Author Archives: Lucy

Flights of Fancy: Fashion and the Butterfly in Jean Paul Gaultier’s Spring 2014 Couture Collection

Jean Paul Gaultier’s Spring 2014 couture collection, on the surface, was a platform of pulsating vivacity, spectacle, and shimmer. He declared “Life is a butterfly! So all the collection is that!”: a simile that not only provided fundamental inspiration, but permeated the entire collection. From raw denim, to sumptuous evening gowns; wings, silhouettes, antennae and more, punctuated every piece. In some cases the references were explicit, when gowns moulded models’ bodies into whole, vibrant butterflies, or jackets morphed and elongated wearers’ shoulders into wings. Within other looks, subtlety prevailed, but the motif was no less prevalent: the quiet presence of a stylised butterfly outline tessellated into a widely-featured, laser-cut leather pattern, or the placement of a cameo-style butterfly silhouette at the top of a shirt-collar.

This homage to the insect drew out the shared focus on materiality, aesthetics and form – decorating the self – between fashion, and the butterfly, who depends on surface pattern for the survival of the species, such as attracting mates. Personal adornment not only enhances an individual’s appearance, but, as Georg Simmel argued in his 1908 ‘Sociology’, also gives pleasure to others. Both whimsical couture, as demonstrated by Gaultier, and the purposefully artful appearance of butterflies, capture delight, and achieve a visual feast for the senses of the observer.

Through doing so, each offers the tantalising chance for rebirth and re-invention. The butterfly depends on such changes by the very nature of its existence, from caterpillar, to chrysalis, to adult, and Gaultier reflected this notion within his collection.

Regarding the woman it targets, he enthused ‘by night, she becomes a showgirl!’, and sartorial nods towards this transformation were made through corsets and feather headpieces. Yet by their very nature, these apparitions and revelations, for both fashion and the butterfly, are transitory: they retain their cultural currency on a seasonal-only basis in the former, and last merely days or weeks in the fleeting life of the latter. But could this enhance, or inform, their respective charm? As philosopher Gilles Lipovetsky has mused, ‘what we call fashion in the strict sense… is, the systematic reign of the ephemeral, of frequent evanescent fluctuations.’ If something cannot be enjoyed permanently, its value and wonder increases symbiotically.

A dark undercurrent shot through Gaultier’s collection and communicated this vulnerability. In several pieces, delicate, sheer layers of frothy cloth built up frou-frou clouds, which correspond to the thin, transparent layers that together form the wings of a butterfly. In places, Gaultier highlighted this susceptibility through deliberate juxtapositions with tough, black leather within the same ensemble, or even used oversized mesh to the same extent, enclosing model and garment in a cage. A butterfly’s markings exist not only for mating and aesthetic pleasure, but are also essential within the more sinister side of survival, protection rather than procreation: warding off predators and creating camouflage. Similarly, fashion, far from being frivolous, can correspond to wider concerns, such as, as in Gaultier’s case, freedom and entrapment, and life and death. As Lipovetsky went on to say, ‘through the fleeting nature of fashion… human sovereignty and autonomy are affirmed, exercising their dominion over the natural world as they do over their own aesthetic décor.’ The butterfly, a mainstay source of symbolism in the arts for centuries, and seen to represent the soul, encapsulates the tensions that together make fashion what it is: ephemeral and enrapturing, yet inextricably bound with a rich and meaningful depth.

For collection images please click here.

Source:

Lipovetsky, G. (1994) The Empire of Fashion: Dressing Modern Democracy, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Edgar Degas, Woman Adjusting her Hair, c.1884

Edgar Degas, Woman Adjusting her Hair, c.1884 Charcoal, chalk and pastel. 63 x 59.9cm The Courtauld Gallery
Edgar Degas, Woman Adjusting her Hair, c.1884
Charcoal, chalk and pastel. 63 x 59.9cm
The Courtauld Gallery

A woman arches her back, twisting elegantly to the side, as she daintily raises her hands to her head, forming neat, careful, mirrored triangles. Her form is made up of frantic, expressive strokes of black charcoal, singed onto the buff paper with latent energy. This overspills into colour: zingy bursts of sunburnt orange, and rich, luscious green echo her movements. As do further sweeps of charcoal surrounding her figure: the ghost of a previous outline, abandoned by the artist, whose continued presence lends a sense of animation. In the foreground, an indistinguishable flurry takes place – the back of a leg, or the swish of a skirt – and the woman in question seemingly turns towards it, as another part within a precisely synchronised whole. Yet while the piece is by Edgar Degas, notorious for his effervescent depictions of the changing life of the ballet, this window reveals the careful orchestration that also took place within everyday life: in this case, as contained within a milliner’s shop. Amidst the movement of Degas’s piece, rest and relief lies in the bottom right-hand corner, where graceful folds of cloth lie sculpturally. They are seemingly set apart from the rest of the composition, reverently bathed in light, which highlights their soft luminosity. This focus on dress connected to a shift that was concurrently occurring: fashion was beginning to gain the momentum that would lead it to where it is today. The world’s first department stores had only recently been set up, in Paris, and began to offer, for the first time, garments that could be bought off the shelf, with little to no need for alteration. This set in motion the path to mass-produced clothing and the fast fashion available today, and such changes captured the attention of contemporary artists and intellectuals. They corresponded in particular with the Impressionist penchant for the pursuit of the new, the capturing of the contemporary. Édouard Manet once declared: ‘the latest fashion is absolutely necessary for a painter. It is what matters most!’ Degas was no exception, and the careful, loving attention he paid to the materiality of dress, in what is by far the most fully worked section of the study, advocated fashion, its importance, and nodded towards its serious social implications, during the 1880s and today alike. A quiet moment of appreciation towards female finery, within a rushing whirlwind towards modernity as we know it.

Source:

Darragon, É. (1924) Manet, Paris.