Author Archives: Alexis

Ready-to-wear, rupture and continuity in the space of Elle magazine post 1968

May 26, 2015Posted by:

The student protests of May 1968 brought focus to Paris’ streets on national and global levels, and this was echoed in French fashion imagery. A ready-to-wear editorial in the 2 September 1968 issue of Elle by Claude Brouet and Marie-Thérèse des Cars set the tone for the straightforward representation of women and the city that would characterise those in magazines in the latter part of the decade and into the next. Here, Peter Knapp photographed women in the streets of Paris, walking or standing against city walls, sometimes looking beyond the camera or directly into its lens. In one image, a model traversed the picture plane in long, confident strides with one arm stretched upwards, as though to shield her face from the bright sunlight. This pose was repeated throughout the editorial; in some instances, the model’s smile was absent, turning the functional gesture into one of protest. In view of the student protests and strikes that engulfed the country three months earlier, contemporary readers might have interpreted the editorial in terms of solidarity.

Indeed, in this imagery, Knapp may have directly referenced the first day of the protest, in which many commentators later remarked on the still, sunny aspect of Paris’ streets before violence erupted. In the 17 June 1968 issue of Elle, for example, journalist Denise Dubois-Jallais contrasted what began as “a lovely Friday in May” with the image of “[…] enraged young people, cobblestones in hand, running towards a police car and, all of a sudden, the noise of shattered glass […].” And although those protests did not focus on women’s rights, they served as a symbolic call to arms, according to commentaries such as that by Michèle Perrein, in the 21 October 1968 issue of Elle. In an article on her personal experience of sexual inequality, Perrein wrote that: “the student revolt […] did me well, so much that I felt, deep down, it corresponded to my own.” Likewise, Knapp’s images represented the calm period that loomed before more vocalised feminist struggles in 1970, the year that saw the establishment of the Mouvement de Liberation des Femmes, as well as Elle’s Etat Généraux de la Femme debates.

Political concern was also held in tension within the text that accompanied Knapp’s images. It conceived of ready-made fashion in terms of action and choice. The author ranked the season’s clothing trends as secondary to the reader herself, who would deploy the clothing to feel comfortable and liberated in it: “But the essential, in all that, will be you. Your way of choosing clothing for its comfort and freedom […].” The text thus highlighted both continuity and rupture. Magazines had promoted ready-made clothing’s freeing attributes—achievable through the wearer’s skill and personality—since they began to feature ready-to-wear in the mid-1950s. However, given magazines’ constant representation of novelty, these attributes were repositioned in view of the May protests to signify the reader’s recognition of her control and capability.

The clothing produced in the mid to late-1960s also worked alongside Elle’s new discussion of wearer experience. From the mid 1960s, magazines characterised jersey and other knitted garments as second skins. And consumer testimonies were consistent, such as that of Monique Naudeix, who recounted how her prized knitted jackets by Sonia Rykiel from the late 1960s “hugged the body.” Peter Knapp’s photographs in the 8 September 1969 issue of Elle highlighted the ways in which fabric clung to and draped against models’ moving bodies. Several small images flanked central ones to depict subsequent steps in the act of walking. In one image, a model wore a knitted ensemble by Sonia Rykiel, a garment that allowed for her swiftness, evidenced by its blurred edges that also blurred the boundaries between body and fabric. These photographs showcased clothing for easy, confident feminine movement. Also central to the image, although secondary in importance to the monumental, active model, was the Paris street, which imbued it with urban capital. And after the events of May 1968, simple streets and pavements assumed an iconic status. As opposed to post-war imagery, in which models hesitatingly tested Paris’ new spaces, busy with street traffic, that symbolised modernity, in 1969 and 1970, magazines showcased women walking assertively on Paris’ pavements. In her June 1968 article, Denise Dubois-Jallais unknowingly set the stage for these visualisations in her description of the aftermath of the May barricades: “the people, curious, arrived with the sun. No cars. The streets [were] like pavements. No cars except for burned carcasses (what a symbol!).”

Sources

Denise Dubois-Jallais, “Sous le balcon d’Albertine, cinq mois, une révolution éclate,” Elle, nos. 1171, 1172, 1173, 17 June 1968.

Michèle Perrein, “Le droit de renaitre,” Elle, no. 1192, 21 October 1968, 35.

Elle, no. 1185, 2 September 1968.

Author, Interview with Monique Naudeix, Paris, 1 December 2014.

