in New York evolved during the Nineteenth Century to the fashion emporiums they are today.

This is part two of a paper I presented last May at our annual symposium. You can read the first part here.

Christmas Shopping on Grand Street, 1890. Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper.

By the late 1850s the Grand Street area was established as the new shopping district, but society had already moved north to live.  Nathaniel P. Willis, editor of The Home Journal, described the smart set as those “who keep carriages, live above Bleecker Street, are subscribers to the opera, go to Grace Church, have a town house and country house, [and] give balls and parties.”

Grace Church, c. 1890.
NYPL Digital Gallery.

A.T. Stewart, always ahead of the game, moved his store in 1862 into a cast iron palace on Broadway between Ninth and Tenth Streets.  Fully embracing the industrial age, A.T. Stewart bid farewell not only to lower Manhattan, but also to the marble of his former palace. Outside, cast iron formed an elaborate and fashionable façade while inside cast iron columns supported the building, enabling open spaces to become the distinctive department store architecture. The large open interiors, washed with natural light from the great glass dome, embodied the new style of consumption— drawing in crowds of shoppers who were free to leisurely study the vast array of local and imported merchandise.

A.T. Stewart’s store at the corner of Broadway and Tenth Street, C. 1869. The New York Historical Society.

A.T. Stewart’s eight floors fashion emporium employed over 2,000 men and women. One visitor observed that this immense establishment was arranged as follows:

There is one general superintendant, with nineteen assistants, each of whom is the head of a department. Nine cashiers receive and pay out money, twenty- five book keepers keep the record of the day; thirty ushers direct purchasers to the department they seek; two hundred cash boys receive the money and bring back the change of purchases; four hundred and seventy clerks, a few of whom are females, make the sales of the day; fifty porters do the heavy work and nine hundred seamstresses are employed in the manufacturing department. Besides these, there are usually about five hundred other persons employed about the establishment in various capacities… 

This account demonstrates that the traditional dry goods store has fully bloomed into a department store, providing employment to many and a substantial income to some.

The Sewing Room at A.T. Stewart’s, 1875.
Frank Leslie’s.

The 1860s gave birth to New York’s most famous shopping district—the “Ladies Mile”. Historians define the Ladies Mile as a stretch of blocks from Fourteenth to Twenty Third Streets along Broadway and Sixth Avenue and later up Fifth Avenue. As the city’s elite society started another migration northward, now residing around Union and Madison Squares, store owners felt compelled to follow.

Twenty Third Street. 1885.
NYPL Digital Gallery.

Though A.T. Stewart remained successful in its Ninth Street location, most downtown establishments that made the move to Grand Street area in the 1850s, relocated further north to the Ladies Mile in the 1860s. The stores enjoyed a constant traffic of shoppers who were transported to the area in Carriages and public horse drawn trolleys from every direction- up and down Broadway and from the two rivers.

If boarding a carriage was challenging with the fashionable clothes of the 1850s, it must have been as hard, if not harder, when in the 1860s the horsehair crinoline gave way to a new invention. The cage crinoline, a petticoat of flexible steel hoops, invented in 1856, was mass produced in factories and sold ready-made in the department stores built of the same material. The light weight steel supported even the widest skirt, freeing women from the cumbersome weight of the petticoats, yet allowing skirts to achieve an even wider circumference. The increasing use of sewing machine, invented in the late 1840s, meant that elaborate trims were more easily applied to dresses. Decorations such as machine made lace, embroidery and ribbons were now more affordable, permitting even women of lesser income to participate in fashion.

Cage Crinoline, 1868.
Victoria & Albert Museum

“New Omnibus Regulation.”
Punch, 1858, NYPL Digital Gallery

The invention of the sewing machine is largely credited for propelling the dry goods trade along Ladies Mile, not only for its ability to increase production, but also because it became available for domestic use. Union Square and the surrounding area of Ladies Mile was also becoming a center for the selling and promoting of domestic sewing machines. The most famous was the Domestic Sewing Machine building, where fashion shows displayed imported dress models from Europe. These models were later translated into paper patterns published and sold in the company’s Fashion Review magazine. The paper patterns would have been taken to a local dress-maker, several of them residing along the ladies mile, or cut and sewn at home.  The fabric, trims, undergarments and accessories to go with the dress would have been offered and religiously purchased at the new palaces of consumption- the grand department stores.

Two Piece Dress, c. 1859.
The Museum at FIT.

Building of the Domestic Sewing-Machine Company,
corner of Broadway and Fourteenth Street. 
Harper’s Weekly, 1872.

