Category Archives: Commentary

Our comments on current or past events, projects, writings, and topics in dress history and fashion

A precarious balance: Reflections on ‘The 50s: Fashion in France, 1947- 1957’ at the Palais Galliera, Paris

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Christian Dior, 1947. (Courtesy of the London College of Fashion archives and The Woolmark Company).

1950s couture is characterised by its dramatic silhouettes which ranged from the rounded hourglass, to the stark, boxy H shape.  While the exhibition provided a comprehensive showcase of garments of extraordinary proportions alongside vignettes of fifties style icons, the women who wore the clothes remained a mystery. As I studied the well-displayed outfits, I tried to imagine how the wearer would move and feel in them.

The first exhibit, Christian Dior’s 1947 bar suit with its silk tussore jacket and wide pleated wool crepe skirt, stiffened with taffeta, was striking for its embalmed, papier mache texture. The wide brimmed straw hat and spindly Perugina escarpins that accompanied the suit indicated that a degree of lightness was intended to animate this heavy, structured garment.  Dior claimed that with his 1947 collection, he had ‘brought back the neglected art of pleasing’, in other words, a prettiness that made women attractive to men, as opposed to the eccentricity and utilitarianism that had characterised war-time fashion. However, a woman’s ability to please in this challenging ensemble would depend on her ability to pose and walk in a manner that was as balanced and delicate as a trained mannequin.  The contemporary American model agent, Helen Fraser explained how from the late 1940s onwards, models were increasingly required to ‘double as dancers…’.She explained that ‘high fashion… employs as its basic pose a semi-ballet stance. The weight is on the hind foot, hips turned away, and the shoulders to the camera, the face half-profile, half straight…’

Film footage of mannequins in the exhibition showed how they would begin their procession from a variation of ballet’s fourth position, and advance in tiny mincing steps, their pivots almost as exact and mechanical as a ballerina’s. The filmed couture displays begin with coats and outerwear, and end with the decade’s jewel: eveningwear. There are at least two rooms devoted to small-waisted, full-skirted dresses in the exhibition, which one young visitor called ‘princess dresses’.  She had a point:  with their naive star and flower embellishment and spouts of tulle, some of these dresses do appear to have been designed for grown-up children, who have only recently graduated from reading fairytales to attending balls in outfits that materialise these fictions.

However, in other garments, a more adult combination of daring and anxiety prevails with regard to revealing the body. In their desire to appease contemporary ideals of feminine sex appeal and modesty simultaneously, these cocktail dresses strive for a precarious balance between titillation and demureness; in an almost formulaic manner, an inch of flesh revealed in one area, is compensated for in another.  For example, sweetheart necklines either dive deep and narrow, or remain high and wide; a plunging décolletage is counterbalanced by a high back and vice versa.  Still, by the late 1950s, the ingenuity displayed in the dresses’ methods of exposure, implies that wearers increasingly revealed their sexuality on their own terms. One 1957 fuchsia moiré dress by Hubert de Givenchy, which was cut to show the knees and lower limbs from the front and permitted longer strides, indicated that the age of docile pleasing had passed its high noon.

 

 

032c re-present Kirsten and Juergen collaboration for Autumn/Winter 2013/4

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Screenshot from SHOWstudio’s Subjective Project – Kristen McMenamy by Juergen Teller
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032c, Issue #25, Winter 2013/14
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032c, Issue #25, Winter 2013/14
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032c, Issue #25, Winter 2013/14

Whilst hunting for photographs to accompany the BA3 course that I am teaching this term at The Courtauld with Dr Rebecca Arnold, entitled ‘Fashion and Photography: viewing and reviewing global images of dress’, I stumbled across an intriguing yet mildly unsettling fashion spread by German photographer Juergen Teller. Commissioned by the German magazine, 032c, for the Winter 2013/14 edition, it captured the veteran 1990s supermodel Kristen McMenamy, now 47 years old and with long silvery-blonde hair, in an 18-piece one-off tribute to Elsa Schiaparelli designed by Christian Lacroix. The series, which draws upon the bizarre, the grotesque and the abject, was shot on a Greek island in the Aegean Sea, and makes use of unsettling trompe l’oeil through eccentric props that include fluffy pompoms, the entrails of a slimy sea creature and the pulpy insides of a watermelon. At times McMenamy is a passive and inert, her long hair flopping forward over her limp naked form that is splattered with dirt and mud, but elsewhere she is active and aware, peeping over a rusting metal fence in bright red and pink pompoms like a demonic Minnie Mouse figure.