We will be posting a sneak peak of our Women Make Fashion/ Fashion Makes Women conference on the blog later today, for those who missed it. Watch this space for this special unscheduled post!

Ready-made Fashion and France’s Urban Fabric in Elle Magazine in 1963

April 17, 2015Posted by:

Alexis

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Screen Shot 2015-04-16 at 07.53.56

Bodies, dress and city space intersected in new ways in the 3rd May 1963 issue of Elle in an editorial that presented ready-made garments in toile, a linen textile. One photograph by Fouli Elia depicted a cross-legged model standing against the grid of the metal beams of a nondescript Modernist building that composed and dominated the photograph’s backdrop. She stared fixedly at something located off the page, and her look suggested that it was an open expanse of scenery, or an extension of her imposing architectural surroundings. Behind her, the building took on the greenish sheen of her shirt and skirt ensemble by the ready-made brand Stanley. Structure embodied the dressed model, both cast in the same hue, constructed from the same fabric. Likewise, the article’s text described clothing in spatial terms, and figure one was identified as “a large green space for this two-piece ensemble, comfortable and sweater style. In what? In toile fibranne.” This material, a rayon fabric similar to linen, was pictured alongside natural fibres in this spread. Yet the characteristics of this synthetic cloth, soft yet grainy, unstructured yet weighty, reflected paradoxes held within the fabric of the photograph. In contrast to the text, the image suggested a lack of space, through the subject’s close crop and the seemingly nonexistent distance between figure and building.

The editorial, with its images of models with outlined bodies superimposed onto buildings, appeared during a period of rapid urbanisation in France. From the 1950s and increasingly into the 1960s and 1970s, low-income housing estates, or Habitations à Loyer Moderé (HLM) were erected in cities’ suburbs to accommodate factory workers, immigrants, and Paris’ growing population. By 1964, there were at least 1,000 of these buildings in the three departments of the Parisian region. In direct contrast to deteriorating and crowded housing in Paris, the government promoted these cités, usually comprised of towers and high-rise blocks (grands ensembles) with park space, schools and other facilities, as symbols of France’s economic modernism and ‘progress.’ This language resembled that used to describe the developing French ready-to-wear, pictured increasingly in the fashion press during the 1950s and early 1960s. Articles in Elle also regularly discussed the housing transition; in 1961 for example, editor Anne-Marie Raimond surveyed women who lived in suburbs and sought to depict the vastness of these spaces and the new way of life they offered:

It is the most formidable exodus of modern time, causing the upheaval of landscapes as well as man’s customs and spirit. […] A new style is born, that of ‘garden cities,’ ‘ensembles,’ ‘residences,’ where sun and greenery come with the deed or lease. Inhabitants (almost) remain Parisian, Lyonnais, Lillois, but have changed rhythm and character. They blossom like plants uprooted from undersized pots, put into the wide earth.

As in the 1950s, descriptions such as this instilled the modernity and progress of the vast, new spaces in their female inhabitants. Elle’s 1963 article likewise conflated clothing, bodies and wide spaces, portraying garments as “very sunny dream ensemble[s],” and “To live in right away.” Yet, the incongruity between idealising text and subtly dark imagery hinted at growing criticism of these estates, and a heightened awareness of their realities.

These outer spaces likewise became normalised in magazine imagery. Pages in Elia’s editorial that displayed a fashion photograph beneath a landscape illustrated how magazines’ new definition of fashion city and urban space stretched to Paris’ suburbs and airport. One such image was cited as “Modern Paris. View from the southern highway between Paris and Orly.” Similarly, in light of Paris’ expansion, Henri Lefebvre wrote in 1970: “The urban fabric proliferates, extends itself, corrodes the residues of agrarian life.” In contrast to photographs of old, iconic, and static Paris (which traditionally upheld the symbolic construction of haute couture), these images visualised modern Paris in perpetual construction and expansion. Below this image, which stressed the vastness of suburban space and sky, a photograph pictured a model in front of a building. Like her above counterpart, the model seemed superimposed, and the frame could not contain her body. The caption identified her location as boulevard Lannes in Paris’ 16th arrondissement, the appropriate well-to-do setting for her expensive suit, in raw silk with and jersey blouse designed by Chloé, which was sold for 700 francs at the fashionable boutique Henry à la Pensée. Financial access to ready-to-wear was a constant promotional factor, which did not always correspond to reality. In this instance, readers were offered, yet barred from purchase of toile, and the ambiguous all-encompassing urban fabric of Paris.