Although department store owners chased elite society, leaping from one district to another in an attempt to remain close to the trend setters, it is evident that by the 1860s the new commercial palaces catered no less to the rising middle classes.  Fashion, so it seems, was democratized by technological advances. The department store adopted several marketing methods to appeal to all classes, yet the newest of them all was the window display. For the nineteenth-century shopper, window displays created a sensation. Presenting the goods behind a glass window for the shoppers’ scrutinizing eyes, was in many ways an extension of the mind-set of the open space interior, which allowed visitors to roam the sales floor uninterrupted.  This new approach to shopping made luxury goods seem more accessible to more people. The German historian Uwe Spiekermann notes that “when gazing into the shop window, even a person with little income believed that the world was at his feet.”

Macy’s Christmas Window, 1884
Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper

As America entered the Gilded Age, the middle and upper classes’ appetite for consuming fashion grew even more.  Store owners who survived the panic of 1873 could not expand fast enough to appease this hunger. Barely surviving the economic downturn, Lord & Taylor recovered and continued growing, gradually adding more and more buildings along Nineteenth and Twentieth Streets, eventually taking up the whole block. But, by the turn of the century, society had set in motion yet another cycle of migration northward.

As Commerce came in place of elite residence, the once fashionable districts of Union and Madison Squares were abandoned for the new, more desirable neighborhoods, which lay above thirty second street up to the edge of Central Park. While American millionaires dwelled in private palaces along Fifth Avenue, the middle class had the department store. By the end of the decade most major Ladies Mile department stores adopted a new Fifth Avenue address which epitomized the luxury and wealth most associated with the Industrial revolution. For the masses visiting Lord & Taylor, B. Altman’s, Henri Bendel, and Arnold Constable among others who had found a new home here, the commercial palace became a symbol of potential social mobility, attained by the mass consumption of luxury goods.

---

 For selected bibliography see part I of this post

This fall season in NY is going to be an exciting one for those of us who love fashion.

Here is a list of some of the upcoming exhibitions, if you know of any other please post it to our facebook page. Thank you!

Gilded New York at the Museum of the City of New York

The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier: From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk at the Brooklyn Museum

Interwoven World: The Worldwide Textile Trade, 1500-1800 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

A Queer History of Fashion: From the Closet to the Catwalk at the Museum at FIT

running until mid-November and worth visiting RetroSpective at the Museum at FIT

Irving Penn: On Assignment at Pace/MacGill Gallery

And in the spring:

Charles James: Beyond Fashion at the newly renovated Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Over the summer, many of us traveled to participate in internships, present papers, and attend conferences. There is always something new to discover in our field, and some of our research led to online discoveries: new websites or updates to some of our favorite online resources.

Of course, we’d like to share our findings with you. On the right side of our page, we’ve added a few more links:

1. A digital archive of Les Modes, a fashion periodical (1902 – 1934)

By Cary O’dell

Such is the power and influence of Yves Saint Laurent that when he announced his retirement in early 2002 from his namesake fashion house, it was reported not only in the fashion press but via all aspects of the world media, from CNN to the Wall Street Journal to the New York Times.

Yves Saint Laurent

The retirement of Saint Laurent represented not only the stepping down of one of fashion’s great (greatest?) grand masters, it also represented a seismic change within the culture, one that we are only now, I think, are beginning to fully appreciate.

Saint Laurent, who died in 2008, was the last of his kind, the final purveyor of a particular but important type of fashion:  subdued, reserved, understated, and elegant above all.  His were the clothes—day and evening—that for years formed the uniforms for the Ladies Who Lunched.  And though these “ladies” are often mocked and derided for who they were/are and what they represent, it was their fashionable sensibilities (not to mention their bank accounts) which, for decades, kept fashion alive and afloat both in America and abroad.

After YSL’s stepping down in ’02, preceded by Givenchy’s and Bill Blass’s earlier exits, I began to wonder just who would now dress the lunching crowd?  With Saint Laurent’s end, it seemed fashion was absolutely no longer about proper gentlemen working in quiet workrooms.  Instead, it was now populated by a bunch of (in comparison) young turks, who were flashier, splashier and funkier.  And, try though they might, desperate though they might be, I did not see the elder ladies of fashion running off to the showrooms of Versace, Viktor & Rolf, Stella McCartney, or even Prada for their daily dress needs.  And though the houses of Givenchy, Chanel, and Balenciaga all endure, the clothes produced by their current lead designers are often far removed from the spare silhouettes and uber-classic stylings favored by their house founders.  For a time, at least, clients could turn to the work of Valentino but now, even that classicist has—as of 2007 -constructed his final garment.