Teller first shot an androgynous looking McMenamy in a controversial documentary-style shoot for Suddeutsche Zeitung in 1996.  A memorable snapshot from this candid series is tempered with a sleazy provocative charge and features McMenamy standing in a confrontational pose, naked except for a haphazard collection of necklaces and bracelets draped around her neck and wrists. She faces Teller’s 35mm camera directly with an open, nonchalant gaze, her hands placed on her hips, her bare chest thrust forward, and her uncovered crotch fully exposed to the harsh flash. Her pale, bruised and mottled skin is illuminated as she stands against an open doorway, a limp cigarette protruding from the right-hand side of her mouth. Her eyes are heavy-lidded and her appearance is dishevelled, with her hair closely cropped. She bears the label ‘VERSACE’ scrawled in dark red lipstick, encased in a crudely drawn heart, across the centre of her chest. This image, shot in collaboration with Teller, is given a raw, confrontational edge through the pared down gritty ‘realist’ aesthetic that stands out in stark contrast to the faked glamour of high production fashion shoots popular throughout the 1980s. McMenamy has since explained that this shoot was her reaction to having a high profile Versace campaign cancelled at the last minute with no explanation. It was she who scrawled the label across her chest, in an attempt to dispense with the measured and preconceived strategies of glossy high fashion photography, and instead embrace the ugly flip side of the unsightly, unappealing and outright provocative.

A walk through ‘Fashioning Winter’

Opening party and inauguration of the ice rink, 10 November 2014

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

War Stories: Voices from the First World War

1 Marjorie Brinkhurst's wedding shoes and veil, 1919
Marjorie Brinkhurst’s wedding shoes and veil, 1919
2 Doug Evershed's undercoat
Doug Evershed’s army undercoat
3 Detail of Vernon Evershed display, showing his brother, Doug
Detail of Vernon Evershed display, showing his brother, Doug
With thanks to Brighton and Hove City Council for granting permission to use these photographs

With the plethora of World War One commemorations this year – and for the next three years – it can become all too easy to become inured to the emotional and individual experiences of this period. While the official events linked to the War have been imposing, they have sometimes lacked a sense of the way history can represent interconnected life stories. Brighton Museum and Art Gallery’s current exhibition War Stories: Voices from the First World War (12 July 2014-1 March 2015) reconnects us to this more personal idea of the past, which reflects Raphael Samuel’s important focus on ‘history from below.’ It tells the histories of thirteen people – all connected to the local area in some way – who lived through the war, and whose experiences are recreated through, for example, personal photographs, letters, and, significantly, the material culture of their world.

Dress and textiles play an important role throughout the exhibition – presenting a tangible, sensorial link between the people discussed, and their lived experience. The collection of people is diverse and includes Belgian refugees, an Indian soldier, a nurse, and a conscientious objector.  But, through the coincidence of their dates of birth, each lived through the chaos of World War One. And each left behind images and objects that speak of this period, and its impact on their actions, relationships, jobs and emotions. In this sense, they curated their own life story, as we all do, through our choices of what and how we collect and keep our memories. This auto-ethnography has then been edited and re-presented within the current exhibition – connecting narratives of the time with our contemporary approach to looking at and thinking about the past.

