Technology as material culture?

Blogging has certainly been on the backburner this last year while I have been preparing my applications for graduate school.  Now, however, that they are all submitted and I am anxiously awaiting interviews and/or acceptance/rejection (I die...) notices, my brain has been churning about what I really think I would like to study if admitted.  Before graduating in 2010, I began to study lower and middle class working women at the beginning of the twentieth century.  Since I never got the chance to fully explore the topic the way it should it has always been on my mind for future study.  Recently, however, I have been thinking a lot about technology and material culture, or rather, technology AS material culture.  Questions like, "How has technology changed the fashion world? How has technology changed how society views material things? Has the curation of style and persona on fashion blogs and social media sites shifted young society's perception of self-expression from how you dress to what you blog about or post pictures of?" 

The strong correlation between what you wear everyday to your percieved identity is one of the reasons I wanted to study fashion.  Clothes are made with the intention to be used everyday, to be practical or functional, but dress (ie clothes, shoes, glasses, jewelry) is also the most accessible form of self-expression. And unless you live in a nudist colony, you are required everyday (by law) to make a choice of what you want to put on your body.  The choices you make about your appearance leave instant impressions on those you encounter whether you intend for that or not. So, how has technology changed this notion of how people express their identity in an ever growing youth culture where what you "like" on Facebook supposedly lets the world know what type of person you are?

The fashion world imparticular has been impacted hugely by this shift.  Today, I can watch fashion shows almost instantaneously with the editors and stylists sitting in the front row, but I get to do it in the comfort of my bedroom on my laptop.  The speed at which this type of sharing happens is mind-boggling when one contemplates how long the ladies of the 19th century had to wait for fashion plates from Paris in order to know what was in vogue. I can get on sites like style.com and click through all the images of the Paris couture shows faster than the length of time it takes for one show to start and end.

To sum this string of thoughts up the question that concludes in my mind is, "Has the concept of materiality shifted to a 2-D, digital realm instead of the notion that physical objects and ownership of those objects is a form of self-expression?" I'm sure that it has not shifted completely, so rather the question should be is there new form of material culture to consider when studying fashion and technology?

I leave you with this picture I saw on The Retronaut last week. I have always said I wish we still wore hats that required hat pins.. And this is definitely a new reason why.

Using a hat pin for self-defence in 1904 = awesome.
"Oh you think a fair lady that can be taken advantage of? Think again..."



Not your average coffee table books.

As a perpetual student and lover of books, I make it a point to go to a bookstore every couple of weeks.  It's kind of like a form of yoga for me, in that it is relaxing, I love the smell, and I'm giving myself the chance to learn something, either from a book or about myself.  I've always said that I hope bookstores stay in business for as long as I'm alive and don't die with the advancement of digitil books and technology.  My favorite book store in Chicago was The Book Table in Oak Park.  I always found something right up my alley or discovered something I hadn't heard about yet when I went in there.  In Memphis, I always go to the Booksellers at Laurelwood, formally Davis-Kidd.  All the staff there is so nice and hospitable (as they should be, being Southern men and women..) ANYways, I bring up bookstores because there are a few books dedicated to fashion that I hope to see on the shelves of my favorite bookstore soon.

Classic Hollywood Style

by Caroline Young

Hollywood's hold on the pulse of fashion is influential even today.  This book highlights 35 films that have influenced not only fashion but also style in their own time and continue to inspire today.  Not only is the character from one of my favorite movies, "Bonnie and Clyde" with the gorgeous Faye Dunaway, on the cover of this book, but I am also so excited that a book has been written about the actual costume designers of some of the most iconic movies of our time.  So many know of the little black dress from "Breakfast at Tiffany's" or the little white dress from "Seven Year Itch", but how often does anyone hear the accounts of the designers who sketched them or the costume production team that so fatefully choose those garments.  Expect to see this book in bookstores on October 16th.

Grace: A Memoir

by Grace Coddington

The memoir of the beautiful Grace Coddington, creative director of Vogue, is bound to be filled with a story worth taking note of for any aspiring fashion die-hard. Out on November 20th, Grace is the memoir of a woman who rose through the world of fashion as a young model in London and would eventually become the right hand woman of Anna Wintour. Her creative vision has shaped the pages of Vogue for many years and a peak inside the world of Grace Coddington is certain not to disappoint.

Antonio Lopez: Fashion, Art, Sex, and Disco

by Roger Padilha and Mauricio Padilha

My first encounter with the work of Antonio Lopez was the drawings included in the Charles James exhibit at the Chicago History Museum last fall. This book cronicles the life and influence of Antonio Lopez.  He created a vast collection of illustrations, photos, and paintings working with some of the most revered and respected designers, including Yves Saint Laurent and Versace among many more.  This book by Roger and Mauricio Padhilha, with an introduction by Andre Leon Talley, an epilogue by Anna Sui and contributions from Bill Cunningham, is the first of its kind featuring Antonio Lopez and will certainly be a must have for the collections of historical institutions as well as fashion moguls worldwide.  Look for it on September 4th!