Granted, fashion has always had a place for the eccentric designer, one has to think no further than Schiaparelli’s powerful influence during the 1930s to acknowledge that fact.  But these extreme witticisms were always tempered by a band of gifted cutters and tailors able to craft the most spectacular suits and eveningwear (think Dior) for even the most proper and socially-conscious of women.  Today, however, with the possible exception of the newly revitalized House of Dior and Vivienne Westwood when she feels like it, “safe” (yet stylish) labels are completely outnumbered, overtaken by the likes of The Row, D&G and Gaultier along with a lot of other radical visionaries.  Even the Met has gone avant-garde; this year’s annual Costume Gala was, as you probably heard, devoted to the Punk aesthetic.

PUNK: Chaos to Couture at Metropolitan Museum of Art (photo courtesy of the MMA)

But, never fear, we are not on the verge of rash of criminally under dressed society ladies.  If designers for this set no longer exist, that’s okay, for the “ladies who lunch” themselves, by and large, aren’t that much of the populace either.  Nan Kemper passed away in 2005.  Mrs. Astor in 2007.  Loulou De La Falaise in 2011.

Brooke Astor

This is not to say that all fashionable “women of a certain age” don’t still exist and don’t still need to be DRESSED.  It’s just that, nowadays, these women are different.  Today, the women who lunch look like Jane Fonda or Sophia Loren and have the bodies and mentality of Cher and Tina Turner.  Jane, Sophia and Tina are all grandmothers, as is Goldie Hawn and Jessica Lange.  Helen Mirren is a sex symbol at age 67.  And Betsey Johnson (always her best customer) is 70.  These women, and their kind, grew up wearing Westwood from Westwood’s punk phase and the color splashes of early Stephen Sprouse.  Later, they lapped up Lacroix.  Today, then, these women, even though in their “golden years,” they are not ready to wear cap sleeves and muted twin sets—nor would we want them to.

Helen Mirren (photo courtesy of FanPop.com)

Still, despite this shift in customer, it nevertheless behooves fashion to try to keep alive some of the grand traditions of some of the old masters not only as homage to a great fashion tradition, but also because it’s good business, something that no fashion house these days can afford to ignore.  After all, Nancy Kissinger is still with us and still needs clothes.  And even the most chi-chi and forward-thinking of 50-plus women don’t want to wear leggings and hoodies everyday.  And, hence, an important customer base awaits, as do their closets.

Designers should (and must) find a way to be fully grown up without being stuffy, to be dignified without being anything less than “modern.”  As mentioned, Dior, now in the hands of designer Raf Simons, has shown his ability to marry the most important edicts of the House with a great modernity.  And when she is indulging her vintage sensibilities rather than her punk tendencies, no one cuts a better, more dignified and stylish suit than Vivienne Westwood.  Finally, Chanel, as interpreted by Lagerfeld, can still be depended upon (most of the time) to bring us something classic and stylish and not overly outré. 

But these designers shouldn’t be the only ones.  Even if their numbers have dwindled, the “ladies who lunch” still cast a profound, influential shadow, one whose current state and needs fashion should embrace and learn from, not turn its back on.

Hagar Cygler with Hannah

I am very excited to share a conversation I had over email with Hagar Cygler, a talented, young, Israeli artist. Cygler recently published a book which started with a visit to the flea market; she was looking for photographs she could cut and experiment as preparation for a project she was working on. In the photographs she bought that day, a women kept showing up. Cygler was intrigued by this woman who captured her imagination and sent her on a detective-like chase. The result is a fascinating project that examines our hyper-documented present by looking at the past.

Keren Ben-Horin: Hello Hagar, congratulations on the new book. It must be very exciting.

Hagar Cygler: Hay Keren. It is very exciting. I have been waiting for this for a long time.

KBH: tell us a little bit about yourself. What is your background and what you do when you are not chasing anonymous women from the 1980s?

HC: Well, I live and work in Tel-Aviv, Israel. I earned my BA in photography from Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem, but as soon as I graduated I realized I am not going to be a photographer. I do have a studio where I mostly shoot for exhibition catalogs and for other artists. I use my studio for my art which, for the most part, is not photography. I do crafted work that almost always uses photographs as a starting point. Some of the photos are of my own family, or people would give them to me or I’ll scout flea markets. I’m also working on an archive for Batsheva Dance Company. It’s a fascinating project that allows me to continue and work with my favorite material- old photographs.