The walls of the gallery are painted deepest red, and each section explores one person’s story. From the start, the role of dress and textiles within people’s lives is clear. It is shown as a part of ritual and life stage – a christening robe, and a wedding dress are poignant mementoes. The dress was worn by Marjorie Brinkhurst in 1919, it is accompanied by silk shoes and a veil, a tiny, folded wedding invitation and the stiffly formal photography of bride and groom, best man and bridesmaid. These are tokens of happiness and relief, as her solider husband made it back from the war, and hers is a story of patience and commitment – a caption quotes her daughter, who remembers ‘She met him when she was 16. And they corresponded and became engaged through letters and so she went out and bought herself a ring.’ This shows how conventions were both broken and reinforced by the war – with its prolonged separations and continual uncertainty.

Another display on Vernon Evershed and his younger brother, Doug conveys the way that dress – with its closeness and intimacy to its wearer – can form a precious memento, a treasured connection to someone lost to the war. The glass cabinet devoted to these soldiers contains a soft brown army undercoat, below it, photographs of them as children, and one of Doug in army uniform. Both died in battle – a telegram from Buckingham Palace and a letter from the commanding officer telling the all too familiar tale of sons lost on the Front. Again, the curators use a quote from a relative to show the war’s legacy – ‘For years and years the undercoat was on my grandmother’s sideboard and we had no idea it had any connection with my father’s uncle.’

The exhibition is rich with such detail, weaving together memories and histories – tying together those who fought, with those who stayed at home, through letters, photographs, scrapbooks and oral histories. A nurse’s uniform and images of a local military hospital remind us of women’s involvement in the war, medals and badges recall battles and regiments, and inventories of uniform items supplied remind us of the huge administration that underpinned the military.

The final display describes – visually and in text – the Unknown Warrior – whose body was buried at Westminster Abbey to represent the enormity of loss. Here, textiles played a key role in conveying the ceremony’s solemnity, and its official, state purpose. The coffin is shown draped in the Union Jack, its graphic form a reminder of nationhood that was reflected in the two huge, flowing flags hung from the cenotaph in Whitehall.

Sources:

Raphael Samuel, Theatres of Memory, vol. I (London: Verso, 1996)

http://www.brighton-hove-rpml.org.uk/WhatsOn/Pages/BMAGwarstories12jul2014to1mar2015.aspx

 

 

Installing ‘Winter Mode’ at Somerset House

1 - An empty vitrine
An empty vitrine…
2 - Objects and condition reports
Objects and condition reports
3 - Conservator Frances Halahan and co-curator Alexis Romano look over condition reports
Conservator Frances Halahan and co-curator Alexis Romano look over condition reports
4 - Co-curator Alexis Romano arranging the display
Co-curator Alexis Romano arranging the display
5 - Under glass! The final display awaiting wall text…
Under 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.

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

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!

A Biography of Objects: Second Floor: The Private Apartment of Coco Chanel by Sam Taylor-Johnson

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Second Floor: Lion with Pearls
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Second Floor: No. 5 Chandelier I
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Second Floor: Sofa

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Second Floor: Staircase II
[All photographs by Sam Taylor-Johnson, Courtesy of Chanel]
“Little events, ordinary things…imbued with new meaning. Suddenly they become the bleached bones of a story”– Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things

Haunting, evocative and profoundly intimate, Sam Taylor-Johnson’s series of photographs of the private apartment of Coco Chanel, exhibited at the Saatchi Gallery, is a visual biography of emotion conveyed through the poignant rendering of objects, and the moments and memories of a life preserved in talismanic form. Although it is closed to the public, the Paris apartment, located above the Chanel boutique at 31 Rue Cambon, has long been the fabric of legend. Forming the ornate backdrop to iconic photographic portraits by Man Ray and Horst, it also regularly played host to gatherings of Chanel’s illustrious social circle and provided her with rare moments of solitude away from her atelier. Today, the apartment, which has stood untouched since Chanel’s death in 1971, is only frequented by a privileged few, such as Chanel creative director Karl Lagerfeld, who frequently draws inspiration from its famous Coromandel screens and décor saturated with symbolism. A mysterious, closely guarded shrine to its former inhabitant, the exotic opulence of the apartment’s interior stands as a living, breathing contradiction to the streamlined simplicity of the couturiere’s clothing designs. Yet look for the signs and they are there: the symbols and the spirit which form the beating heart of both Chanel the brand and Chanel the woman.