Sources

“Faites vos plans sur la toile,” Elle, no. 906, 3 May 1963, 96, 99, 100, 102. Author’s translations.

Anne-Marie Raimond, “Une enquête une revelation une revolution: le visage et la vie des nouvelles banlieusardes,” Elle, no. 826, 20 October 1961, 84. Author’s translations.

Paul Clerc, Grands ensembles banlieues nouvelles: enquête démographique et psycho-sociologique. Paris: PUF, 1967.

Henri Lefebvre, The Urban Revolution, trans. Robert Bononno, Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota, 2003 [1970], 3.

Red Capes and Glitter Jelly Heels: An Interview with Curators Colleen Hill and Ariele Elia

April 10, 2015Posted by:

Alexis

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1.Museum at FIT website with image from the Comme des Garçons, Spring 2015 runway show — Museum at FIT website with image from the Comme des Garçons, Spring 2015 runway show

Unlicensed copy of Madeleine Vionnet’s “Little Horses” dress, rayon crepe, black and gold seed beads, c. 1925, USA, 76.125.1

Detail of "Little Horses" dress — Detail of “Little Horses” dress

I first met Colleen Hill, associate curator at The Museum at FIT during a visit to the museum archive to research garments by Emmanuelle Khanh in 2008. We bonded over our love of 1960s fashion and French culture. I met Ariele Elia, assistant curator, in 2011 at an exhibition opening—she was dressed as an 1890s tennis player and I went in 1860s croquet wear. And on 13th January the three of us caught up over coffee on 7th Avenue.

What were your reasons for choosing this career path?

CH: I’ve loved fashion, museums, and writing for as long as I can remember. I can’t imagine a job better suited to my interests.

AE: From a young age I was exposed to the inner workings of the fashion industry. My mother started off as a fashion designer, but ended up owning a series of women’s apparel boutiques. While working in her stores I enjoyed learning about the business side of fashion, but was more fascinated with the creative process of the designers. In college I majored in Art History, and almost went on to pursue an M.A. in that field, until I realised Fashion History existed. However, this was not a viable career option in California. So I moved to New York to continue my studies and could not be happier about that decision.

Your current project?

CH: I’m opening an exhibition in February 2016 called Fairy Tale Fashion. It will use both historical and contemporary garments to illustrate more than twelve fairy tales, including well-known stories such as “Little Red Riding Hood,” “Cinderella,” and “Sleeping Beauty.” In addition to offering a brief history of the fairy tales and their significance, the show will highlight their direct references to fashion.

AE: Currently I am co-curating an exhibition titled Global Fashion Capitals, set to open in June 2015. The first half of the exhibition looks at dynamics that allowed Paris, New York, London, and Milan to become established as global powers in fashion. While the second half of the exhibition explores emerging cities that attempt to rise as new fashion capitals, including Istanbul, São Paulo, Seoul, Mumbai, and Shanghai.

Your current object of fascination in the collection?

CH: I’m currently researching a hooded, red cape from the eighteenth century.

AE: I am fascinated with Madeleine Vionnet’s “Little Horses” dress from 1921. While researching for Faking It, I had found a few versions of this dress that I had assumed were unauthorised copies, including the one in our collection. Recently I had discovered that Eva BOEX, a French atelier was authorised to create copies of the dress. The description of her version is very close to the one in our collection, so I am hoping to find a sketch to confirm my findings.

Can you discuss your curatorial vision? What do you enjoy most about curating? What aspect do you find most challenging?

CH: I’ve organised numerous exhibitions in the Fashion History Gallery at The Museum at FIT, which are intended to be straightforward, educational, and, of course, historical. Within those parameters, I tend to select topics that are subtly provocative. For example, I’ve curated exhibitions about the role of women in the fashion industry, gender and fashion, sustainable fashion, and lingerie. I aim to put together shows that are accessible and entertaining, but also intelligent.

I find nearly every aspect of curatorial work to be enjoyable, but identifying a small but crucial bit of research is especially rewarding.

Like most curators, I would imagine, one of the most challenging aspects of my work is meeting short deadlines.

AE: I have curated a few exhibitions in the museum’s Fashion and Textile History Gallery. I love to investigate interdisciplinary topics within fashion such as fashion and technology and fashion law.

The aspect I enjoy most about curating is studying an object. It is incredible what a garment can tell you by just observing it.

One aspect that I am constantly working to improve is editing. There is so much information a curator would like to tell their public; however a curator must synthesise the content into a digestible form. I don’t want to overwhelm someone visiting the museum for the first time, but I also want to maintain an academic standard to a fashion historian. It’s a difficult balance!

