Author Archives: cburgess

Festive Fantasies

December 21, 2018Posted by:

This is not a joke: last year, I made a Keynote presentation of things I wanted for the holidays. It was called ‘Lacey’s presentation-chic 22nd Christmas-cum-23rd birthday vision board’. It culminated with a a request for balloons, and I made it entirely for the pleasure of creating it—and presenting it to my mom.

St. Vincent said something about how seduction occurs when the invitation to the party is actually better than the party. This is true about so many things, including the holidays. Who cares about one day when you get the build up of a month’s worth—at least!—of lights, fir trees, wreaths and baubles, roasted chestnuts, the Grinch and Charlie Brown music?

I realise this isn’t universal. (For example, talking to my friend in Paris the other week, I learned that, despite having gone to college in New York and having two small children, she had never seen How the Grinch Stole Christmas. I quickly remedied that by showing her the best Christmas song in American history.) But bear with me. I think we can all relate to the thrill of anticipation, a thrill that overshadows whatever it is that it’s building towards. There’s such unattached delight in knowing that state of affairs from the onset.

This year for the holidays, we have turned to the timeless wish list—dress-related, of course! I had such fun reading about everyone’s desired objects, whether they be fantastic or grounded in reality, and hope you do as well.

Happy holidays from the Class of 2018-2019!

Daisy

Not coming from a Fashion or Art History background, the first time I saw Cristóbal Balenciaga’s work was at the V&A Shaping Fashion exhibition earlier this year. I absolutely fell in love with the vivid green colour and incredibly bold design of this dress. It is probably completely impractical and I have absolutely nowhere to wear it but I love it and I just want to have it so I can stare at it!

Installation view of V&A Balenciaga Shaping Fashion exhibition showing evening dress and cape, silk gazar, Cristóbal Balenciaga. Credit: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/fashion/style/balenciaga-va-7-reasons-should-see-fashion-exhibition-year/

For some reason I was watching the ‘Never Forget You’ (The Noisettes) video a few weeks ago and I thought Shingai Shoniwa’s punk-esque outfit was amazing, particularly the silver docs. My go to outfit for a night-out is a sequin dress with black patent docs but I would love to upgrade to a sequin dress with silver docs!

Ellen

My dream present is this Giambattista Valli autumn/ winter 2015 haute couture skirt. I love this because of the bright ombré colour and the exaggerated size and volume of the skirt. I can only imagine how it would feel to wear this, and I love that it has next to no practicality. In essence, this fulfils my childhood dreams of a bona fide princess skirt.

I am ashamed to admit that I’ve avoided getting a sight test for 2 years and, furthermore, have had the same glasses for four years… So, I have decided to get a new pair. I love the idea of clear frames, but these are slightly tinted a blush pink. I wear my glasses all the time (I’m lazy and haven’t sorted contact lenses), so I aim for a mixture of something practical but also stylish.

Fran

So, the gift on my list that will never arrive (boo Saint Nick, you bore) is a Christopher Kane AW18 crystal-embellished black, twill blazer. I would dress this bejewelled number up with a black tailored flare-trouser and a classic Chanel-red lip. Maybe even a pair of huge, over-sized Oscar de la Renta crystal earrings—though that could be overkill. OR be a little less theatrical and wear it with pair of classic Hedi Slimane Saint Laurent leather trousers (maybe AW15?—I am still very much in the realm of fantasy here, in case you were confused.) Running with this theme, I would paint my face with some YSL Rouge Pur Couture in Fuschia Innocent and a dash of jet-black mascara (and most likely a splattering of glitter).

I am desperate to sit by a log fire with an amaretto-infused mulled wine and read Emily Spivack’s Worn in New York: 68 Sartorial Memoirs of the City (2017).

Another (less dress/fashion themed) publication I am very interested in is Sarah McBride’s Tomorrow Will Be Different (2018). I listen to an amazing podcast called How to be a Girl by Marlo Mack, and the last episode (Episode XXVI, 6 November 2018) was dedicated to McBride’s inspirational career; she is an amazingly strong woman. Also, listen to this podcast NOW—it’s a whole thing.

Imogene

I would want a front row ticket to a Chanel Haute Couture fashion show… that would be a fantasy in itself.

Left: Chanel Haute Couture Show Spring 2017
Right: Helmut Newton photo of Yves Saint Laurent’s ‘Le Smoking’, ‘Rue Aubriot, Paris, 1975’, 1975, French Vogue

For my more realistic gift, I’d like to have an enlarged photograph of an iconic fashion image – a Helmut Newton photograph or a photograph of a Grace Coddington fashion editorial.