Familiar and recurring Chanel design emblems appear in the form of gilded lions (Chanel’s astrological sign), a chandelier of tumbling glass ‘5’ and interlocking double ‘C’ motifs and beige suede cushions which bear the same quilted effect of the iconic ‘2.55’ handbag. More personal and emotionally metaphoric objects, such as Buddhas, tarot cards, a smoky crystal ball and sheaves of wheat, sit alongside, hinting at a deep inner life characterized by intense spirituality, superstition and profound loss. A particularly poignant close-up image of a miniature jewelled cage containing two tiny pearl lovebirds serves not only as a tangible reminder of Chanel’s great love of precious materials but as, in the words of Harper’s Bazaar editor Justine Picardie, a ‘treasured amulet of a coupledom that was to elude Chanel’.

This photographic series was inspired by a conversation between Taylor-Johnson and Picardie, who wrote part of her acclaimed Chanel biography in the apartment and who, like the artist, has come to develop a very personal connection with the designer. For both photographer and writer, what appears to be the most striking and profound element of being immersed in the Chanel interior is its undeniably ethereal overtones, and its overwhelming and almost uncomfortable sensation of coming too close. Chanel herself described the interior of a home as ‘the natural projection of the soul’ and, indeed, it is within this intimate setting that her spirit still lingers, her loves, passions and even heartbreaks crystallized within the now abandoned collections of rare books, art and objects. What strikes Picardie most about Taylor-Johnson’s remarkable images ‘is that they capture absence, at the same time as presence’. Looking at these photographs, one suspects that Chanel’s own image may be glimpsed at any moment in the smoked glass mirror, whose octagonal form echoes the familiar shape of a Chanel No. 5 perfume bottle stopper, yet, simultaneously, the famous cream silk chair in which she reclined for many a portrait, its cushion worn from constant sitting, stands eerily empty.

For many, the glossy chiaroscuro of these large-scale photographs will be the closest they will come to experiencing this secret inner sanctum. Taylor-Johnson’s powerful and intriguing rendering of Chanel’s most cherished items, however, undoubtedly succeeds in drawing its viewers deeper into the authentic and indissoluble aura of Chanel, forming a portrait of a woman and the narrative of a life told through objects that is, at once, both elusive and inescapable.

 

Second Floor: The Private Apartment of Coco Chanel by Sam Taylor-Johnson was exhibited at the Saatchi Gallery, London in September 2014.

The book Sam Taylor-Johnson: Second Floor will be published by Steidl on 24th November 2014.

 

Sources:

Morand, P. (1976), The Allure of Chanel, trans. E. Cameron, London: Pushkin.

Picardie, J. (2014), ‘Kindred Spirits’ in Harper’s Bazaar, London: September 2014.

Picardie, J. (2011), Coco Chanel: The Legend and The Life, London: HarperCollins.

Wearable Technology

During the summer of 2014, the Barbican staged its Digital Revolution – an exhibition that celebrated technology. From the humble home computer of the 1970s, to innovative special effects and interactive artworks of the present and future, it highlighted the way technology has come to immerse itself within, and drive, almost every aspect of daily life. Fashion is by no means immune to this convergence, and the show duly acknowledged this, by featuring garments by Studio XO for TechHaus, the technical division of Lady Gaga’s Haus of Gaga, and wearable technology by Pauline van Dongen. The examples on display went beyond wearable gadgets that are solely functional, such as sporting devices, and instead demonstrated how technology can be fused seamlessly with sartorial ensembles, breaking any boxy, plastic stereotypes and looking unmistakably like couture.

One dress from Pauline van Dongen’s Wearable Solar collection was especially striking. Smooth, cool leather moulds itself over the torso, joined by a simple, black, wool skirt that sits just above the knee. Generous, but form-skimming shapes prevent the look from being overly sexualized, and instead promote a strong, confident style, enhanced by elongated shoulders. One would be forgiven, from a distance, for presuming that the shining stripes made up of small squares that descend from each shoulder serve a decorative purpose only. However, the dress in fact incorporates 72 flexible solar cells, and is capable of fully charging the wearer’s mobile phone with just two hours of full sunlight.