Can you name an exhibition that marked you?

CH: My earliest museum memory is going to see Colleen Moore’s fairy castle at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. It’s essentially a massive, meticulously constructed doll’s house. I was completely fascinated by its beauty and intricacy, and also the way it was presented—with only one part of the castle lit at a time, allowing the visitor to focus on its details. I’m obviously still interested in fairy-tale worlds!

AE: Stylized Sculpture: Contemporary Japanese Fashion (2007) was the first fashion exhibition I had seen. I was in awe over the incredible shapes of the garments designed by Rei Kawakubo, Issey Miyake, and Yohji Yamamoto. It was here that I realised there were other people that spoke the same language I did.

Can you discuss a personal fashion memory?

CH: I found a copy of Radical Rags by Joel Lobenthal in my local library when I was ten years old. I became completely obsessed with it. The book affected the way I dressed, my interest in music, and my future career choice.

AE: I always have fond memories of my mother getting ready for work. She was a huge fan of Donna Karan in the 90s. Her 7 easy piece collection worked perfectly for my mom and her busy schedule. She always looked so elegant in her black wrap skirt, body suit, and large gold belt. I wish I could emulate her style.

Can you discuss an item of clothing or an accessory that you no longer have but still think about?

CH: I purchased a pair of Dr. Martens when I was about 14. They were brown with a subtle cheetah print. Since the shoes were second-hand, they didn’t even fit well, but I wore them with everything.

AE: When I was about 10 I owned a pair of glitter jelly heels. In the heel was an Eiffel Tower that floated in water and glitter like a snow globe. I wish I would have kept them!

If you could be dressed by any past couturier, who would it be?

CH: André Courrèges.

AE: Charles James. I absolutely love the architectural shapes he created! He made the women he dressed look so elegant. I wish I could have his Butterfly dress remade in lavender.

Observations from Several Sides of the Lens: on Women, Fabric and Space in Maria Kapajeva’s Photographs

January 9, 2015Posted by:

Alexis

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Maria Kapajeva, from the 'Interiors' series — Maria Kapajeva, from the ‘Interiors’ series

Women and space are frequent points of inquiry for London-based artist Maria Kapajeva. In her series entitled Interiors from 2012, she manipulates amateur photographs of Russian women in sexualised poses, and replaces their skin and bodily features with the bold pattern of surrounding wallpaper. Viewers’ sense of haptic visuality is roused by the tactility of the pictured textiles of home furnishings and clothing, including crushed velvets and synthetic satins. Pattern and texture intertwine so that space engulfs and integrates women subjects, while bodily absence paradoxically serves to remove their subjectivities from the image.

When I met Maria on 23rd May 2014 to discuss her work, she admitted that she chose the photographs for their post-Soviet interiors—easily recognisable through the wallpaper and bed covers’ prominent patterns—that she knew in her native Estonia. Yet the dated styles of the photographs’ interior decoration belie their more recent time of photography. This stylistic retrogression mirrors that in women’s lives. Wallpaper in lieu of skin serves to show the extent to which women in certain Eastern Bloc countries must still conform to a “domestic ideal.” Even as they attempt to stand out and become visible through poses in states of undress, they fail to escape the domination of their environment. In these absurd, integral images, objectified women are equated with domestic settings.

Maria explores women’s roles and the notion of integrality in different ways in her ongoing series A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Woman, in which she photographs women in their work environments. She explains that “[m]ost of these women have moved to a new country, as I have, not to get married, but to realize their own potential in whatever they do: write, draw, paint, photograph or invent. Working in collaboration with them, I try to find the ways to photograph each of them as a unique and strong personality in her own working environment.” The subject of one photograph, Elena, is thus defined as an artist by her studio space yet she stands out as an individual against its blurred details. Maria draws on such details—stacks of papers, folds of clothing, bric-a-brac—to shape the composition of these images. These minutiae also inform and complicate the construction of the sitter’s identity, but do not dominate as in Interiors.

Helena, from the 'A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Woman' — Elena, from the ‘A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Woman’ series

Eugenia, from the 'A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Woman' series — Eugenia, from the ‘A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Woman’ series

Maria prefers that the sitters dress as they would normally in their ‘natural’ environments, and clothing varies as widely as their diverse personalities. As opposed to the original viewers or photographers of the Interiors series, she withdraws herself from the equation. The image is untouched and raw, in the sense that she does not use supplemental lighting, filtering or cropping techniques. And the subject is meant to dress for no one but herself. Eugenia, for example, who wears a garment of her own design, stands in the open space of a London rooftop. As the wind blows her voluminous collar it comes into contact with her face. Her body is the site of narrative and identity, informed by the interaction between dress and exterior.