The Little Black Jacket: Chanel's Classic Revisted

by Karl Lagerfeld and Carine Roitfeld

This book is definitely the most coffee table-esque out of the others just because it mainly features photos.  However, as a forever follower of anything Lagerfeld touches, I will definitely be checking this book out.  This book does reflect on the timelessness of Coco Chanel's oringinal design of the "little black jacket" and its versatillity, so there is definitely some historical referene and provenance to this book.  It also features some of my fashion icons, such as Yoko Ono and SJP, wearing the jacket in their own way. This book is due out on August 25.

L'influence

I was perusing the runway images from Paris and Milan's most recent fashion weeks (Spring 2012 Ready-To-Wear) and I came upon this fabulous hat (or visor, really..) in the Balenciaga show. Instantly, the famous Irving Penn photographs of Balenciaga fashions circa 1950 came to mind, but also..and please bear with me on this one..images of trench warfare soldiers from World War I. Something about the almost cape-like brim reminded me of the drawings and cartoons of trench soldiers that were plastered on propaganda posters and war bond posters. Whatch'all think?

Balenciaga Spring 2012 RTW

Lisa Fonssagrive in Balenciaga, taken by Irving Penn, 1950.

Love, love, love.

O and just for fun...Another gem from Spring 2012. Yall know I love some Barbie shoes...Especially some YSL Jack Sparrow meets Marie Antionette Barbie shoes..*sigh*

Runway images property of Style.com

Working Girl.

Okay, so... I know I've taken a little bit of a hiatus from blogging, a month to be exact, but the "moving back to Memphis, new job, and trying to settle" madness is behind me I promise I will be more diligent. Besides blogging, other things that I need to tend to are studying for the GRE (yuck....) and getting on top of editing my paper that will be submitted with my grad school apps in the fall. I thought bringing the topic of this paper into today's blog post would be a nice way to kick start everything :]

Working girls..

In today's society working women are more than common place. In fact if a woman isn't working it's usually because she married wealthy, is retired, or is under 15. Before the late 1800s, however, a woman's "sphere" was restricted to domestic settings. As the Industrial Revolution took off in America during the late 19th century, work opportunities for women outside of the home also rose. Factories and shops needed cheap labor and there were plenty of single, immigrant women in the urban communities across the east that needed to support themselves.

Most commonly these women are known for the hardships they experienced such as dire working conditions, meager pay, long work hours, and the danger they encountered in the factories, like the infamous Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of 1911.* Historians like Kathy Peiss and Nan Enstad, however, have presented a different side of the story for these young women.

These young, single women made up a demographic that this country had never encountered before. The garment factories in which they worked were producing ready-to-wear fashions that they could afford to purchase in the department shops popping up in shopping districts across the metropolis's of America. Dance halls in which men and women intermingled were breaking down the Victorian concept of separate spheres for the sexes. In part, these women laid the foundation for the social revolutions of the 1920s and the middle class flapper girls.

The image of young working women in the early 1900s may look very different from my comrades and I running around bringing you your food and drinks in our Blue Monkey shirts, shorts, and tennis shoes, but essentially the ideals of making a living and taking steps toward bettering ourselves are there for the young working woman of 1911 as well as 2011.

*146 women perished in this industrial disaster due to locked doors and no fire exits in the factory.

Images from Cheap Amusements: Working Women and Leisure in Turn-of-the-Century New York by Kathy Peiss and Ladies of Labor, Girls of Adventure: Working Women, Popular Culture, and Labor Politics at the Turn of the Twentieth Century by Nan Enstad.

Fashion is history.

So if you have not seen the NY Times article on fashion's place in museums then don't bother at this point because I'm about to point out why it has a seriously misled point of view.

It really is pointless to argue that fashion is superficial and it has no place in the academic world because it has arrived, folks, and its not going anywhere. Fashion as history has fought the same battles that any other "alternative" history has fought. And by "alternative" I mean, anything that is not the old, rich white man's version of history. Emerging social histories fought for their relevancy back in the 1960s, and fashion has been fighting the same battle in academia since before the 1990s.

Yes, it is true that fashion exhibitions are popular with the public because fashion as a general subject is popular. But who is to argue against something that brings in revenue for museums that are struggling financially more than ever in this downward trending economy? Also, just because museums and academia are finding a place for costume exhibitions doesn't mean that the public in general understands how fashion can be used to tell the stories of the past. Isn't educating one of the basic missions of a museum? Imagine the surprise for those lucky wanderers of New York's Met or Chicago's Chicago History Museum or L.A.'s Los Angeles County Museum of Art when they find themselves face to face with a turn of the century gown that demonstrates how couturiers freed women from rigid corsetry or how garment factory workers used the emerging ready-to-wear industry to uplift their position in life. Conserve, share and educate. That is what museum's are doing with their costume collections just as they are with their paintings and photographs and other forms of "art."

