I walked through the Metropolitan Museum of Art and as I approached the exhibition, gentle music gradually filled the air. I was awestruck by an otherworldly sight of gold, glittering and dancing in the light. This wonderful sight was the 20-ft train of a Chanel haute couture wedding gown from the Autumn/ Winter 2014- 2015 collection.
The entrance had a cathedral-like quality, with a zoomed in image of the dress projected onto the dome ceiling. Pages of Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d’Alembert’s Encyclopedie, ou Dictionnaire raisonne des sciences, des arts et des métiers Crafts, 1751-72, were placed in glass cases around the dress – almost like manuscripts on display. Meanwhile, ethereal music played in the background (Brian Eno’s “The Ascent”). This church-like atmosphere created a quiet space to reflect on the exhibition and gave importance to the dress and items on display, informing visitors that the contents and ideas raised by the exhibition were sacred, to be studied and respected.
The exhibition highlighted the distinct relationship between fashion and technology, challenging the traditional idea of handmade clothing as more valuable than machine-made. The Chanel wedding gown at the entrance was a striking first example of how hand and machine techniques can work together. This dress was first sketched by hand, then manipulated on a computer to have a look of pixelation, then heat-pressed with rhinestones, hand-painted in gold and hand-embroidered.
The book on display at the entrance, Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d’Alembert’s Encyclopedie, described métiers, or trades, of dressmaking. These métiers were used to curate the exhibition into sections, including embroidery, featherwork, artificial flowers, pleating, lacework and leatherwork. In addition to these métiers, a room featured toiles and paper patterns, as well as tailoring and dressmaking. The layout of the exhibition, curated by Andrew Bolton, was clear and accessible, spreading over two floors.
Throughout the exhibition garments were juxtaposed beside each other; to highlight similarities between them and the continued relationship between hand and machine-made fashion throughout time. For example, the “Wet Lace Frill Dress”, a 2014 machine-made and machine-embroidered dress by Irish-born designer Simone Rocha, was placed deliberately beside a hand- sewn and machine-embroidered “Cocktail Dress” with hand-applied flounces and bows, from the House of Balenciaga Autumn/ Winter 1963-4 collection.
One of my favourite garments in the exhibition was the “May” Dress from the ‘Artificial Flowers’ section. It was a beautifully feminine Christian Dior dress, from the 1953 Spring/ Summer collection. The dress was formed by a combination of hand and machine techniques; it was machine-sewn, had hand- finished white silk organza and net, and was hand-embroidered with artificial flowers, clover and grass.
The exhibition was very informative, enriched by wall displays in each section presenting information on the métiers. Each garment was also accompanied by a label, description of its process of manufacture and sometimes a quote from the designer. Some garments were displayed against the background of a blown up image detailing its construction, which allowed the spectators to inspect the garment more closely.
I really enjoyed visiting the exhibition, sadly it has just ended so I can’t recommend visiting it any more, but I hope this provides some insight as to what it was about.
Undressed: A Brief History of Underwear, V&A Photo: Authors own
Last weekend, on my semi-regular sojourn to the V&A, I decided to attend the Fashion Department’s new exhibition “Undressed: A Brief History of Underwear.” To my surprise the exhibition garnered quite a bit of attention the morning of my visit, with the exhibition space itself full of visitors and lines of spectators inching slowly past the glass displays of historic underwear and garments.
My initial expectation of the exhibition imagined the display to be a spattering of various undergarments from different eras, but with a noticeable emphasis on the corset and hoop skirt. To be fair, these elements were featured prominently in the display, and even though most of the visitors flocked to these body contorting contraptions, the rest of the exhibition presented a delightful overview of innovations in underwear from an impressive range of eras. I particularly enjoyed the emphasis on the evolution of lingerie design toward the end of the exhibition, which traced developments in the industry from the 1920s to the 1930s. Compared to the hyperbolic manipulation of the body evident in the miniscule waists of the corsets on display, the body sculpting garments from the 1920s, 30s, and 40s seem tamed. Upon closer examination, however, the garments’ structures constrict the form and manipulate it into an ideal shape. From an academic perspective, the garments provide a perfect point from which to examine the power structures connected to standards of beauty. They enable the viewer to question what motivated a wearer (and still does) to physically transform their body via the adornment of garments that often use metal structures to manipulate the form? What gaze ultimately develops that definition of beauty and through networks disseminates and propagates an entire system of dress to elevate certain ideals? How do such beauty ideals limit the wearer’s agency within various social contexts, but also enhance his/her agency within others?