During our conversation I sensed that Maria, who believes that too much importance is placed on specific dress codes, did not want to broach the subject of clothing. She likes that, as a photography lecturer at the University for the Creative Arts (Farnham), she can dress as she wishes. But this freedom poses its own problems.

My experience as Maria’s most recent sitter for the Portrait of the Artist series in October replicated my own research into the use of dress and its representation in the construction of identity, and the relationship between dress, ideas of appropriateness and how this relates to specific space.

Alexis, from the 'A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Woman' series — Alexis, from the ‘A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Woman’ series

Like Maria’s raw photos, clothes on the body leave bare a host of personal paradoxes, details and foibles. My relationship with the black linen shirt I wore during my portrait, paired with black trousers, is complex. As is my connection to the space in which I was photographed—my bedroom—where personal and professional lines are blurred. The shirt’s long, well-worn life is evidenced by its loose weave in some places. Yet its history is concealed by its simplicity. Knowing that I loved to write about its designer, a dear friend found it for me at a Paris flea market. It is thus a piece of evidence and resource, and a link to people and places, yet its early life is a mystery. These elements, contained within the coarse fabric, are my secret, and constant reminders at each touch against my skin. As captured in Maria’s image of me, my clothing and surroundings combine to inform my ideas of self. Her photograph exposes these connections and foregrounds the emotional links we have to our dress, and the ways we use them to negotiate our presence.

Source:

Kapajeva, M. ‘About A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Woman’, http://www.mariakapajeva.com/a-portrait-of-the-artist-as-a-young-woman/

Paris, capitale prestigieuse de la mode…

November 14, 2014Posted by:

Alexis

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Tone on tone, an image of two fashion models placed against the faded backdrop of Paris reveals multiple layers of reality, space and modernity. I discovered it as I studied materials in the archives of the Parisian department store Galeries Lafayette (GL) for my doctoral research. Included in a Spring/Summer 1956 GL catalogue, the spread followed the example of many fashion magazines that used the city of Paris in their symbolic construction of fashion. In her study of Paris fashion, Valerie Steele argues that the city had historically been the symbolic centre in the ‘geography of fashion,’ based on its ‘knowledgeable fashion performers and spectators’ and ability to stage fashion. Magazines visualised Paris’ fashion hegemony and situated their readers in the capital, in terms of current events and happenings, the actual retail locations of the pictured clothing, and, through imagery, as a fantasised or imagined place for their use. Readers of the GL catalogue, through the purchase of a relatively inexpensive ready-made dress, such as those pictured here, could themselves access the privileged spaces of the capital. Yet the soft rendering of Paris, in the style of aquarelle paintings sold to tourists, transformed the city into a mirage. Removed by a colour tone, the dresses – in their all-over printed, floral-patterned fabric made of synthetic “Poplin nylon” – expressed a similar falseness. Plus, the artificial quality of the models – pert yet frozen in space – was reinforced by clothing that hindered movement, and contained the body through buttons, belts, and underskirts.

The models are posed as friends, shoppers and tourists, and, sandwiched between the Eiffel Tower and Sacré Cœur, connected different ends of Paris. The shop was in fact located between these two Parisian sites, and was itself a veritable stop in tourism itineraries as fashion was ingrained in Paris’ cultural heritage. Another guide published several years earlier by the department store Printemps titled Notre beau Paris…et ses Environs listed Paris’ sites and monuments amid advertisements of the city’s shops and artisans. Like the GL catalogue, the cover, which de-contextualised these places and pictured them atop clouds, mythologized the city and the act of shopping, and made Paris readable. This visualisation of the city was especially comforting in view of the changes taking place in the city. From the 1950s Paris was characterised by the growth of mass motorised transport, large-scale urbanisation, the demolition of old working-class quarters, and a large push to the city’s periphery and new suburbs. And filtered through traditional views of Paris, fashion, with its ever-changing nature and increasing industrialisation in the 1950s, allowed women to safely experience modernity.

