Fashion-orientated depictions of swimming primarily focus on appearance. Swimwear histories and the annual beachwear magazine features alike, discuss the shapes of swimming garments and how the exposed body should look or has looked over time. Appearing before strangers wearing nothing but a few choicely-positioned fig-leaves is certainly an important aspect of the swimming experience, but once you enter the water, other considerations come into play: will the suit cling acutely, forming a seal-like second skin, float buoyantly around you or threaten to leave you altogether?

Leanne Shapton’s Swimming Studies, a memoir of her swimming experience both as a trainee Olympian and later as a recreational swimmer begins to answer some of these questions as she elaborates upon the sensory aspects of swimming and swimwear. She recounts how the water feels against her skin, hair and muscles, and considers how its variable temperature, smell, colour and parameters vary with each aquatic encounter.

Each swimming experience is synaesthetic, where the look of the water influences the feeling and vice-versa: for example, the Olympium pool in Etobicoke, Canada is ‘blue’, ‘hums in the mornings’ and is of a scale ‘amplified by the density of chlorinated air over the water’s surface’. The pure blue colour and chlorine smell preside over an atmosphere of concentrated swimming ambition. Subsequently, the bodies that enter the pool reflect its streamlined, utilitarian purpose. Conversely, the seawater at the women’s swimming pavilion at Saltsjöbadens Friluftsbad in the Stockholm Archipelago, where clothing is optional, appeared ‘a beautiful olive-green colour, turning (Shapton’s) skin ochre beneath the waves’ and tasted ‘only mildly saline’. The experience of swimming nude amongst other women was one of ‘indifferent animality… as though in our polite blankness we are brushing up against one another, our furs , our similarities’. Here, the water’s olive waves transfigure the women’s forms, both in terms of appearance and sensation, and indicate a natural, non-competitive realm, where bodies are free from scrutiny.

Shapton’s book also features black and white photographs of her swimwear collection, modelled by white, headless linen mannequins. She describes how one high-necked black Speedo, ‘used for training, 1988-1992’, was ‘made of nylon, more durable and less flexible than Lycra’ and worn doubled up with other suits in order to provide extra weight and ‘drag’. Shapton compared the team’s uniform mentality to their extra suits to that of a ballet company because ‘we’d roll them down wet after warm-up, as ballerinas roll legwarmers up over their knees and then down around their ankles.’ While Shapton’s competitive swimwear was exposed to the shared, routine experiences of a team, her often vintage, recreational swimwear, which hangs shapelessly from the mannequins, acquired personal associations. She reproached one vintage Cole of California, brown zebra-stripe full piece for being ‘slightly too short in the waist’ despite its pattern’s promise to transform the wearer into the zebra-fish it resembled, and recounted that a whimsical Vintage Charmant mustard-yellow and white polka-dot bikini was worn to host a suitably retro pool party ‘where guests played Bananagrams, croquet and Catchphrase’.

Shapton demonstrates how swimming is always an occasion because one leaves behind one’s terrestrial habits and gains ‘knowledge of watery space, being able to sense exactly where my body is and what it’s affecting, an animal empathy for contact with another element.’ Thus, each entry into the water, whether competitively in a team, or recreationally, is ripe for memory-making. Our swimming costumes, and how they transform in the water, become part of our aquatic beings. As we move through the water, we notice that racing stripes are the image of speed, or the ruffle around our bikini resembles a gill. We remember these garments not merely by how they appear dry, but by how they perform when wet.

Sources:
Leanne Shapton, Swimming Studies (London: Penguin Books, 2012).

The jewellery designed and worn by Coco Chanel and, by extension, the modern-day incarnation of Chanel Fine Jewellery, presents a precise reflection of her overarching mythology, weaving together the three crucial components of this myth – design, biography and contemporary image – into an aesthetic shorthand for its contradictions and consistencies. The jewellery’s positioning as a perpetual counterpoint to the design philosophies Chanel signified through her clothing designs subverted and, at times, reversed the relationships between intricacy and simplicity, abundance and absence.

Cecil Beaton, writing in the year of Chanel’s ‘comeback’ in 1954, contemplated the logic behind the designer’s promotion of rational simplicity within her clothing designs. Bypassing typical attributions to notions of modernity and shifting social mores, Beaton suggested an alternative interpretation: ‘possibly she turned to nature and…reaffirmed, the fact that the female of the species is generally unadorned, that female birds are drab compared to the males’. The dualism inherent within the wider Chanel mythology, however, finds its full force in the couturière’s consistent contrasts: between this minimalistic clothing and a mode of ‘adornment’ defined by luxury, but never ostentation; artistry, but never economical value. She deconstructed the notion of ‘adornment’, stripping it from its conventional space on the clothing’s surface, only to reconstruct it through the medium of jewellery and, subsequently, making this juxtaposition an integral part of her image and identity, both personally and through her brand.

Chanel’s clothing designs appeared to be simple, with their streamlined silhouettes and reductive aesthetic, yet they both contradicted and complemented the bold, graphic qualities of her costume jewellery and the fantastical profusion of her 1932 foray into diamond jewellery. Her ability to incorporate seemingly oppositional elements, such as authentic and imitation stones, as seen in photographic representation of her wearing her own jewellery, alongside the consistency with which she employed recurring motifs and design features – the star, the feather, the lion – as seen in both the 1932 and 2012 collections, is part of her inherent mythology. However, the tensions that surface between contradiction and consistency within Chanel’s jewellery, and indeed clothing, are not limited solely to design. The frictions that have inevitably arisen between Karl Lagerfeld’s desire to respectfully reanimate the iconographical traditions of his predecessor while, simultaneously, avoiding an overtly reverential methodology create a contemporary layer of paradox atop a pre-existing mythology. Similarly, Chanel’s own conscious presentation of a cultivated ‘personality’, which sought to rewrite the more humble and tumultuous aspects of her personal narrative, was crystallized within her own use of adornment. However, an excessive biographical focus in relation to the Chanel ‘myth’, due primarily to a recent cultural propensity to amplify and ‘commercialize’ this particular aspect, can certainly eclipse vital components of a mythology that, in fact, extends further than mere biography. However, without any consideration of Chanel’s heavily mythologized personality, the ‘myth’ as a whole remains incomplete, owing to its significant contribution to the durability of her overall image.