The second half of the exhibition attempted to blur the demarcation between under garments, lingerie, etc., and outerwear through the presentation a numerous outfits from the V&A’s permanent collection. Personally, I found this section disconnected from the first half of the exhibition with certain ensembles on display not particularly resonating with the exhibition’s theme. With that said, I must admit that the Ulyana Sergeenko couture pieces were to die for and on my list of most coveted items.
Undressed: A Brief History of Underwear, V&A Photo: Authors own
Ulyana Sergeenko Couture, Undressed: A Brief History of Underwear, V&A. Photo: Authors own
Please join us May 6 & 7, 2016 for Posing the Body, a conference on Stillness, Movement & Representation organised by The Courtauld Institute of Art and The University of Westminster.
Gazette du bon ton, 1921, History of Dress Collection, Courtauld Institute of Art
Posing has been central to art, dance, and sculpture for thousands of years. In recent years, the growing interest in fashion media and modelling has also focused attention on questions of pose and posing. Incorporating notions of movement and stillness, posing can be understood in terms of historical modes of representation, as well as contemporary media and rapidly evolving relationships between bodies, subjects, and technologies of representation. Posing incorporates symbolic and semiotic meaning alongside embodied action and feeling. Recent coverage of the work of choreographer Stephen Galloway in 032c magazine, and new publications such as Steven Sebring’s Study of Pose: 1000 Poses by Coco Rocha testify to the growing interest in the cultural significance of posing and the pose – yet both remain under-researched areas with little discussion of their significance.
This symposium will assert the importance of pose as both a creative practice and an emerging area of critical inquiry. It will bring together multi-disciplinary academics and practitioners to discuss and develop new ways of understanding pose and posing in a historical and contemporary context. We encourage proposals for papers that address pose from global and diverse perspectives. This event represents a potentially fruitful and exciting moment to bring these strands together to the benefit of researchers within practice and theory-based media, historians of dress, photography, art and film and allied disciplines.
The keynote lecture will be delivered by David Campany, internationally recognised writer and curator, and Reader in Photography at the University of Westminster.
Please click through to the conference programme to find details of speakers and papers being presented, and follow this link to book your place! We hope to see you there.
In a typical Queen Bey move reminiscent of the unannounced video drops of the album “Beyonce” and the “7/11” EP, Beyonce released a new video entitled “Formation” on February 6th. Naturally, as a huge Beyonce fan all of my social media platforms began disseminating first responses to the new song and I felt compelled to stop everything I was doing and watch the video for myself.
Since its release and Beyonce’s surprise performance of the new song at Super Bowl 50 in a costume alluding to Michael Jackson and surrounded by dancers clothed in costumes reminiscent of the Black Panthers, “Formation” has been the subject of numerous articles deconstructing and analyzing its various scenes, lyrics, and messages. Of these, Charlie Brinkhurst-Cuff’s Dazed article entitled Beyonce’s ‘Formation’ is a Defiant Reclamation of Blackness seemed particularly potent in its explanation of the past, current, hopefully future identities Beyonce’s video attempts to reclaim for African Americans.
What seemed important for me to highlight in the context of this blog, my academic research, and of course within the parameters of this MA course on the history of dress, is how Beyonce performs identity for a specific audience. Naturally her allusion to her “Givenchy dress” appropriates certain forms of elite white culture, evoking both the history of the eponymous label and its resurgence as a major arbiter of taste under Tisci’s direction. So much has already been written on how she performs identity – from hairstyles to ensembles to the backdrops – but I think that her intended audience is of particular importance.
Givenchy Dress in Beyoncé’s formation video. Source: Video screenshot.
In many ways, I view that intended audience to be twofold. Most importantly, the video’s glorification of a variety of black bodies as beautiful, its rejection of “whiten-ing” beauty standards, and overall positive body image demonstrates to a black audience that the black body in all of its manifestations is just as worthy of characterization as beautiful as its white counterpart and therefore is inherently valuable. In other words, BLACK LIVES MATTER.
Blue Ivy, Beyoncé’s daughter, with natural hair.