Jeordy

In the alternate reality where I have rich friends and family and have fashioned myself after Eartha Kitt, the ‘Victoire’ Clutch with Shell from Rocio (or literally any of their other clutches) would be on my wish-list.

Acacia and shell ‘Victoire’ clutch by Rocio. Photo taken from the author

Each stunning, limited-edition bag is handmade in the Philippines using native acacia wood. This clutch is acacia and shell, and features an 18k gold chain and clasp, and faux suede lining. It would look simply marvellous with a silk or velvet evening gown, don’t you think? It is available at Fortum and Masons, if anyone wants to be my Santa Baby this year!

Even realistically, buying clothes for your loved ones for Christmas is risky business, especially when they (I) wear mostly vintage clothing. For this reason, this year I have my eye on the novel and extraordinary bespoke creations at The Emperor’s Old Clothes, a vintage and one-of-a-kind clothing boutique in Brighton.

Cropped jacket and miniskirt sets from The Emperor’s Old Clothes. Photo courtesy of Instagram

Their unique sets—either a pencil or circle skirt and crop-top, or cropped jacket and miniskirt— are handmade with vintage fabrics, making them especially one-of-a-kind. The Emperor’s Old Clothes’ all-female team are paid a living wage, making their products ethical on top of being environmentally friendly and unique, all of my criteria for a great gift.

Top and skirt sets from The Emperor’s Old Clothes. Photo courtesy of Instagram

Lacey

It’s not just that I want this dress: it’s that I want a reason to have this dress. If I were to dress up like the Sugar Plum Fairy, you better believe I’d have the social connections and sparkly evening plans to go with it. I’m already worried about how to get my hair to behave…

Lately, my friends and I have talked about having patrons and sponsors—people to magically offer us jobs and provide goods like above. Until that happens, I ran out of my Atelier Cologne clementine perfume last year and am dying for more…

Marielle

I dream of an opportunity to wear this Yohji Yamamoto gown I saw at the Fashion and Lace Museum in Brussels, and of an occasion to wear it!

But I could more realistically swing a skirt with reversible sequins, a trend I love for this year, and perfect for a holiday party (or any other day)!

Useful and Beautiful? William Morris and H&M

December 7, 2018Posted by:

cburgess

Coincidentally, two days after I asked whether the bourgeois elite ever matched their upholstery to the fabric of their dress, I took myself to the William Morris Gallery to work out what I thought about the H&M x Morris & Co. collaboration. Spoiler: while I am decidedly annoyed with myself for buying a pretty but unnecessary book about mazes (labyrinths have been on my mind – what else?), I remain ambivalent about the latest of the Swedish fashion chain’s myriad partnerships.

A West End window, emblazoned with the autumn partnership. Photo by author

On H&M’s campaign page, the shopper is encouraged to get lost ‘in a world of exquisite original patterns and modern tributes to the work of William Morris, one of the nineteenth century’s most celebrated designers’, in celebration of ‘nature, style and timelessness’. Two models stride through a moor where they offer daisies, peer through windows, dunk enamel cups in basins, and snap pics with a vintage camera, self-referentially underscoring the ad’s amateur film footage look to induce the brand of lifestyle envy that only the 30-second fashion advertisement can. Then: an array of womenswear, ranging from £5.99 to £79.99, though neither the fabric hairband nor the wool-blend coat book-ending the spectrum represent actual collaboration pieces. Out of 90 products, 33 are William Morris & Co. x H&M. And so while there is nothing extraordinary about a two-pack of knee socks, the collection is meant to be a composition of heavy, heady historical references attenuated by standard H&M basics. Pair pleated skirts, maxi dresses and printed wide trousers with knit jumpers, Chelsea boots and faux fur coats: one can ‘curate’ outfits in a way that, in the age of online shopping, would normally never bear mentioning but which happens to resonate particularly with Morris’s artistic ethos: hand-picked Art for Art’s sake…and for everyone else’s.

A selection of pieces from the H&M x Morris & Co. collaboration. From https://
www2.hm.com/en_gb/ladies/shop-by-feature/1288a-morris-co-x-hm.html?sort=ascPrice&imagesize=
small&image=stillLife&offset=0&page-size=90

William Morris was one of the 19th century’s romantic, disappointing sons who abandoned a future in the church in favour of much more earthly realms. Getting a taste of artistic camaraderie after falling in with the Pre-Raphaelites, larking about on Rossetti’s hilarious ‘Jovial Campaign’ and embarking upon a group artistic housewarming project, he and six partners—whom he eventually bought out—founded the interior decorating business Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. in 1861. Disillusioned with modernism and industrial modes of production and radically nostalgic for an age of highly artisanal craftsmanship, Morris pioneered a sort of anti-Industrial Revolution. As a progressive socialist and firm believer that beauty belonged to the masses, he also understood the limits to what could only ever ideally be a democratic model, apparently regretting that his ‘his high quality, handmade products were beyond the means of ordinary working people’ (William Morris Gallery). In a move similar to that of 19th century couture houses, his evolving company launched more affordable lines to attract a wider range of clientele – the interior design’s analogue of fashion’s ready-to-wear.

