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

"We all get dressed for Bill."

Every one who is interested in fashion, especially fashion journalism, needs to watch the documentary on Bill Cunningham. Simply titled "Bill Cunningham New York," this documentary chronicles the life and work, which are one in the same, of the photographer who has captured fabulous, real women in fashion on the streets of New York since the 1960s. Historically speaking, he has seen and captured all the major works and looks of high fashion and "street" fashion of the second half of the 20th century. He continually references historical influences in his weekly columns for the New York Times as well as in the audio for online videos that accompany his "In the Street" column. Bill Cunningham is a staple character in the streets of New York City as well as an icon in fashion journalism. His mission is not to define trends or fashion, but to merely capture and portray beautiful men and women in their clothes or their "armor to survive everyday life" as he puts it. It is because of people like Bill that fashion has become so accessible to everyone across the globe. He dedicates his life to capturing everyday people in the wonderfully fashion forward city of New York for his own pleasure as well as for the pleasure of small-town girls like myself who dream of the day when our photograph is casually snapped by the likes of Bill Cunningham. The documentary is available on instant streaming on Netflix right now so I suggest you all hop to it and check it out.

"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.