Something worth thinking about is Lara Svendsen’s theory on the new in fashion. He argues that ‘the traditional logic of fashion is a logic of replacement’. This means that new fashions cause their predecessors to become unfashionable. Yet now, the increased speed of fashion has led to the logic of supplementation. New fashions are introduced so rapidly they barely have time to be established as fashionable before they are replaced again, or recycled back into fashion. This means there is no clear definition of what is in fashion or what is out, but an endless array of options as more fashion is added to the already existing spectrum, and vintage or recycled fashion is rapidly recycled back into itself. It seems, in his view, things are neither in or out of fashion, they simply present options. I think he presents an accurate summary on the current state, which seems to encourage a freedom of anything goes.
‘Anyone who does not regularly visit Paris will never be completely elegant’. I didn’t say it, Balzac did, but I like it.
As I do research for my upcoming regular segment on Radio National, I’m noting the influence that blogs and the internet have had on fashion exhibition design. For example, Cathy Horne noted that in the Louis Vuitton exhibition in Paris ‘The most revealing space of the exhibition may be the first room on the Jacobs floor, described as “Marc’s World.” It looks like a Tumblr page come to life. High-definition video monitors cover the walls, some showing still images of Barbra Streisand, Nicki Minaj, Rei Kawakubo and Mrs. Prada… It is basically a visual representation of the inside of Mr. Jacobs’s head, and it’s fascinating.’
In our recent exhibition on menswear at the NGV we referenced the influence of Scot Schuman by placing blown up black and white images of Melbourne streetscapes behind our dressed male mannequins, situating them in a kind of streetscape, alla The Sartorialist. It’s also interesting to see the attention museums are gaining in fashion media.
In the literary journal, Kill Your Darlings, writer Ron Rash tells us that similes shows intelligence in the use of language.
‘To me, the best kind of intelligence and complexity in language is the ability to create simile. Very often, I use a lot of similes in my vernacular because I feel it’s a way to show the creativity and intelligence of the character. They may not use an educated language, but there’s a beauty and a poetry and an inventiveness in their language… when I hear a good phrase I usually write it down… ‘so dark you need a crowbar to break the light’.’ (Kill Your Darlings, Issue Six, July 2011, p.125-6)
For me, this quote exposes part of the strength and fame of the legendary fashion editor and special consultant Diana Vreeland, who is subject of the current exhibition at the Palazzo Pitti in Venice, Diana Vreeland After Diana Vreeland. Vreeland’s extraordinary observations on fashion are often recorded through her use of simile. For example, of jeans she says, “They’re the most beautiful things since the gondola”, while perhaps her most famous quote is that “pink is the navy blue of India”. Through simile she describes not only the world of fashion, but herself and her world of fashion, invented through alluring and intoxicating comparisons which create a world of luscious imagery as well as quick communication of her views and ideas.
I just read this…
Someone described jet lag to me as ‘coming back to a hole in your home town that you no longer quite fit into’
I don’t know if that’s jet lag as must as post travel-ness, but it says it well.
Today I’m reading about the history of soap for a talk that i’m giving in two weeks on the History of Garment Care, where I learnt:
The name soap opera stems from the original dramatic serials broadcast on radio that had soap manufacturers, such as Procter & Gamble, Colgate-Palmolive and Lever Brothers, as sponsors[1] and producers.[2] (Thanks Wikipedia!)
ah-ha! I love this stuff. I have turned my mind to the expression more than once to wonder where it came from but never would have imagined this as its origin. Glad I know.
The talk will be given on 15th March in association with the exhibition Nobody was Dirty at NGV studio, Feberation Square Melbourne.
What colour slip does the 1920s or 1930s lady wear under her semi-transparent dress? Well, by looking at a dress in the gallery’s fashion and textiles collection I found that an orange patterned chiffon dress had a matching burnt orange silk charmeuse slip, just a shade darker than the outer fabric. Likewise a dark orange tulle Vionnet dress had a darker lame slip. I see a pattern… matching slips in a solid fabric of a slightly darker shade. The exception seemed to be the black Vionnet dresses which have fleshy pink slips or gold lame slips under black chiffon. Drama.
Initially lured by the cover, a spare illustration of an elegant 1920s dame, The Paris Wife by Paula McLain presents a fictional account of Ernest Hemmingway’s marriage to Hadley Richardson. It is well-written and affecting, while offering an accessible landscape of the time including a feeling of urgency and despair following the war and a sense of disillusionment and loss. I’ve also read The Beautiful and the Damned but it somehow felt distant and history books sometimes segment periods into decades, as if someone who lived in the 1920s had not been there for the 1910s. In The Paris Wife, there is a strong sense that a different time was not so long before. At the same time, the characters mingle. Hemmingway dines with Gertrude Stein, interviews Mussolini and feels the rise of Fascism around him. But what McLain has done so well is convey the changing literary scene from poetic prose into spare, real, text just like in fashion where garments that were once frilly, overdecorated, belle époque, become spare, lean and flat. Like prose, they are reduced to their essence, stripped back, ready for the twentieth century.
So according to Alan Mansfield and Phillis Cunnington in Handbook of English Costume in the 20th Century 1900-1950 apron tunics and overskirts were popular in the 1920s. ‘Tunic effects were narrower in 1924’ and ‘some tunic dresses were in the form of a bodice extended to the knees, opening back or front over a sheath skirt.’ Still no mention of side openings though…
Norgh Waugh in The Cut of Women’s Clothes gets closer when she writes about ‘The Renaissance style …’tabard’ - a long straight loose panel over the front and …back, the shoulders seamed and the panels caught together low on each hip.’ Hmmm, no catching at the hip on my example though.
But in L’official de la mode, 1924, no.36, there’s an image of a dress with side openings on p.27, and another with what could be side openings all the way up to the shoulder on p.16. So I guess we’ll just leave them for now and move forward.