KBH: How did you get to Hana?

HC: I met her by chance. I was invited to be a part of the last ceramics biennale in the Eretz Israel museum in Tel-Aviv. I needed a large amount of photographs for the object I was making. I stopped by the flea market in Jaffa and bought a random pile of photo albums. When I started going through them I realized they belonged to the same family and I took out the photos I liked. At some point I started to see a repeating pattern of composition in some of the photos- these are the photos of Hannah standing at the hallway of her apartment and modeling a different outfit every time.

KBH: Tell us a bit about the blog

HC: Hannah’s photos looked so much like the fashion blogs I follow and I thought for sure, if she could, she would have had a blog like that. So I did it for her. I opened a blog called same place, same haircut, different outfit. Every day I posted a new picture.

KBH: You had 46 photos of Hannah in the same place and position. What happened after you posted all 46 pictures?

HC: The reaction was great, people got really excited and started asking questions about her I didn’t really know to answer. When all 46 pictures were uploaded I felt I had to continue with the project, it felt like this has to be a book.

KBH: Why a book?

HC: There’s something about the medium of blogs that feels temporary. We scroll through quickly to consume more and more. The huge amount of data is distracting and doesn’t let us really submerge in what we see. A book is more permanent, repetitive. It doesn’t constantly change like a blog and you can always go back and re-look at images. After I experimented with the blog, I felt Hannah needed a permanent platform because I didn’t have more photographs to update the blog regularly.

KBH: How were you able to get the rights for the photographs?

HC: I assumed that because I found the photographs at the flea market, most chances Hannah was no longer alive and I was looking for her children or relatives to release the rights. I was looking for clues in the photographs which led me to a building in Herzeliya. One thing led to another, I remembered places I saw in the photos and somehow I found myself in Hannah’s old building talking to her neighbor who told me everything about her.

KBH: What did you find about Hannah?

HC: Hannah was a loving, charming woman who was in love with her husband until the day she died. She loved kids but did not have children of her own. She always bought chocolates and gifts to all the kids in the neighborhood. She was very warm and sweet. Her love of fashion was nurtured even in her native country Hungary, before she immigrated to Israel in the 1960s. She loved to splurge on clothes. The neighbor introduced me to Hannah’s relatives who released the rights and also told me more about Hannah and her husband.

KBH: What was people’s reaction to Hannah’s photographs?

HC: There is something heartwarming and charming about Hannah, anyone who shows interest in the pictures ends up falling in love with her. One of the most common reactions is of disbelieve that people throw away photographs. It always stirs a conversation about how we retain memory and the way we handle different objects in our lives.

KBH: What do you mean?

HC: We tend to capture memory through objects: mementos from places we traveled to, diaries, endless number of photographs. Even people living in a minimalist space would still leave things behind when they are gone. The work I did for the ceramic biennale was based on the experience of having to throw away my grandparents’ belongings after they passed. We gave away what we could, but there were still things we had no choice but to trash. I couldn’t bring myself to throw away a pile of photographs that my grandfather had taken. They had no visual value, but the fact that he took these made them valuable, and for me that was where the memory endured. The gap between the image and the material as indicator of memory intrigued me and resulted in a series of ceramic photographs.

Cygler’s work at the Biennale for Israeli Ceramics. Photo : Leonid Padrul, © Eretz Israel Museum, Tel Aviv

KBH: Why do you think Hannah captured your imagination? What drew you to her personal history?

HC: Hannah is like sunshine on a rainy day. Every time I felt tired or depressed I looked at her pictures again and they made me happy. She is very authentic, not pretentious at all and she always makes me smile. At the beginning, I didn’t care much for her personal story. The research was really just to get the rights from the family. But after I learned about whom she was, it intensified all the emotions I had to begin with.

KBH: What can we draw from Hannah about how visuals are made and consumed today?

HC: Hannah’s photos are a fascinating mirror to the way we take pictures today. We feel that technological advances changed us. At the end of the day, we use the same tool to get to the same point. We shoot ourselves the same way, in the same places, and for the same purpose- to document a moment we want to remember. The fact that technology is faster and more accessible doesn’t change the way we pose in front of a camera, we still want to look our best.

KBH: What do you think changed in the 30 years since she took these pictures?