This is just one example of new ways of thinking and working in the fashion industry, which are re-invigorating the existing model that has been in place for decades. The relationship between clothes and their wearers is changing: dress no longer must necessarily be worn passively. Rather, it is capable of responding, communicating, and even assisting. Furthermore, such developments create new links and dialogues between fashion and other areas, such as the energy industries.

Van Dongen asserts that this will help to restore sustainability, both in her work, through the clear environmental benefits of using solar energy, and, on a more general scale, by increasing the longevity of garments, on the basis that incorporated technology will raise their value (actual and perceived) and theoretically decrease their disposability. The implied sense of frugality and practicality maximizes the usefulness of something that is already a constant accompaniment in everyday life: clothing.

However, this infusion of technology into dress is not entirely new. For example, since the late-1980s the Cyber Goth trend has entailed distinctly future orientated and styled dress, incorporating technological elements such as LED circuits. However, it seems that the 2010s mark a new transition point towards usability and ubiquity within this phenomenon. Since the late 2000s, shoppers have been able to use digital representations of themselves to ‘try on’ makeup and fashion looks in a virtual reality environment, for example at Shiseido and Topshop. The launch of the Apple Watch in September 2014, blends design, function, and lifestyle, and Topshop Unique’s use of virtual reality to transport in-branch shoppers to the heart of its Spring/Summer 2014 catwalk show are two other uses of technology within fashion and design. It seems the Barbican’s crowning of a digital renaissance comes on the cusp of technology’s transformation of the ways we experience dress.

Fashioning the Little Mermaid c. 1935

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Hans Christian Andersen’s 1837 fairytale, ‘The Little Mermaid’, is in many respects about a subordinated being who dares to seek a future that defies her society’s expectations. The eponymous protagonist rescues a Prince who falls overboard, and then vows to become human and win his love at great personal cost because the sea-witch who transforms her demands the mermaid’s beautiful voice, and also threatens that if she fails to win the Prince’s love she will dissolve into sea-foam on the morning of his marriage to another.

All visual interpretations of the fairytale face the challenge of expressing not only the mermaid’s transformation into a human, but her desire to be recognised by a so-called higher being, and the love that makes her grow, change and even break. The Parisian Librairie Delagrave edition from 1935, with its illustrations by Maurice Berty and watercolour by Christiane Hameau, is striking in its attempt to interpret the fairytale for contemporary readers.

Illustrations of the mermaid prior to her transformation show her as an inhabitant of a natural realm, largely untainted by civilisation. In a depiction of the mermaid beside a giant octopus, her waist-length brown hair, pink and white floral wreath and rosy cheeks and lips are perennials of Western feminine beauty, and seem untouched by contemporary fashion. Hameau’s gold highlight on the mermaid’s green tail gives her figure sculptural relief, and also indicates her otherworldly majesty. Nevertheless, her eyes’ feline slant and long, lean torso, with arms crossed to conceal her breasts, recalls mid to late 1920s beauty ideals, and indicates that Berty and Hameau’s vision of nature was influenced by the art deco movement.

Although this Libraire Delagrave edition was published in 1935, the mermaid’s transformation, after her acquisition of legs, is dramatised through her relinquishment of a timeless, feminine oceanic realm, to a masculine historic realm, and her subsequent resemblance to the 1920s garconne. In a departure from Andersen’s text, Berty’s illustration of the mermaid on shore in the prince’s court, depicts her with a straight page-boy bob, fashionable in the mid-1920s, wearing an androgynous red tunic and hose, which emphasise the ‘loveliest legs and feet that a young girl could dream of’. Her red garments symbolise her passion for the prince, but also the punishing pain that accompanied her acquisition of legs, because every step felt like walking on hot coals. The notion of sacrifice is further apparent in the mermaid’s androgyny. Although her high-arched feet and legs with their rounded tapering line are gendered feminine, her shorn hair and the phallic sword about her waist indicate that she has given up a measure of her femininity by occupying the active, masculine position of adventurer and wooer. Indeed, the fairytale duly punishes her for her presumption, because the prince admires, but dismisses her current form. He instead prefers to remain faithful to his original memory of her as his rescuer when she still had her fish-tail, and then eventually marries a human princess who mysteriously resembles the mermaid prior to her transformation.