Mannequins dressed in collaboration pieces at H&M. Photo by author

While the ideal Morris client would have afforded an exquisite, hand-crafted, bespoke interior – despite the designer’s empathy for broader swathes of society – there is nothing inherently bespoke in today’s accessible, ubiquitous fashion lines. To be fair, what H&M has done is, superficially, no different from what countless museum gift shops – commercial spaces with much closer ties to art and history – do: if the scarf my mom wears at the Huntington Gallery is not printed with a Morris design, it certainly shares the look. Even his contemporaries ‘dressed themselves with his wall hangings’ (William Morris Gallery). Perhaps it is simply that, what with H&M as an established, popular clothing store, I am more inclined to critically analyse the partnership in terms of fashion and art history and get caught up in notions of integrity; and because Morris had such striking aesthetic principles, I am more invested in an ideological dialogue that I find lacking. Ultimately, the collaboration between Morris & Co. and a mostly-affordable fast fashion company that tends to satisfy and disappoint me at an equal pace oscillates between seeming antithetical and completely fitting. I have not purchased anything, nor do I plan to, and, as mentioned above, I remain ambivalent. But perhaps it would be more fitting to frame this ambivalence as a blossoming response to William Morris’s motto, ‘Si je puis: Pourquoi pas?’

Rose, c’est la vie: Pink at the Museum at FIT

November 2, 2018Posted by:

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Although my aunt coincidentally just spoke of ‘edible colour’ in terms of bento lunches and not the Fashion Institute of Technology, that would be taking The Museum at FIT’s current special exhibit, a survey of pink fashion spanning three centuries, to its (il)logical conclusion.

I used to rip handfuls of petals off my grandmother’s roses, because I didn’t know what else to do with the colour and, in batik class, drenched a handkerchief in what looked like pink blood well beyond the purpose of saturation. More recently, Elle Beauty’s lipstick smash videos and their muted clacks, scrapes and smears have satisfied… something, with form and purpose seemingly destroyed to become pure, shapeless colour. And so, Maison Schiaparelli’s fall 2015-16 silk chiffon gown, a pillar of ‘Shocking Pink’, inspires a familiar urge: visual obsession manifested as base, physical desire – ‘I want to eat it,’ I texted my aunt. ‘I want to rip it.’

Schiaparelli Paris Silk chiffon gown, fall 2015-16.

This Schiaparelli figures amongst approximately 80 ensembles recounting ‘Pink: The History of a Punk, Pretty, Powerful Color’, from dresses that look like Ladurée pastries to suits that look like rag doll fetish-wear. ‘Pink’ spotlights one of the most auratic of features, literally – the clothing glows under the effects of lighting and black background – and figuratively. With its history of elevation, commodification, codification and reclamation, the colour evokes seemingly endless ideas: youth, gender, queerness, class, modernity, imagination and fashionability.

The anteroom presents a brief overview of pink that one might expect: a chronological display of a stereotypically feminine colour beginning with an 1857 taffeta dress in watermelon and ending with the business suit of the 1980s and ’90s. If the main gallery doesn’t subvert this initial presentation, it certainly nuances and elasticises it, grouping ensembles thematically to tell a different story: a story of an elegant, ungendered colour that emerged from nameless indifference in the 18th century to paint the French royal court – despite pink dyes being used in China, Japan and India for much longer – before its 19th century feminisation; a colour to be reclaimed in excessive/transgressive displays of fantastic (sarcastic?) femininity.

‘Pink’ cites colour historian Michel Pastoureau to clarify that, despite overwhelming associations, ‘there is no transnational truth to colour perception.’ It’s strange that reflections of light with no inherent truth or physical body can drive trends, enchant or repulse generations, and make me feel so viscerally. The clothing’s object-ness, reinforced by how invitingly tactile some of the ensembles are – the silk ruffles of Paquin’s 1897 chiffon evening cape, or the bubblegum pleather ones of Comme des Garçons’ 2016 ‘18th-Century Punk’ – combines with the intensity of the colour to suggest you can hold the pink, know and consume and be consumed by it.

Comme des Garçon Pleather, faux fur, rubber, and synthetic ensemble, fall 2016.

Pink is on point as colour and exhibition subject, all-inclusively staining book jackets, home décor, and men’s wellness campaigns as of late. Its prevalence, and the increasingly broken gender codes thereof, means today’s pink both continues to attract and loses its bite.