HC: In our culture everyone is taking pictures and sharing them instantly, we don’t have time to digest. The anticipation for the developed film, choosing which ones to print, putting pictures in an album, and giving out pictures to friends was a process that allowed us to scrutinize, to absorb. The culture has changed, it became more complicated. At the same time, Hannah’s life in retrospect might seem simpler but she is doing exactly what many other fashionable women are doing today.

KBH: Hannah’s husband is the silent, yet active partner, why do you think they took the photographs?

HC: That’s a great point of view. When I imagine the situation, I visualize Hana asking Yosef to take her picture just before they leave the house in the outfit she chose for the day. Pictures of hers in a house robe, make me think that it might have become their private joke. From the family I know that Hannah loved photographing and being photographed, she is very present in every picture. Yosef tends to slightly slant the camera or a sliver of his finger is visible, I think it’s charming. There’s love in the pictures, you can see it in Hannah’s gaze.

KBH: I absolutely love the ease and confidence of a woman with a body that doesn’t conform to fashion norms, and clothes that were probably not fashionable when they were worn. Yet she takes pleasure in dressing up and she is obviously admired by the eyes behind the lens.

HC: Indeed, there’s confidence and ease in front of the camera that stems from their relationship. As for the body image, you have to remember that 30 years passed, and although Hannah is not exactly a top model, I do think she could have been a Burda or hand-knitting catalog model- representing a “normal” body type. You also have to remember she lived in Israel in a time when fashion from Paris or New York arrived her in a delay of a few years. She was also a factory worker and her husband was a plumber, even if she wanted to spend more on fashionable clothes she probably wasn’t able to afford it.

KBH: Is the book sold in the US?

HC: It’s available online at my Etsy store and on the publisher’s website.

KBH: What’s next for you?

HC: I would love to rest. I am still collecting materials, people always come by with things they have found, I am sure something will start cooking in the studio soon.

KBH: Hagar, thank you for taking the time to share your work with us. Do you have any advice to young researchers of fashion history who want to publish their work?

HC: Thank you! Wow. I think mostly to work hard. If you believe what you have is good, don’t wait for someone to discover you. There are so many outlets today to get to a wide audience without mediators, so keep working and keep trying. If you think I can help or advise, I am always happy to help, shoot me an email.

Since ancient times earrings were women’s prized possession. Whether small little studs, large chandeliers, skillfully set with gems, or playfully designed with ready-mades, earrings are the final touch, that extra little bit of style that frames the face and finishes up the look. Earring are under the spot light in a new publication, a book titled I Love Those Earrings (Schiffer Publishing) by Jane Merrill and Chris Filstrup.  Lucky me, Jane and I are co-authors of two upcoming fashion history books (more about that in the near future) so she agreed to answer some questions and share her experience of researching and writing.

Keren Ben-Horin: Hi Jane, congratulations on the wonderful new publication, the book has some spectacular illustrations. First things first, why earrings?

Jane Merrill:  Beginning with ancient Celts, Greeks, Scythians and Egyptians, people wore gorgeous and intricate earrings that exhibited personal style.  The more you look the more you see about their beauty, how the wearers glamorized themselves, and the cultural context.  I was living in Paris when I began to study earrings – in antiquarian fairs and shops, and in museums.  I discovered that earrings often don’t show up in reproductions, whereas in paintings especially from the Renaissance to now they provide the fascinating detail.

Red gold from Jane Merrill’s private collection

Jade earrings from Jane Merrill’s private collection

KBH: Tell us a little bit about the arrangement of the chapters.

JM:  My co-author, Chris Filstrup, and I surveyed from ancient examples to the present.  Most sources skip the medieval period as having no earrings which isn’t true.  We chose to subsume the Georgian jewelry style within Romanticism, 1815-1840, which seemed to suit earrings very well.  The book has women talking about their earrings, men (like pirates and athletes, Chris’s chapter) who wear earrings, designers doing intriguing things, and how earrings fit into my life, too, as a journalist and one time semi-hippie.

Borden earrings from Jane Merrill’s private collection

KBH: Out of the periods covered, which is your favorite in terms of earrings design and why?

JM: Victorians of Europe and America sit in the middle of our book because their era was an apex for partisanship, invention, and charm.  Prince Albert gave Queen Victoria earrings made from teeth of his stag quarry, and women who were “sportive” themselves or spectators of their beaux and husbands wore miniature racing shells, croquet mallets, etc. in their ears.  Then there were the earrings made of every color hair but red (too flashy) and whimsies like the vogue for housefly or exotic natural motifs post Darwin.

Grace Rose. Fredrick Sandys.