These ‘contained’ images depicted Paris as a boutique whose objects for sale – women, clothing and city – were neatly encapsulated in a picture. Other catalogue images of models posed next to shop mannequins bridged the gap between outdoor city and indoor shopping space. The stylised gestures of the living models aligned them to their plastic counterparts and both became commoditised and imbued with Paris’ magic, as Agnès Rocamora has described the trope of La Parisienne in fashion magazines. The lines between shopping, looking and being seen were thus blurred in the catalogue’s amalgamation of street and vitrine.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Florence Brachet Champsaur for allowing me to visit the archive and show the images here.

Sources

Rocamora, A. (2009) Fashioning the City: Paris, Fashion and the Media. London; I B Tauris, p. 99.

Steele, V. (1988) Paris Fashion: A Cultural History. New York: Oxford, pp. 7, 137, 135.

Exhibition update: Goodbye summer, hello winter! Planning ‘Winter Mode’

November 4, 2014Posted by:

Alexis

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Co-curator-Fruzsina-Befeki-puts-together-a-mock-display — Co-curator Fruzsina Bekefi puts together a mock display

As they design fashion collections, with their clear link to upcoming seasons, designers must continually have the impression of being projected into the future. Fashion’s futurity affects shoppers too, who imagine their bodies in clothing that relates to seasonal elements. Co-curating the display Winter Mode (with Dr Rebecca Arnold and Fruzsina Befeki), one of the exhibitions that constitute Fashioning Winter at Somerset House, has resulted in a similar detachment between present and future for me. Summer and now autumn has been winter focused, as our display explores wintry fashion illustrations from the 1910s and 1920s, and specifically, how illustrators connected the subject to her environment, and represented at once the style, modernity, warmth and comfort of winter dress.

And as a rather warm autumn lingers, installation has already begun! While we, along with head curator Shonagh Marshall and dress historians such as Amy de la Haye, install our individual displays, technicians work to erect the ice skating rink that has inhabited the courtyard of Somerset House for fifteen years each winter. Both rink and exhibition open to the public on 11th November.

Although our installation is only two days away, there is still much to do. Our display showcases the fashion journals Gazette du Bon Ton, Femina and Journal des dames et des modes, and we’ve chosen the individual fashion plates as they relate to our three themes: The Elements, Fashion and Sport. We decided on the content months ago, but we must constantly adapt and adjust the display in view of issues that arise, relating to conservation or to display case constraints for example. And as display objects change so must our overall aesthetic. In the above photograph taken several weeks ago Fruzsina works on one of our mock exhibits! We are especially thankful to Antony Hopkins, Kilfinan Librarian, Head of Book, Witt and Conway Libraries at the Courtauld Institute, and Kate Edmondson, Paper Conservator at the Courtauld Gallery, for their support and guidance during this process.

Each journal on display will be identified by a caption that recalls an antique price tag, which we hope will carry viewers to a figurative shopping space, embellished by layers of history. And although they won’t be able to handle the journals on display, we’ve created a booklet for them to touch and peruse, with the help of the exhibition designer Amy Preston. It is our abstract interpretation of a historic fashion journal, and includes a fashion plate, editor’s letter, and other surprises. Will this intimate interaction heighten readers’ bodily sense of setting, and plunge them into winter? And those who attend some of the exhibitions’ associated events, such as our December workshop, will obtain their very own copy!

Self-expression, space and style: a conversation with Camille Branda at Bergdorf’s

October 17, 2014Posted by:

Alexis

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Camille 01 — Camille, 4th Floor, Bergdorf Goodman

Camille 02 — 4th Floor, Couture and Evening Collections, Bergdorf Goodman

Camille 03 — 3rd Floor, Designer Collections, Bergdorf Goodman

Camille 04 — View of Bergdorf Goodman from 5th Avenue

Camille 06 — Camille, 1960s, Brooklyn, New York

Camille 07 — Camille, 1970s, Brooklyn, New York

Camille Branda, associate and personal shopper in couture and evening collections at Bergdorf Goodman since 2011, considers the shop a museum, in that it is a space defined as much by beautiful things, as the creative people that work with them. In September, we met and discussed how these elements intersect to shape one of New York’s most iconic specialty stores. It was a pleasure to wander its spaces together, and admire the craftsmanship and ideas behind the garments. And Camille has a discerning eye – before launching her own Image Consulting Business a few years ago, she led a fulfilling career as the VP of Product Development and Sourcing for The Echo Design Group, an accessory and home décor company. While there, she travelled the world to look for novel fabrics, products and manufacturers. Camille relives this experience of discovery every day at BG, as interaction with designers enhances her understanding and appreciation of the clothing. It is the constant flow of diverse people – from the designers to those that work on the window displays and customers – that make BG an ever-changing creativity hub. This is reflected in the way she talks about her job:

Everyday I arrive excited, as I approach 5^th Avenue, and see the store and its magnificent window displays. This may sound silly, but it really does thrill me. We start most mornings with a clinic, directed by a designer or designer representative, who introduces us to a particular product, to understand this brand and its seasonal inspiration. We then go live and meet the customers. Curtain unfolds at 10:00 and the real show begins!