Secondly, the video clearly seems to be a defiant reclamation of black identity geared at disrupting white constructions of blackness and instead offering to a white audience a series of identities created and portrayed by “real” black women. I think this is absolutely necessary in the contemporary moment for white audiences to be confronted through the very mainstream media that propagates, perpetuates, and promotes white standards of beauty and identity, with the fact that racism not only still exists but is actually prevalent and institutionalized. The limited diversity we usually see on these platforms is often tokenized, distorted, and manipulated to produce sensationalized stories.
Beyoncé in the Camino wearing a fur coat typically associated with African American rappers. Source: Video Screenshot.
Beyonce’s push towards the reclamation of blackness, visual appropriation of elements of black history (in particular southern identity through allusions via scenery and dress to the history of southern slavery), and even her re-employment of “Negro,” all disrupt the normative narrative of blackness in ways necessary for a white audience. Blackness is successful, popular, and enviable. Blackness should not be defined by white preconceived notions.
In the 21st century, my hope is that movements like Black Lives Matter, the Smith’s boycotting of the Oscars, and even Beyonce’s “Formation” help to create a world where a young black girl “just might be a black Bill Gates in the making!” Instead of inhibiting the progress of our country by systematically oppressing a part of our citizenry through police violence, a lack of access to quality education, and narratives of history, identity, and progress derived from the monolithic ideology of the white establishment, it is time for the privileged to support our African American sisters and brothers and assist them in the creation of a equitable society.
On Monday, February 8th, the MA Course had the pleasure of attending a talk given by the curator, dress historian and Professor of Fashion & Museology, London College of Fashion, Judith Clark, about the exhibition she is planning entitled “Vulgar.” To be curated with psychoanalyst Adam Phillips and shown at the Barbican later in 2016, the exhibition traces, visually, various occurrences of vulgarity present in haute couture level fashion from a myriad of time periods. From Clark’s perspective, the exhibition lends itself to a deeper exploration of the very definition (or even definitions) of the word “vulgar” and the nuances, in meaning, associated with those societal constructs. From Clark’s explanation of the evolution of the exhibition concept and the subsequent open discussion, several themes related to the construct of the “vulgar” emerged, namely, the term’s violent connotational undercurrents and its implication of the inferiority of the common. But most of all, I was struck by Clark’s curatorial process as a mix between the academic traditionalism of the discipline and a refreshingly contemporary emphasis on the design of the exhibition as a work of art itself.
Installation photograph of Clark’s exhibition, A Concise Dictionary of Dress, illustrating Clark’s unique approach to exhibiting dress and keen curatorial eye.
From my perspective, “vulgar” derives its plethora of meanings based upon its symbiotic relationship with a certain society or culture’s hegemonic ideal. In other words, the term “vulgar” (from my perspective) highlights discursive, subversive, or simply non-normative behavior, identity performance, and obviously dress that encroaches upon and in so doing highlights the fragility of a hegemonic ideal. For example, the New Negro aesthetic championed by Alain Locke in his 1925 manifesto of the same title sought to elevate the status of African Americans by promoting African American literature, arts, etc. As an extenuation of that cultural agenda, elite African American dress popular during the late Harlem Renaissance appropriated the white middle class aesthetic and, in what was considered a vulgar display of new found wealth, often exaggerated its elements in an almost “Dandy” fashion. James Van Der Zee’s almost ethnographic photographs of the period demonstrates these types of fashions and identities performed by citizens of Harlem as they actively claimed agency in a shifting racial power structure. But a contemporary audience can imagine how vulgar those images must have appeared to white audiences of the period used to popular images equating blackness with the tradition of American minstrelsy. Therefore, my main take away from the talk and the subsequent notion is summarized by the word agency. In what ways can the vulgar, and actively performing the vulgar, award a wearer agency within a given socio-political context?
New definitions of the Vulgar, Adam Phillips. “The vulgar reminds us of the tyranny of the real thing.”
About Dress Talks: As a part of the Courtauld’s Sackler Research Forum, this series of lunchtime events brings together a roster of invited speakers to talk about their current research, and encourage discussion about dress history now. Each term academics, curators and dress and fashion industry professionals will share their insight and analysis of an aspect of dress and fashion history to provide a platform for new ideas and approaches to the subject. Look out for future events here.
It’s December, the ice rink is up and running in the Somerset House courtyard, and we couldn’t be more excited for Christmas and, more importantly, winter fashion! To get in the mood, we have been looking through the Documenting Fashion archives and reminiscing about the wintery display that Dr Rebecca Arnold, PhD student Alexis Romano and MA History of Dress alumnus Fruszina Befeki curated as part of last year’s Winter Mode exhibition in Somerset House. Their display, Winter Mode, showcased a group of fashion journals from the Courtauld’s collection, giving the reader tips for how look chic in the snow! Read on for a recap of their experiences!