Though I still want to bite it.

‘Pink: The History of a Punk, Pretty, Powerful Color‘ is on view at The Museum of FIT until January 5, 2019.

All photos taken by the author.

Marie Antoinette’s Street Comeback

October 6, 2016Posted by:

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Marie Antoinette by John Galliano for Christian Dior (2000). Caroline Weber discusses Galliano’s creation in Queen of Fashion: What Marie Antoinette Wore to the Revolution (2006). As Weber notes, ‘one of the gown's two embroidered hip panels depict the notorious French queen frolicking at her country palace in shepherdess costume; the other shows her walking to the guillotine in rags. These details rightly suggest that her fate was inextricably intertwined with her clothing choices.' — Marie Antoinette by John Galliano for Christian Dior (2000). Caroline Weber discusses Galliano’s creation in Queen of Fashion: What Marie Antoinette Wore to the Revolution (2006). As Weber notes, ‘one of the gown’s two embroidered hip panels depict the notorious French queen frolicking at her country palace in shepherdess costume; the other shows her walking to the guillotine in rags. These details rightly suggest that her fate was inextricably intertwined with her clothing choices.’

The second instalment of Rihanna’s collaboration with German sportswear brand Puma was unveiled during Paris Fashion Week. The inspiration behind the collection: Marie Antoinette. The result: street-style-cum-gym-class versions of Madame Déficite (and a couple of Messieurs). In Milan, Fendi had a few flowery, Marie Antoinette moments as well. A reminder perhaps that the French queen is celebrating her 10^th anniversary as a contemporary fashion icon – since Sofia Coppola put her on screen in her 2006 biopic and Vogue on the cover of its September issue. While never entirely absent – Madonna masqueraded as Marie Antoinette for a 1990 MTV performance of ‘Vogue’ and later in the promotional material of her 2004 ‘Reinvention’ Tour, while John Galliano featured his version of the queen in his Fall 2000 collection for Christian Dior – her aura arguably reached new heights. As The New York Times’ Alix Browne put it at the time: ‘M.A., it seems, is officially a brand.’ This is yet another comeback.

Rihanna broke into the Ivory Tower of Parisian fashion with a sportswear pastiche of Marie Antoinette’s sartorial legacy. A legacy crafted in part through subsequent, sugarcoated resurgences since little is left of her actual wardrobe, which was almost entirely destroyed during the French Revolution

These Marie Antoinette vibes come on the heel of the Autumn/Winter 2016 shows’ 18^th century-inspired collections. Rei Kawakubo devised an 18^th-century version of the punks for Comme des Garçons. John Galliano at Maison Martin Margiela revived his ties to the Incroyables – the dandified, aristocratic youth of France’s Directoire years (1795-1799) and the theme of his seminal graduation collection of 1984. Shayne Olivier of New York label Hood By Hair also seemed to riff on their legacy. Assessing these 18^th-century/punk revivals, T Magazine’s Alexander Fury argued that the Incroyables were in many ways the rebellious precedents of the rebellious 1970s movement. If not message, they shared means – dress as a form of protest. Fury noted:

‘The Incroyables emerged in the shadow of the revolution and the deaths of the Terror; punk sparked during the crippling recession of the early 1970s, alongside the oil crisis, the fall of Nixon and three-day week in Great Britain. Perhaps these echoes of the Incroyables are emerging now in reaction to similarly unsettled times…’

If 18^th-century revivals can be read as a desire for dissent, what role does Marie Antoinette play in it?

In her modern guises, Marie Antoinette epitomises an assertive individuality that befits contemporary cravings for uniqueness and fashion’s promise to help achieve it. In the wake of Coppola’s film for example, she was heralded as a rebellious teen ‘who rocked Versailles’ for the purpose of selling ‘dramatic new silhouettes.’ If her body had been the site of ‘crucial political and cultural contests,’ it was now the site to express, in too diluted ways perhaps, teenage alienation – and a highly profitable highbrow rebelliousness.

Kristen Dunst on the cover of Vogue’s September issue of 2006, shot by Annie Leibovitz. You can view the full editorial here.

But perhaps the stylistic extravagance she embodies has indeed re-emerged as a tool to manifest, if unwittingly, a form of (mild) dissent. Against the enduring lure of a lofty minimalism, Marie Antoinette offers excess as a counter-model. And excess, it seems, is a trend (think Gucci). A Marie Antoinette inflected wardrobe is an excuse to pair – as in Rihanna’s collection – pink lace, brocade, ribbons, ruffles, heels, pearls and so on, all at once. This time, however, to stroll the streets rather than VIP parties (at least in theory).