Dresses featured in Chicago History Museum's exhibition Chic Chicago: Couture Treasures from the Chicago History Museum that demonstrate how couture fashion "trickled down" to ready-to-wear fashion. Christian Dior (on right) circa 1953 and Sophie (on left) circa 1954 could both have been purchased at Chicago's Marshall Field's in their different departments of course.*

What it comes down to, honestly, is that dress, in all its different forms, is something we use everyday. And whether or not you are plucking t-shirts out of the half off bin at Express or strolling into Dior on Avenue Montaigne, dress expresses identity. Dress has acted as an expression of identity since before the Etruscans draped their first chiton in the 6th century B.C. and will continue to do so forever. Therefore, it is not hard to connect how fashion can give us a tangible window into the societies of the past, whether it's a gown from the couture house of Gabrielle Chanel from the 1920s or an English red coat from the Revolutionary War.

So, believers in fashion, continue to support the arts, in all its forms, by visiting the exquisitely well thought out fashion exhibitions being featured in museums across this country. Thank you and goodnight.

*Information from the catalog of the exhibition, which can be purchased here. (One example of the scholarly work that goes into a fashion exhibition.)

The History of "Stuff"

You don't have to be a history buff to be obsessed with shows like American Pickers, Pawn Stars, or Auction Kings. If you are a history buff, however, and you have not stumbled upon these shows before then I heartily suggest you do. The recent rise in popularity of shows such as these has peaked my interest into why people are fascinated by them. If you do not know, the basic premise of these shows is the buying and reselling of people's old things (sort of the high brow version of garage sales). Of course all of them go about it in their own unique way, but all of them could not exist if there was not a market for what they do.

One of the reasons that I think people are attracted to these types of programs is because people love the history of "stuff." And as someone who wants to eventually pursue a master's degree in material culture/decorative arts, the relevance of these shows has really caught my attention. The greatest thing about these shows is that they include the history of whatever object is being sold/bought, so the viewer actually understands why its worth whatever it is being sold/bought for. I intend to do some further research into this topic and see what others have said about it.

Now the granddaddy of all these shows has got to be Antiques Roadshow. The premise of AR may be very different because there is no buying/selling going on, but the core value of the show is very much the same as the others because people are bringing in their old stuff to learn more about it and find out how much it is worth. While costume items are few and far between on shows such as these, the costume nerd inside of me jumped for joy when I was watching a rerun of AR this past week and saw this:

The appraiser places the date of the portrait between 1805-1825 based on the costume the man is wearing. For the appraiser, J. Michael Flanigan, to have that sort of knowledge of costume, when he is listed as an expert in furniture and folk art, shows that the relevance of costume is becoming more and more significant. Changes in men's fashion are more subtle throughout history, and the presence of the high collared waist-coat and shirt with ruffled necktie, also known as a cravat are seen in both the Empire Period (1790-1820) and the Romantic Period (1820-1850). Stay tuned for more posts on shows such as these! In the mean time, check them out for yourself on the History Channel, the Discover Channel, and PBS!

(picture and video courtesy of pbs.org)

Here goes nothin'...

Alright, folks.

Clothes. Costume. Fashion. Dress. Whatever you want to call it, it's what we wear everyday.

And as someone who is attempting to break into the industry that supports the historical side of life, I am here to pay weekly tribute to fashions of the past, the women and men who wore those fashions, and how those fashions influenced the lives of the people in the past and still today.

For centuries, history was told through the lens of the rich, white man, and only in the last half of the 20th century did the untold "social" histories emerge and become relevant. Fashion, still, was a little slow on the uptake in the minds of those who decided what constituted "history." Finally, however, the field of historical dress is on the rise in the world of academia. As a matter of fact, I was watching Jeopardy last week and to my pleasant surprise the Final Jeopardy category was "Garments of the World," and Mr. Trebek himself said that it was the first time they had ever had that category on the show....a small victory for dress historians.

Now, I am merely a student of dress history at this point in my life, and only intend to further my own studies and the presence of dress history with this blog. Part of my mission is to demonstrate how clothes help define a society, imparticularly societies of the past. Another integral part of my mission is to reflect how modern fashion is very much a reflection of something from the past. In fact, I was watching highlights from the most recent fashion week in Paris, and a commentator stated that a modern day fashion show is really a lesson in fashion history, meaning that designers of today use fashions of the past to inspire something modern.

Okay, so enough of history lessons by Jane. I promise future posts will be more fun, and I hope that whoever does stumble upon this blog will share it with others who also have a passion for history/clothes/museums/clothes in museums :)

Thanks folks.

Something I am going to do with every post is include an image, fact, etc. about an historical piece of dress and tag it as....

Jane's Favorite Old Thing of the Week:

So for the first Favorite Old Thing, I'm going with

a garment that holds meaning to me and holds a lot of historical value. The gown the woman in the picture is wearing is by Mariano Fortuny. It is an example of a "Delphos" gown that he made many different versions of throughout his career from 1907 until his death in 1949. The intricate pleating on the "Delphos" gowns has been copied for decades by a variety of designers. Still today, if a designer features an intricately pleated garment on the runway, the garment is said to have "Fortuny pleats." After Paul Poiret, Fortuny was a pioneer for couture garments that did not require wearing a corset. Outside of my History of Dress classes, my first interaction with Fortuny was during my work with the exhibition, Chic Chicago, at the Chicago History Museum. The "Delphos" gowns featured in that exhibit were some of my favorite pieces from the show and I admire what they stand for still today.