Exhibition Update: Goodbye Summer, Hello Winter! Planning ‘Winter Mode’ by Alexis Romano
Co-curator Fruzsina Befeki 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!
4 November, 2014
Installing ‘Winter Mode’ at Somerset House by Fruszi Befeki
An empty vitrine…Objects and condition reportsConservator Frances Halahan and co-curator Alexis Romano look over condition reportsCo-curator Alexis Romano arranging the displayUnder glass! The final display awaiting wall text…
I must admit, rather unprofessionally perhaps, that I was like a child on Christmas day during yesterday morning’s installation of Winter Mode, a display that I am curating with Dr Rebecca Arnold and Alexis Romano for Fashioning Winter at Somerset House. We had decided on our object list, approved labels, wrote condition reports and even devised a ‘dress rehearsal’ (see Alexis’s blog post from 4th November) well in advance of installation, but we had never seen all of these components come together.
We started our day by going over the contents of our to-do list, which we proceeded to tick off one by one. The two book cradles that Kate Edmondson, The Courtauld’s paper conservator, kindly made for us were ready. They were waiting for us at the studio, along with the two books they were designed to hold. We headed back to Rebecca’s office where we very carefully laid out all of the objects, to go over our sequence and arrangement one last time. This gave us the opportunity to make sure that we had the right viewing dynamic, with the different illustrations’ subjects connecting with one another through the direction of their gaze and body language. All of the fashionable ladies featured in the display are engaged in the act of looking, either at themselves, at art objects or at a winter scene, as if illustrators sought to remind their viewers of their own tendencies. We aimed to highlight this and to animate the display through their interaction.
At two o’clock we headed to the East Wing of Somerset House with boxes in tow, to find the empty vitrine waiting to be filled. Once Shonagh Marshall and Susan Thompson (head curator of Fashioning Winter and Somerset House exhibitions organiser, respectively) had arrived, we began by placing the textile panel, bound in a lovely Christopher Farr fabric, in the display case. Conservator Frances Halahan then carefully cleaned the surface so that no dust or microscopic insects would endanger the magazines once under glass. We then proceeded to arrange objects according to our well rehearsed plan and matched them up with their respective condition report so that Frances could verify our details’ accuracy.
Once the object labels arrived we reached the penultimate stage of installation; all that remained to do was meticulously review every arrangement before placing the glass over the display. We commissioned captions to look like vintage price tags in order to emphasise that, for many viewers, looking at these illustrations was like window-shopping. They are labelled according to one of three themes: Fashion, Sport, Battling the Elements. These refer not only to the scenes depicted, but also to the sense that each illustrator tried to convey to viewers: the thrill of ice-skating or the comfort of a warm coat on a frosty winter afternoon, for example.
With everything in position and checked, technicians expertly lifted and placed the glass over the case. As Shonagh pointed out, there is something quite satisfying about this final stage of installation. The glass seals and protects the objects, which will stay in place until the exhibition closes. Visitors are now welcome to move around, lean in close, and inspect the display. We hope you will enjoy Winter Mode!
We would like to thank the staff at Somerset House and at the Courtauld Institute of Art for their generous help on the day and leading up to the exhibition.
7 November 2014
A Walk Through ‘Fashioning Winter’ by Fruszi Befeki
Opening party and inauguration of the ice rink, 10 November 2014
Although we have been focusing on our own displays for Fashioning Winter in order to give you some behind the scenes access, now that the exhibition is up and running it is time to introduce you to the fascinating exhibits that make up the rest of the project. As with most shows, it really is best if you go see it in person, but for those who cannot make it, here are a few photographic guides to Somerset House’s winter fashion history treasure hunt.
Caroline Evans’s Skating on Film is directly next to our installation in Somerset House’s East Wing. The display focuses on footage of people skating in the early 20th century, and features clips from the Netherland’s Eye Filmmuseum.
These clips provide a parallel to Skate in Somerset House’s courtyard and encourage viewers to compare their own wardrobes and motions with sets of gestures from the past.
Amy de la Haye used her own collection of postcards by the illustrator Xavier Sager, and these depictions of fashionable women ice-skating and rollerblading are also in keeping with the theme of winter sports. Sager’s works are a combination of beautiful workmanship and a healthy dose of humour and when seen together, these illustrations reveal a connection between modernity, fashion and motion.