Portrait of Empress Eugenie. Frantz Winterhalter.

KBH: Can you explain why a certain type of earrings was adopted in a specific era or culture?

JM: Availability of precious metals is a story in itself.  For example one of my favorite pairs in the book is gold sculpted women’s heads, with tiaras, and earrings – earrings wearing earrings. The modeling is exquisite and when they were fashioned in Crimea in the fourth century B.C. there were abundant gold artifacts being made.  The Supplies of natural pearls kept shifting, so that when the pearl trade in the Persian Gulf was depleted, other sources were sought.  Even on Elizabeth Regina’s gowns not all the pearls were real, although the ones in her earrings were.

KBH: were earrings popular at some periods more than others? Why do you think that is?

JM: Wimples, hats and usually veils are anathema to earrings. Decolletage, hair bobs and up-dos encourage them.

KBH: Tell us a little bit about the research process. Where did you begin? What kind of sources were you looking at? Where did you find the greatest abundance of information?

Birds nest earrings. A la Vielle Russie

JM: Does one have guided tours of La Vielle Russie and Verdura, and meet gemologists and curators of jewelry to write on earrings, or write on earrings for these dazzling opportunities?  I’ve fastened on earrings every since putting in order my mother’s jewelry box.  Also, much jewelry appears on the Internet that is fugitive, as soon sold, and sellers were kind enough to assist me with many of the images.  I regret to say that, many years ago, I wimped on an assignment for Town & Country to go down into the diamond mines, from fear.

KBH: The book features some remarkable women who enjoyed splurging on jewelry. Can you give us one or two examples? How did jewelry, politics and power intertwined?

Possardes. Source: Amanda Grove Holmen

JM: There are so many.  Cleopatra dissolved a pearl and drank it to impress Marc Anthony; the Virgin Queen’s last suitor, a French prince, gave her an earring in the shape of a frog to remember him by; Louis XIV when he was a dauphin gave his first love Marie Mancini a perfect pearl drop, the La Peregrina, that later would be in the jewelry collection of Elizabeth Taylor; Mrs. Lincoln shopped for lovely earrings that are in the MFA in Boston, probably beyond her husband’s means; and Josephine Baker and Mae West outdid everybody in the Roaring Twenties.  Frida Kahlo put exciting earrings including some unmatched ones into her self-portraits.  Women also have worn earrings that bespeak their politics: for example, the engraved gems attesting a woman’s faithful allegiance to the memory of Charles I, and the grisly fashion for teeny model guillotines in the wake of the French Revolution.

Marie Louise de Parma. Anton Raphael Mengs.

KBH: How did mass production influence the style of and the fashion for earrings?

JM: One of my valued informants, Ulysses Grant Dietz, Senior Curator of the Newark Museum, explains the “bread and butter” jewelry suddenly available to all from mid-19^th century.  He says that between 1850 and 1950, more women’s earrings in 14 K and 18K were made in Newark than any other city on earth.   In 1872, a Newark manufacturer also introduced machine production of the so important little earring findings.  The Providence Jewelry Museum (Rhode Island), located in an old factory, has hundreds of drawers of beautiful steel dies once used to make intricate costume jewelry.

KBH: Tell us about the “Suffragette” earrings

JM: In England and also the U.S, women fighting for the right to vote might wear on their person purple, white, and green:  purple for pride and triumph; white for purity; and green for hope or spring. Even if not of precious gems these are rare.

Suffragettes earrings. Source: Edith Horwitz

KBH: What changed for earrings in the new millennium? Do we see any new technologies coming in? How do they influence the aesthetic?

JM: Different materials, from paper to plastics to palladium, CAD, and a patent for earrings in sync with a heart beat.  Today people apply their beliefs about living to the earrings they create.  For instance, you see mismatched silver earrings by Mocium and earrings made of fascinating shards of antique Chinese porcelain, cut woods, coral, and old coins by a silversmith who travels the world for inspiration.

Belperron earrings. Verdura

KBH: Jane, thank you for taking the time to share your experience with us. Finally, do you have any advice for young researchers who want to publish their work?

JM: If you don’t want to bore your significant other to tears, find someone as obsessed as you are and collaborate on learning what fascinates you both.

I Love Those Earrings can be purchased here

We are so thrilled about the topic of this year’s annual symposium organized by the students of FIT’s MA program Fashion and Textile Studies: History, Theory, Museum Practice. The students will explore modernity and modernism in 20th century fashion in eleven fascinating papers. The event is free and open to the public.

We hope to see you there!