While the patriarchal myth that a woman who occupies a masculine position sacrifices both herself and the love of men is timeless, it appears especially poignant in these 1935 illustrations, which were conceived in the wake of the female emancipation that characterised the post armistice years, and manifested most strongly in mid-1920s fashion. Thus, in their depiction of the mermaid’s metamorphosis for a children’s fairytale book, Berty and Hameau drew attention to society’s lingering discomfort with regard to feminine agency.

FASHIONING THE FUTURE

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Sci Fi references come in and out of fashion as futuristic aesthetics periodically capture designers’ imaginations. However, references that may seem forward thinking at first can turn out to be retro-futuristic on closer inspection. Unravelling these unexpected connections is one of the many things that makes studying fashion history an exciting enterprise. Looking at Versace’s Fall 2014 couture collection with its asymmetric, monochrome dresses adorned with sleekly cut geometric patterns for example, I was reminded of the little known British science fiction film High Treason. However, it wasn’t completely incidental that I should recognise familiar motifs because I wrote my dissertation on Gordon Conway’s costumes for the feature. Analysing her designs and thinking about how contemporary viewers may have perceived them allowed me to consider how the sartorial language of science fiction fashions powerful images of life in the future.

High Treason, directed by Maurice Elvey in 1929, takes place in the mechanically-driven world of 1940 and focuses on a love story that unfolds while an escalating international crisis threatens with a second world war. The film addressed contemporary concerns regarding technology and depicted a world where machines were not inherently good or evil, as the outcomes of their use depended on human responsibility and a commitment to world peace. Despite its lofty themes, the feature’s principal aim was to astound viewers with its portrayal of the future, therefore flying machines, automated showers and real-time conversations over television screens are shown as the perks of life in 1940. The movie especially sought to appeal to female audiences, as they were considered the primary consumers of cinema at the time. As a result, women were shown to be equal partners in society, whose participation in public life was a key ingredient to world peace.

Fashion played a defining role throughout the film as an added source of entertainment because it was thought that women would pay more attention to costumes than to anything else they saw on screen. Gordon Conway’s futuristic sketches and costumes therefore reflected on the way that women could be both glamorous and practical in a mechanised world. An imaginative range of evening dresses in the film’s nightclub scene illustrated the combination of these two concepts. Actresses appear in hybrid garments; in dresses with daring slits that reveal short trousers underneath. These costumes were decorated in varied ways, but geometric patterns, asymmetry and the use of reflective textures such as black leather and silver silk characterise the pieces shown. Although these costumes appeared futuristic, they also built on an established association between trousers and emancipation that originated from 19th century American feminists. Conway’s costumes therefore reinterpreted avant-garde aesthetics and referenced forward-thinking political movements from the past in order to craft a believable image of the future, one that seemed new yet familiar at the same time.

It is this mix of familiarity and futurism that seems to have been quite prominent in the 2014 fall couture collections, and perhaps it is not a complete coincidence that designs such as Atelier Versace’s geometrically streamlined collection bring to mind science fiction aesthetics. Fashion is always in dialogue with its own past, even when the futuristic is concerned. Due to its propensity for novelty, it has frequently been used to envisage life in the future over the course of the twentieth century. These sartorial prophecies could be viewed at world exhibitions, in films and on the catwalk. As a result, a visual vocabulary of the futuristic has developed, components of which we can recognise without knowing their precise origin. The influence of science fiction aesthetics on high fashion indicates the extent to which technological advances stir the collective imagination. Furthermore, it calls for a comparison with earlier periods when futuristic fashion proved popular, in order to understand how we approach the future, the body and technology today.

High Treason can be viewed for free at the BFI Southbank Mediatheque.