We are less than two weeks away from our conference Reading Fashion Magazines: Celebrating The Courtauld’s History of Dress Journals Archive! Upcoming blog posts will offer a sneak peek into ‘Addressing the Courtauld’s Fashion Magazines,’ an exhibition held in conjunction with the conference. Be sure to book a ticket here to see amazing speakers and beautiful magazines. Remember: Digital images are nice, but nothing beats seeing the real thing!
Femina was a French fashion magazine active from the early twentieth century. It is a great documentary source for the history of French couture as shown by these images. During the war, Parisian couture was necessarily scaled back in its production due to a lack of material resources as well as customers. Fashion, however, was often a way for the women of Paris to resist the occupation of their city by asserting nationalistic pride through the cultural tradition of high fashion. After the war, Christian Dior asserted a return to luxuriant and grand femininity with his “New Look” collection of 1947 featuring narrow sloped shoulders, hand-span waists, and voluminous longer skirts. Although some people were shocked and even dismayed at what seemed an excessive use of fabric, the silhouette was largely embraced by women happy to have a change that expressed beauty and luxury.
By 1951, as these illustrations attest to, the New Look silhouette was an integral part of fashion. Dior’s gown features a blue back panel with bow that is reminiscent of the earlier nineteenth century bustle emphasizing the back of the skirt. This silhouette was very consciously a return to the history of dress from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries which Dior felt celebrated femininity in a way that resonated in the post-war period.
Nina Ricci was one of many female couturiers before the war who opened her house in 1932. Though she isn’t as well remembered today as Dior, she was a great success in the thirties and after the war, designing until 1954 when her son took over the business. The gown illustrated here exemplifies Ricci’s aesthetic of a highly refined femininity infused with romantic details. The caption refers to the Second Empire period in mid-nineteenth century France which the gown seems to revivify in its sweeping trained skirt and oversized bow emphasizing the hips. By contrast, the waist appears even smaller. The matching long evening gloves also continue a fashion tradition in eveningwear. The model’s coiffure, however, is a modern post-war style which reminds us that fashion is always a blend of past and present.
What I love so much about these illustrations is the way they capture a sense of drama from the dress itself. Photographs often rely upon the model and settings to create a fuller scenario but illustrations really focus on the silhouette and textures of the garment. The shading on the Dior gown conveys the stiffness of the material and the sheen of a silk. That I can “feel” the surface and shape of the dress is what draws me in. In a sense, the drawing convinces me that the gown is real, that fashion is real, because it connects to what I already know in part – the textures, colors, and shape, but offers the possibility of even more – the actual dress.
The mark of the artist’s hand speaks to the agency of my own hands and the knowledge they quite literally hold. The architectural quality of the gown can be felt with just a few lines in the right place. By contrast, the more fluid, softer drape of Nina Ricci’s gown seems to telegraph the movements of the woman’s body. I can imagine the train swaying in echo of her hips as she glides across the ballroom. The illustrations heighten the sensuality of the gowns. The differences in aesthetic qualities reflect the type of woman imagined as the wearer and express the designer’s vision of her desires.