Thanks to Pop star royalty, Marie Antoinette has resurfaced as a potential street style star.

Rihanna paired the decadent extravagance of Marie Antoinette’s style with the slouchy comfortness of sportswear basics. The collection can be viewed here.

Further readings

On Marie Antoinette:

Dena Goodman and Thomas E. Kaiser, eds., Marie-Antoinette: Writings on the Body of a Queen (New York: Routledge Member of the Taylor and Francis Group, 2003).

Caroline Weber, Queen of Fashion: What Marie Antoinette Wore to the Revolution (New York, NY: Holt, Henry & Company, 2006).

On the lasting appeal of minimalism:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/31/magazine/the-oppressive-gospel-of-minimalism.html?_r=0

For a discussion of minimalism in high fashion:

Rebecca Arnold, ‘Luxury and Restraint: Minimalism in 1990s Fashion,’ in The Fashion Business; Theory, Practice, Image, ed. Nicola White and Ian Griffiths (Oxford and New York: Berg, 2000), 167—81.

Terence Donovan at The Photographers gallery

September 29, 2016Posted by:

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Terence Donovan, Chloé by Karl Lagerfeld, 1978.

‘Manteaux arts modernes’ and ‘Du nouveau sous le tunnel,’ French Elle, September issues of 1965 and 1966.

Terence Donovan, ‘Dressed Overall,’ Nova, 1974.

British photographer Terence Donovan (1936 – 1996) helped redefine fashion photography in the 1960s. Alongside David Bailey and Brian Duffy, Donovan took part in the elaboration of a ‘new vision.’ Youthful, street-bound, unabashedly sexual and decidedly experimental, the images produced by the ‘The Terrible Three’ (as Cecil Beaton would refer to them) reflected the aspirations of a new generation. The unassuming Donovan is perhaps the lesser-known figure of the flamboyant trio.

Curated by photographic historian Robin Muir, the retrospective comprised a large number of fashion prints, magazine copies and portraits, an array of personal objects (Donovan’s studio books for instance) and examples of his music videos (the notorious Addicted To Love by Robert Palmer). The exhibition’s first section covered the 1960s – his early years, from the opening of his studio in 1959 to 1969. The second section straddled four-decades of work from the 1970s to his last, monumental ‘Cool Britannia’ shoot for GQ published just after his abrupt death in 1996.

The series titled ‘Manteaux arts modernes’ and ‘Du nouveau sous le tunnel’ produced for French Elle’s September issues of 1965 and 1966 respectively, opened the first section. In ‘Les Manteaux arts modernes,’ a patterned Christian Dior two-piece suit echoes the cubic wall tiles in the background. In ‘Du nouveau sous le tunnel,’ a towering model in a futuristic white coat (possibly a Cardin) is given architectural dimensions. Both series play on the formal affinities between clothing and setting, yet they also evoke the disquieting atmosphere of film noir, in the interplay of light and shadow and the sense of angst elicited by emptied urban spaces.

The urban environment was key in fact to Donovan’s early years of experimentation with photography (in later work, he would favor the studio). In 1961, Donovan used London’s Road power station to shoot the latest menswear for British men’s magazine Man About Town. As Rebecca Arnold has noted, the Man About Town series bore references to both 1930s Hollywood gangster films and press photographs of London’s own, East End gangs. In Donovan’s images, the city it seems stood less as the symbol of an upbeat modernity than as an invocation of its dark, if glamorized, underworlds.

A 1974 series titled ‘Dressed Overall’ published in Nova magazine is an example of Donovan’s grittier, documentary-like approach. Shot in Deptford, South London, the series pairs functional, worker-like clothing with the biting atmosphere of a grey London in the midst of a recession. A sort of fictional reportage that verges on surveillance-like shots, it features the model named Ika as she leaves and returns to the neighbourhood’s housing estates. Acutely aware of her obsessive monitoring, she is magnetic in her defiance as she either purposefully ignores or stares back at the camera. The series stages, rather masterfully, a complex dialogue between camera and subject.

If Donovan’s photographs contrasted sharply with the lofty elegance and lavish decors of 1950s fashion photography, the photographer did not eschew colour (and there were plenty of examples on view), neither a sense of playfulness (nor for that matter, fashion photography’s highbrow affiliations). A 1972 series for Nova titled the ‘Heavenly suited’ is a dreamy example of Donovan’s use of colour. But just like his 1978 photograph of a Chloé design by Karl Lagerfeld, these images retain an almost solemn tone in the models’ frank stares and upright postures.

There is something highly appealing and at times almost disturbing (as we are made aware perhaps of our own, complicit gaze) about Donovan’s images and their ability to convey so forcefully a sense of the models’ presence.