This sense of theatre is reflected in the movement and crowds that characterise the store’s ambience. And Camille clearly moves to this fast rhythm: when we met, an hour before her next appointment, she seamlessly conversed with me in between phone calls to clients and fitters. Perhaps it is the personal shoppers, who are the most integrated within the intricate spaces of the shop: they tie all the floors together in their creation of looks. And their clients, who Camille describes as more “educated” than ever, demand thorough service. In turn, she has learned much about the many individual and cultural perceptions of fashion and the body. For Camille, ‘the “one-on-one” relationship is intimate and rewarding. We talk lifestyle, goals, preferences, and challenges, as well as colour, style and proportion as we walk through the store to feel for likes and dislikes… I am not only interested in making a big sale, I want to build a relationship with customers for a lifetime.’ Through close observation – the unspoken is most revealing – and listening, she is able to best advise on clothing that ‘accommodate[s] and improve[s] a customer’s personal style.’

Clothing is one element of a puzzle that shapes the picture of one’s image or style, based on self-presentation, expression, and the physical realities of the body in a certain space. In a typical day for Camille, she might style outfits, as ritualistic as that for a wedding or debutante presentation, or plan wardrobes to correspond to the minimalist space of an art gallery, a formal state dinner, or business and casual settings. This multi-layered definition of style was a thread that ran through our conversation, especially when we discussed unique characters, such as the late American heiress, horticulturalist and collector Doris Duke. Camille became fascinated with Duke after a recent visit to her mansion in Newport, Rhode Island, whose objects and decoration reflected its owner’s extraordinary life and unique outlook. Similarly, Camille’s memory of her mother, as ‘sophisticated, polished and elegant’ and ‘a true style icon,’ lives on in objects and pictures, with which she surrounds herself. She joked that her mother ‘groomed [her] for Bergdorf Goodman at a very tender age,’ and a few days after our meeting, she sent me a childhood photograph of herself in a carefully constructed ensemble ‘styled by Mom.’ Taken in her bedroom, she wears a coat with a large white fur collar over a dress, accessorised with leather gloves, a bag, and an ornamented hat. Her prim crossed-legged pose completes the image.

As she grew older, Camille used fashion as her own means of creativity and self-expression. She recalls wearing a shearling coat and printed headband while in high school. The processes of styling and wearing this outfit were, for Camille, transformative experiences that made her feel ‘so cool and simply amazing.’ Through them she could assert her independence, as well as relate to the wardrobes of films, including Love Story and Annie Hall.

Camille has thus always combined the realities of fashionable dressing, with a ‘romantic, fun’ fantasy realm. Throughout her career, Camille has honed her expertise and fashion eye, and now similarly seeks to enhance and elevate her clients’ images to match Bergdorf’s own, stylish reputation.

Welcome!

October 13, 2014Posted by:

Alexis

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Please join us in welcoming this year’s MA students on the course Documenting Fashion: Modernity, Films and Image in America and Europe, 1920-1945, taught by Dr Rebecca Arnold. Look out for their posts when they join our blog team next month!

Collar meets Bar: historicism and circuitous timelines at Dior

September 2, 2014Posted by:

Alexis

Fashion Now Uncategorized No Comments

One look from Dior’s Autumn-Winter collection, which was presented in July, comprises a top and trousers in blue taffeta. Its individual elements present a synthesis of references and blur the boundaries between casual and formal wear: while the trousers evoke twentieth-century industrial workwear, the top’s cut and embroidered motifs recall both men’s court dress tailoring and women’s bodices of the eighteenth century. The ensemble forms part of Flight a la Française, one of the collection’s eight themes, where, as artistic director Raf Simons explained, “the flight suit meets the traditional dress; bodices and embroidery transposed at times, zippers and silk taffeta utilised.” Like his description, the overall collection reads as a sketch of the designer’s creative process, a collation of transhistorical stylistic and technical sources. And as I viewed the collection I got the impression of being carried across history, never remaining in any one place or time.