Sophia Hedman and Serge Martinov have created a highly conceptual display that focuses on the changing meanings of the colour white in Western fashion history. Exhibits are suspended in the Stamp stairwell, allowing viewers to walk around the objects displayed and admire them at a remarkably close range.
Ben Whyman’s Winter in Wartime is a timely exhibit that will resonate with audiences on the 100th anniversary year of the outbreak of the First World War. The display consists of contemporary illustrated newspaper cuttings, which demonstrate what members of the British Armed forces wore to keep warm at the Front.
If you head to the Great Arch Hall you will find Tory Turk’s and Beatrice Behlen’s respective exhibits facing each other, as if in conversation. Turk has created a “capsule archive” of skiing culture that includes gems such as a Burberry ladies’ ski suit c. 1927. The display maps the evolution of skiwear through an exciting assortment of objects.
While Tory Turk’s exhibit revolves around global skiing culture, Beatrice Behlen has focused on the vogue for skating in interwar London. The exhibition’s focal point, a pair of skates from the 1930s, is given a historical frame with the help of newspaper clippings and photographs. A map that shows viewers where one could find ice-rinks during this period illustrates just how popular the sport was at the time.
The Nelson Stair is now home to Alistair O’Neill’s display of photographer Angus McBean’s imaginative Christmas cards. Humourous, surreal, yet sensitive, these greeting cards, which span the period 1949 to 1985, illustrate a lifetime of creative experimentation.
Head curator Shonagh Marshall examines how the world of fairy tales inspire designers for the autumn/winter shows with the help of evocative literary excerpts and wonderful illustrations by Stephen Doherty. The three projections, set up in alcoves, transform Seamen’s Hall into a living storybook of fashion.
Gazette du bon ton, 1921, History of Dress Collections, The Courtauld Institute of Art
Friday 6 May 2016, Regent Street Cinema, University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street, London W1B 2UW
Saturday 7 May 2016, The Courtauld Institute of Art, Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 0RN
CALL FOR PAPERS
Posing has been central to art, dance, and sculpture for thousands of years. In recent years, the growing interest in fashion media and modelling has also focused attention on questions of pose and posing. Incorporating notions of movement and stillness, posing can be understood in terms of historical modes of representation, as well as contemporary media and rapidly evolving relationships between bodies, subjects, and technologies of representation. Posing incorporates symbolic and semiotic meaning alongside embodied action and feeling. Recent coverage of the work of choreographer Stephen Galloway in 032c magazine, and new publications such as Steven Sebring’s Study of Pose: 1000 Poses by Coco Rocha testify to the growing interest in the cultural significance of posing and the pose – yet both remain under-researched areas with little discussion of their significance.
This symposium will assert the importance of pose as both a creative practice and an emerging area of critical inquiry. It will bring together multi-disciplinary academics and practitioners to discuss and develop new ways of understanding pose and posing in a historical and contemporary context. We encourage proposals for papers that address pose from global and diverse perspectives. This event represents a potentially fruitful and exciting moment to bring these strands together to the benefit of researchers within practice and theory-based media, historians of dress, photography, art and film and allied disciplines.
The keynote lecture will be delivered by David Campany, internationally recognised writer and curator, and Reader in Photography at the University of Westminster.
Possible themes include (but are not limited to):
Modelling (fashion and artistic)
Gesture Dance (popular and classical)
Pose and the everyday
Movement and stillness
Posing, corporeality and the body
Posing and social media (Blogs, Instagram, etc.)
Submission process: Please submit abstracts of 150-200 words in English, along with a short biography of approximately 100 words to Posingthebody@gmail.com by 2 October 2015.
Organised by Rebecca Arnold, Oak Foundation Lecturer in History of Dress & Textiles, The Courtauld Institute of Art; Katherine Faulkner, Study Skills and Widening Participation Academic Coordinator, The Courtauld Institute of Art; Katerina Pantelides, Visiting Lecturer, The Courtauld Institute of Art and Eugénie Shinkle, Reader in Photography, University of Westminster.
Documenting Fashion graduates Lauren, Brianna, Lisa, Nicole and RosilyCongratulations Courtauldians! Dr Rebecca Arnold, MA student Rosily Roberts and PhD student Elizabeth Kutesko welcome honorary doctorate Valerie Steele (far right) to the Courtauld