If you have missed the exhibition, it is well worth taking a look at Terence Donovan’s images online.

References

Arnold, R., Fashion, Desire and Anxiety, London: I.B. Tauris, 2001.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/obituary-terence-donovan-1354218.html

http://www.terencedonovan.co.uk/portfolio/fashion/2-stella-tennant-british-vogue-1995

For the fashion-inclined, there is a lot to see this Autumn. Here’s a brief list…

September 20, 2016Posted by:

cburgess

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Rush to see these two fantastic exhibitions in London at the Photographer’s Gallery, before they end on the 25th September!

Terence Donovan: Speed of Light

photo-1 — The opening wall of floor 5 is dedicated to Donovan’s work from the 1970s through to the 1990s.

photo-2

photo-3

photo-5

This is the first major retrospective of British photographer Terence Donovan (1936-1996). Alongside David Bailey and Brian Duffy, Donovan helped redefine fashion photography in the 1960s (Cecil Beaton referred to them as the ‘The Terrible Three’). The exhibition covers four decades worth of work over two floors with an emphasis on the 1960s. (A review of this exhibition will be coming soon to Documenting Fashion!)

Made you Look – Dandyism and Black Masculinity

Young Man in Plaid, NYC, 1991 by Jeffrey Hansen Scales on the cover of the PG’s programme.

Curator Ekow Eshun explores ‘dandyism as a radical personal politics’ through an array of images that document black men’s use of provocative styles as a way of resisting processes of objectification. The exhibition includes both archival documents and a range of works by contemporary photographers.

And finally… coming soon!

Malick Sidibé: The Eye of Modern Mali

The late Malian photographer will have is first UK major solo show at Somerset House this fall.

To note as well, an exhibition dedicated to Malick Sidibé’s work – on view in Made you look – will open during the Contemporary African Art Fair taking place at Somerset house from 6-9 October. The exhibition will stay on until 15 January 2017.

Dissertation Discussion: Aude

May 13, 2016Posted by:

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What is your title?

Spectacular bodies: Paul Poiret and the display of Haute Couture (still working on it).

What prompted you to choose this subject?

I was struck by the ‘grand narratives’ that seemed to be applied to Paul Poiret’s work and life – his rise to stardom in the 1910s as the ‘king of fashion’, or as he was characterized at times Poiret ‘The Modernist,’ and his downfall in the postwar years as the couturier who would (ironically) ‘reject’ modernism. My work is an attempt at nuancing some of the assumptions that surround the couturier, notably in the years following the First World War, by looking at his involvement in the costuming of music-halls, his use of actresses in advertisements, and the relationships of power between these performers, their audience, the couture clientele and the (bourgeois) couturier.

Most inspiring research find so far?

Poiret’s acting role in Colette’s La Vagabonde (alongside Colette herself) shown at the Théâtre de l’Avenue in 1927. The fact that La Vagabonde has a sort of redemptive tone in its attempt to legitimize the hard-working actresses of the music-halls is particularly interesting in light of Poiret’s own difficulties in combining the sort of excess his persona and clothing were seen to produce and the bourgeois values of the Third Republic.

Favourite place to work?

I spent three days in Paris in the various buildings of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France for research on Poiret. The Richelieu site was a highlight, and I have to admit that consulting microfilms there made me feel that bit more professional.

The 1923 February cover of Les Modes with Mistinguett as its cover star. The gown is misattributed to Paul Poiret (the magazine apologizes in the next issue)

Performing for the Camera at Tate Modern: Dress & No Dress

April 19, 2016Posted by:

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Amalia Ulman, from Excellences and Perfections, 2014; Yves Klein, ‘Leap into the Void’ (Saut dans le Vide), Fontenay-aux-Roses, France, 1960.

Clad in his classic bourgeois suit, Yves Klein leaps into the void. Captured in a Christ-like posture, his silhouette hovers over a street, the deadly landing point of the Parisian bitume in view. It is perhaps the void that Amalia Ulman evokes too – a hollowed sense of identity left to exist solely through Instragram snapshots. Klein opens the Tate Modern’s Performing for the Camera, Amalia Ulman acts as an allusive conclusion.

As an additional shot reveals, a group of Klein’s friends holding the tarpaulin into which the French artist was meant to safely fall was erased through photomontage. The photograph was then printed on the front page of a spoof newspaper, disseminating the aura of Klein’s eerie figure to the masses. Ulman’s lingerie selfie is a shot from her instagram feed, blown up to museum proportions. It is taken from a three-part tale, in which the artist assumes the identity of a provincial girl with dreams of making it in LA, and acts out her downfall into drugs, surgery, and suggestive selfies. Finally, redemption – in the form of juices, yoga, and Gwyneth Paltrow.