Simons’ first collection for Dior in 2012 featured several references to Christian Dior’s 1940s and 1950s creations, such as the Bar jacket. His tendency to look backwards is a logical means of establishing continuity between his work and the historic fashion house. As in politics, the field of fashion has shown recurrently how comfort is found in historicism and restoration. And in one way, Simons was charged with restoring the house after John Galliano’s dismissal in February 2011. As Mark Holgate remarked of Simons’ first collection: “Dior, an esteemed component of the French cultural establishment, and therefore of national pride, is relying on the belief that Simons will be the designer to rejuvenate its sense of beauty, and—a factor not to be underestimated—declare its standing in the world.”

These workings are not unlike Christian Dior’s own brand of historicism when he opened the house in the late 1940s, at a moment when France sought to re-attain its place in fashion and politics, both left shaken after the Second World War. As Alexandra Palmer has written, “Dior designed a contrived and reproducible vision of a new elite French woman that drew on hybrid aristocratic European roots. The Dior woman recalled the nobility of eighteenth-century France, the Second Empire and the Belle Epoque.” Yet Dior’s Bar Suit, with its clear reference to the structured silhouettes of previous centuries and apparent departure from the immediate past, must have appeared very new to contemporary audiences. Such examples illustrate perfectly Walter Benjamin’s observation that “[f]ashion has an eye for what is up-to-date, wherever it moves in the jungle of what was. It is the tiger’s leap into that which has gone before.”

Likewise, Simons clearly explicated his trans-directional leaping last July: “I was very interested in the process of finding something extremely modern through something very historical; particularly through a juxtaposition of different themes.” The resulting collection presented allusions to various types of garments, such as the courtly justacorps, and silhouettes from the eighteenth century, 1910s, 1920s, and 1950s. These were not random selections however, and Simons went beyond “historical inspiration” to question “how the foundations of one era are based on another, how the future is based on the past.” Simons’ leaping was more like time travel, and he sought to infuse the present with the past, and vice versa. This dialectical vision extended to the various processes used, and Simons created new techniques, such as the “resin punctuated fringe” that replaced beadwork on his version of a 1920s dress. And he continued to rethink Dior’s designs, themselves linked to earlier periods. Simons’ “form language” challenges traditional linear timelines of fashion creation, a major departure from the days when silhouettes progressed strictly from one season to the next. Most fascinating, he has exposed his creative practice, which seeks to question the mechanisms of the fashion system.

References:

‘Across Time’ (2014) DiorMag, 7 July, http://www.dior.com/magazine/tw_ct/News/Across-Time

Benjamin, W. (1940) ‘Theses on the Philosophy of History’, note XIV, http://seansturm.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/benjamin-theses-on-the-philosophy-of-history.pdf

Holgate, M. (2012) ‘Monsieur Simons: Raf Simons at Dior’, Vogue, 14 November. http://www.vogue.com/magazine/article/monsieur-simons-raf-simons-at-dior/#

Palmer, A. (2009) Dior: A New Look, A New Enterprise (1947-57), London, V&A, p. 32.

The summer body

August 12, 2014Posted by:

Alexis

Summer Uncategorized No Comments

The contents of the display box outside shoe shop Donna Più encapsulate summer. As befits its tropical location in Alghero, a Sardinian town overlooking the Mediterranean Sea, the shop’s display box house hats and sunglasses to protect from the sun, and gold-coloured scarves, bags and jewellery to show off bronzed skin. The sandals and bikinis in the bottom row are brightly coloured, in step with a rainbow assortment of lipstick and nail varnish. The coordinated chaos of the contents resemble the look of the many other boxes that adorn the walls of the town’s historic centre, containing jewellery made from the island’s abundant coral reefs. While these natural products are wrought into charms and pendants for consumers who wish to personify a season or place, the creators make clothing and accessories that prescribe how people should present themselves in the summertime.

Seen together, the objects in the box also evoke the female form. Joanne Entwistle wrote that “So significant are clothes to our readings of the body that they can come to stand for sexual difference in the absence of a body.” And, although Donna Più predominantly sells shoes, it seeks to signify ‘more’ than just that. Its fragmented name meaning, ‘women more’, calls to mind all things feminine. But whose definition of femininity is it? As women stroll through the streets and glimpse their reflections in the box’s glass, they project their image onto the display. Fragments entwine with inner thoughts, and become bodies, ideal feminine tourists, or more.

Source:

Entwistle, J. (2000) The Fashioned Body: Fashion, Dress and Modern Social Theory, Cambridge: Polity Press, p. 141.