"Unmentionables: Foundations of Fashion"

In the spirit of embracing my move back to Memphis I am seeking outlets of history and fashion history in my dear ole hometown to not only continue my own education of the subjects but also to learn more about the place in which I was born and raised. So it was my delight to learn that The Pink Palace was opening a display of fashion undergarments titled "Unmentionables: Foundations of Fashion." As every other broke post-grad does in this situation, I looked up when the museum offers free admission :) So last Tuesday in between 1-5 I trekked over to check it out. (I will be writing a separate post about the general history of The Pink Palace and the other textile and garment pieces I encountered while on my visit there.)

The emphasis of the display is on silhouette and how fashion's history has been defined greatly by shape and the undergarments that create said shapes. The display includes 12 examples of women's undergarments spanning from the 1880s to the 1960s and 4 examples of men's undergarments. The display also includes 6 women's dresses, including one wedding dress, that exemplify the type of garment that would be worn with their counterpart understructure, all spanning from the 1880s to the 1960s. The study of silhouette has always been an area of interest of mine, especially in relation to corsetry and the women's movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. I complain when a belt or a pair of pants is too tight so I can only imagine the discomfort that these women dealt with daily because of tight corsetry. On the other hand, today's woman will walk around in 4 inch heels all day giving herself blisters all for the sake of beauty and fashion, so is there really that big of difference? All I can conclude is that I am thankful that it is no longer considered in vogue to wear those type of garments under my clothes everyday and to thank designers like Chanel, Poiret, and Fortuny for setting the trend on a mainstream level in the 1910s and women like Ameilia Bloomer, Annie Oakley, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton for starting the trend among women at the grassroots level in the 19th century.

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.

Gala's, Weddings, and McQueen...O My!

Sorry for the hiatus this past week, folks. It's moving time for me. I am leaving my sweet home Chicago and going back to my other sweet home, Memphis, Tennessee. So with all my stuff packed away and ready for the big haul down south tomorrow morning, I, of course, can't sleep...

What better time to blog :)

A lot has been going on in the world of historic dress in the last week. So I thought I'd give a little synopsis of the main events.

Today was the ever-so-elegant and celebrity-attracting Costume Institute Gala. An event put on every May at the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC. This event is sponsored by many of fashion's "higher-ups," but most notably Vogue and Anna Wintour. The event draws every notable celebrity, designer, model, etc. etc. from around the globe and the reason they come is to lend support (and by support, I mean $dollars$) for the Met's Costume Institute. This year's gala marks the opening of an exhibition featuring the designs of the late (and great) Alexander McQueen, titled "Savage Beauty." This exhibition chronicles the masterpiece creations of McQueen and includes approximately 100 pieces from throughout his career from 1994 to 2010.

Pieces that are to be included in the exhibition were shown at a press preview.

And, of course, there's the Royal Wedding.

Which, ironically, also brings up the name of Alexander McQueen. The best kept secret of the RW was the designer of Kate's dress. As Kate stepped out of the car at Westminster Abbey, the world learned that it was in fact Sarah Burton, creative director at Alexander McQueen, that Kate collaborated with on the design and aesthetic of the dress. And may I say....flawless. Classic. Elegant. Perfection. Of course, the hype surrounding Kate's dress intrigue's one to look back at royal wedding dresses of the past. Historic Royal Palaces released the video below last week displaying some of the rarest royal wedding dresses, including the infamous "first" ivory gown that Queen Victoria wore when she wed Prince Albert in 1840. With all this wedding buzz, I wish that Chicago History Museum's own exhibition of wedding dresses("I Do: Chicago Ties the Knot"), which ran from May of last year until this past January, was still on display. If you missed it, however, the catalog can still be purchased at chicagohistory.org.

Senior curator, Dr. Joanna Marschner, discusses the six dresses on display at Historic Royal Palaces.

Kate's dress has been rightfully compared to Grace Kelly's wedding dress with it's long lace sleeves, high neck, and sweetheart neckline. The choosing a widely-celebrated, contemporary British design house by Kate is not only another example of why she is truly a modern day princess.

Kate's second dress worn at the festivities after the ceremony was also designed by Alexander McQueen's Sarah Burton. (Stunning!!)

Just one last look at the happy couple...everybody together now...awwwwww!!

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.)

Favorite Old Thing of the Week

"The entire point of the original mod movement was to reject the naff rocker look, to dolly-bird yourself up in the sharpest suit or neatest op-art jacket, and make yourself over into your personal best, regardless of external circumstances." --Vogue, May 2011

Spring is the most appropriate time of year for a makeover in all aspects of life. Here's to adopting mod as a fashion and life philosophy as a young person in 2011. Join me.

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)

Favorite Old Thing of the Week

Norman Norell: Conservative Elegance

Norman Norell, seen in the picture at the left with models, was an American designer throughout the middle of the 20th century. Norell is among the group of American designers who gained prominence during WWII because of the lack of communication that was available between France and America at the time. French fashion had reigned superior for centuries, but because French designing was cutback significantly due to Nazi occupation, magazines such as Vogue and Harper's Bazaar began to feature more American designers.

During the early part of his career, Norell worked with Hattie Carnegie, another prominent American designer. After partnering in the company Traina-Norell for 20 years, Norell finally broke off on his own in 1960.

Norell's aesthetic is known for its precision tailoring, simplicity, and elegant femininity. Some of his signature looks include his sequined mermaid gowns, as seen on Marilyn Monroe in the picture above, his short jersey dresses, his nautical themed looks featuring bows, buttons and belts, and his elegant suits.

Norman Norell remained a prominent figure in the fashion industry until his death in 1972. Norell, Claire McCardell, Pauline Trigere, Charles James, and Gilbert Adrian are some of the American designers that helped resurrect fashion in America and abroad after the world had experienced two decades of depression and war. In the picture to the right, Norell is seen in his signature red tie along with some of his signature looks. He was truly an American classic.