Klein’s image condenses many of the themes the exhibition sets to unpick: the camera as record of an art performance, the photographic image as the site for which the performance is conceived, and finally the photographic document as proof – conscious or unconscious – of a performed identity, whether part of the work itself as an intentional act of self promotion for instance (Koons’ magazine advertisements) or as an attempt to create a seemingly authentic (artistic) persona (Klein’s suit). This last aspect is not overtly addressed by the exhibition but lingers over it, as artists dress or undress for the camera.

Artistic authenticity comes in the form of nudity, or so it seems considering the vast number of images of naked performance on display. The subversive quality of nakedness seemingly ensures the authenticity of the performing artist, literally stripped bare of ‘superficial’ signifiers. Costume, as a sort of manifest addition to the body, appears to stand as another strategy used to subvert identities, highlighting their contingency, yet one that also retains or marks the distinction between the performed role and the ‘true’ identity of the performer.

It is precisely the boundaries of costumes and theater that allow Sarah Bernhardt to flaunt a more liberated body, both through dress (clad in male attire) and her comical poses. Nadar’s studio is made into an extension of the theater stage, in which actresses such as Bernhardt embodied a wide array of identities, yet upheld her image as ‘the eternal feminine’ in the eyes of critics. From Nadar, the exhibition takes us to an endless archive of images from big names (Andy Warhol, Hannah Wilke, Joseph Beuys, Cindy Sherman etc.) to a younger bunch, among them Romain Mader (featured on the show’s poster) and Amalia Ulman.

Jeff Koons advertisement in Art in America, 1988-9; Sarah Bernhardt in ‘Pierrot Assassin,’ 1883

In Ulman’s shot, the distinction between artistic self and performance blend. In an interview, Ulman reveals that a gallery had concerns over her credibility before the artist revealed the spoof, namely that the shots of herself were part of a performance. ‘I was acting, it wasn’t me.’ The need to emphasize those boundaries exposes the necessity for an ‘authentic’ self to exist outside of what we are caught easily judging as inappropriate or superficial (as Simon Baker notes, the comments on her Instagram feed are as much part of the performance as the images). Perhaps more than confronting us with our daily selfie routines, Ulman’s performance draws attention to our own highbrow assumptions of what constitutes an ‘appropriate’ display of the self.

Performing for the Camera is on display at Tate Modern until June 12, 2016

Mary Louise Roberts, Disruptive Acts, The New Woman in Fin-de-siècle France (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002)

http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/performing-camera

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/photography/what-to-see/is-this-the-first-instagram-masterpiece/

Jacqueline de Ribes: The Art of Style at the MET

March 15, 2016Posted by:

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De RIBES 1 — Jacqueline de Ribes by Richard Avedon; de Ribes as ‘The Last Queen of Paris’ in Vanity Fair; and the designer adjusting her logo.

Showcasing 60 or so ensembles from Countess Jacqueline de Ribes’ wardrobe, the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Jacqueline de Ribes: The Art of Style visually traces the life of de Ribes, a Parisian-born aristocrat whose sense of style and unconventional approach to dress had captivated the (high) society of her day. Now 87 and living in Paris, most of the gowns on display stem from the Countess’s personal archive and span the early 1960s to the present. These are arranged in a series of tableaux from daywear, eveningwear (the bulk of clothing on display), her own designs, to the exotic costumes she devised for dramatic entrances at masked balls. A devoted client and friend of the couturiers of her time, de Ribes was renowned for asking for specific modifications on the couture gowns she ordered, making her own adjustments, combining ‘high and low’ (although ‘low’ seems an ill-suited term for the ready-to-wear de Ribes purchased), and finally launching her own design business in the early 1980s.

Despite the constraints of an aristocratic milieu in which women’s accomplishments were limited to figuring in ‘Best dressed lists’ – something de Ribes mastered early on, entering Eleanor Lambert’s Best-Dressed list in 1956 – the Countess found in fashion a way of channeling her independence and creativity, which would culminate in the launch of her own brand ‘Jacquelines de Ribes’ in 1982. Yves Saint Laurent had encouraged her to re-consider: ‘He told me I would suffer too much.’ Her husband reluctantly consented, yet resisted risking his own money in the venture. If de Ribes had stood as ‘a muse to haute couture designers,’ she exceeded that role on many levels. It is a point that the exhibition seeks to make, emphasizing her unique sense of style, her role as designer, and her different endeavors in theater, television, interior decorating, and charity events.

Some of the gowns on display at the Jacquelines de Ribes exhibition. Credit: Giovanna Culora

Yet for all its attempts to convey a more complex portrait of de Ribes, the exhibition falls back at times onto the long-worn tropes that precisely reduce women to the passive role of muse. Introducing her through the lens and pen of Richard Avedon and Truman Capote as one of the ‘swans’ of ‘impeccable elegance,’ the opening panel fails to clearly frame the issues at stake. There is a certain blurriness between her historical characterization and the discourse through which she is ‘advertised’ to the exhibition viewers: the panel notes her ‘precocious sophistication,’ ‘aura of exoticism,’ and ‘innate and self-taught talents,’ seemingly conflating at times her sense of style with an idealized (elite) femininity, and therefore playing to the allure that such discourses arguably retain today. Dramatic lighting effects and a classical music score only further obscure (quite literally) the exhibition’s critical engagement with the material on view. Put forward as a sort of conclusion, quotes from de Ribes that thrive on the classic fashion-elegance-style triumvirate stand as a final blow to a well-intended goal.

It is regrettable that exhibition does not attempt to unpick the loaded implications of de Ribes’ characterizations at the time, but rather ambiguously draws on them. This is despite the exhibition’s focus on de Ribes as a designer, and as a ‘wearer’ – someone who retains agency in asserting a personal identity through fashion, momentarily alleviating the weight of social prescriptions. As Elizabeth Grosz has noted ‘the past contains the resources to much more than the present.’ By addressing that past less obliquely, the Jacqueline de Ribes exhibition could have done more than thrust us back into a time capsule of glamour.

Sources:

http://www.metmuseum.org/press/exhibitions/2015/jacqueline-de-ribes

http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/haute-ticket-jacqueline-de-ribes-at-the-met

Elizabeth Grosz, ‘Histories of a Feminist Future ,’ Signs, Vol. 25, No. 4, Feminisms at a Millennium (Summer, 2000), p. 1019.

Tags: exhibition; glamour; couture; style; Jacqueline de Ribes; MET

(Non) Fashion exhibitions

December 29, 2015Posted by:

cburgess

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Lists such as Dazed’s “Fashion exhibitions you don’t want to miss in 2016” are a familiar feature of the end-of-year frenzy. Yet as fashion exhibitions gain popularity (they are the blockbusters bringing big money into museums), offers have widened. Brands in fact now stage their own exhibitions: this year London saw Louis Vuitton and Chanel battling for social media presence through hashtag-inducing displays. Yet for those interested in the history of fashion, there is also a lot to gain from “non-fashion” exhibitions.

2015 fashion exhibitions: Series 3 by Louis Vuitton, Mademoiselle Privé by Chanel (Saatchi Gallery), Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty (V&A), and the Jeanne Lanvin exhibition (Musée Galliera).

The Vivian Maier exhibition at the Forma fondazione in Milan is one of them. The exhibition showcases over 120 photographs by Chicago photographer and former nanny, Vivian Maier (1926-2009), whose work and story were unearthed by John Maloof in 2007. Maier has since been heralded as “one of the best US street photographers of the 20^th century”. Her work however had never been intended for publication: her photographs are personal snapshots of city life in the late 1950s, mostly of Chicago and New York. For the fashion historian, they constitute valuable documents of the ways in which dress was worn and experienced in the 1950s and beyond. Maier had a sharp eye for the dissonances of modern life apparent on the surface of things: the clothing of her subjects often bears the marks of these incongruities.

Two photographs by Maier on display at the Forma Fondazione in Milan.

Her photographs also powerfully articulate the issues that surround the role and representation of women in the postwar years. A photograph taken in the 1950s in a Chicago streetcar for instance highlights the tension between the pervasiveness of women as surface (we discern the fashionable silhouettes of three models on one of the newspapers), and the visibility or agency that is simultaneously denied to them (the image hints at the male-dominated workplace). Her numerous self-portraits however form an interesting counterpoint (also on view at Forma). In these images Maier asserts her presence and reclaims an existence for herself through her own self-fashioning.

The streetcar photograph (Chicago, 1950s) and a self-portrait (New York, 1953).

This is all to say that there is more than the conventional fashion exhibition for the fashion “geek”, especially as seen through the lens of documentary photography. So to add to the list-mania of the coming weeks, here are some suggestions that go beyond the realm of the fashion exhibition: Germaine Krull exhibition at the Martin Gropius Bau in Berlin (ends January 31^st), Qui a Peur des femmes photographes? 1839-1919 (ends January 24^th) at the Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris, Rosângela Rennó’s exhibition at the photographer’s gallery in London (opens January 22^nd), Lee Miller: A Woman’s War at the Imperial War Museum (ends April 24^th), and the Jacques Henri Lartigue exhibition at Foam (opens January 22^th).