The myth’s three central components are therefore inextricably interlinked in its establishment. Thus, both the jewellery’s design and representation enabled the expression of a mythology that extends beyond design in order to encompass interdependent notions of personality and contemporary image, and which, subsequently, becomes an embodiment of the Chanel brand’s modern, contradictory and indissoluble identity.

Sources:

Beaton, C. (1954) The Glass of Fashion, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson.

Bolton, A. and Koda, H., eds. (2005) Chanel, New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Mauriès, P. (2012) Jewelry by Chanel, London: Thames & Hudson.

All opinions are the author’s own. 

On 24th June 2014, Rebecca Jones posted a photograph on Twitter, addressed to the low cost clothing retailer, Primark. Her navy blue top, sprinkled with a neat grid of white polka dots, and worn with jeans, although simple and stylish, would not be out of place on a typical high street. What isn’t so typical, however – not even within the thousands of identical garments sold nationally by the retailer – is the label nestling amongst its folds. In addition to standard issue washing and care instructions in red and white printed text, is a handmade addition. Its idiosyncratic stitches and scrawled black capitals state plainly: ‘“Degrading” sweatshop conditions.’

Primark’s ethical disposition has never been entirely untarnished, and a major section of its website is dedicated to bolstering this, with photographs, videos, and attempts to address the moral question, explicitly quoted: ‘How can Primark offer the lowest prices?’. This initiative is especially important in light of last year’s tragedy at Rana Plaza, the garment factory that collapsed, killing over 1,130 workers.

Whilst the brand offers amongst the lowest in-store garment prices, it was by no means the only retailer to have used the factory, and therefore not alone in its association with unfavourable working conditions. These too, are representative of a much more widespread problem, and the heavily publicized disaster served to bring to public consciousness an issue that can be otherwise all too easy to repress. When faced with an accessible abundance of goods, in retail outlets thousands of miles away from the factories in which they are made, this sensation of consumer dissociation is exacerbated.

Other consumers also discovered handmade reminders of these ethical issues hidden in their garments. A similar example appeared in a floral dress bought by Rebecca Gallagher in the same Swansea store, whereas the third known example emerged in the form of a note, written in Chinese and concealed in the pocket of a pair of trousers, bought by Karen Wisinska in Belfast. The affected garments were all purchased a year or more ago. Although investigations have concluded that the incidents were likely staged, and added after arriving in store, this does not defeat their role in sharply raising awareness of the very real issue of fast fashion, and its implications.

Ready-to-wear clothing’s rise to dominance sped up after the First World War, when the industry began to evolve into its modern state. In the last thirty years, there has been a huge growth in availability, range and, indeed, excess of clothing, much of which – Primark’s wares included – is so cheap that it can be discarded at the end of the fashion season. Is this a demonstration of ready-to-wear reaching a tipping point? Is fast, throwaway fashion sustainable, environmentally and ethically alike? Can it truly exist without adversely affecting humanity – both in terms of unscrupulous treatment of producers, and corroding consumers’ sense of value?

Recently, a tide of organized and public protest against these issues has gained momentum, and increasingly, brands new and old explicitly promote consciousness. Italian label Progetto Quid, for example, transforms surplus stock into ‘limited eco chic collections’, employing ‘exclusively disadvantaged women’, and combats any residual notions that responsible clothing must be staid, with its trend-led design. Nevertheless, will this be enough to entice the average shopper away from the low cost and easy availability that they are accustomed to? Only time will tell whether ethics matter enough over convenience, and whether accountability and accessibility can converge. Perhaps the Primark ‘labels’ can become a catalyst for change that has long been required.

References:

http://www.primark.com/en/our-ethics

http://progettoquid.it

The Red Hat Society (RHS) is a social organization originally founded in 1998 in the United States for women aged 50 and beyond, but is now open to women of all ages. As of 2011, there are over 40 000 chapters in the United States and other countries. I had the opportunity to meet a lovely group of ladies from the RHS. The group had travelled from Essex to Somerset House, to see the Isabella Blow exhibition that finished in March 2014. Known as the red ‘hatters’ the ladies often have tea parties and their Queen, Phoenix Fillies, confirmed a taste for the eccentric. The founding hatter, artist Sue Ellen Cooper, initiated the RHS by quoting Jenny Joseph’s poem ‘Warning,’ noting:

“When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat that doesn’t go and doesn’t suit me.”

There was something of the absurd, yet subtly brilliant, about the women’s appearance. Whilst they stood out as a group in Somerset House, each had adapted the colour combination of red and purple to create a range of interesting details that oscillated between being quite old fashioned and extremely modern, with details such as a tight seam or white tights set against red lipstick and red nails.

Each woman clearly took pride in their appearance and in belonging to the group. Their ‘Queen’, Phoenix Fillies, was forthcoming about the aims and benefits of the Red Hat Society. Their sense of belonging through colour invoked Jenifer Craik’s research on uniforms and can also be seen to relate to colour theory, demonstrating an outfit choice that resists insecurity and invisibility as older women. Pamela Church Gibson explores the disappointing tendency to become invisible as women get older. As opposed to an invisibility cloak, the red and purple clothes became the insignia of pride and presence. Visibly travelling around and enjoying interesting cultural days out, each woman took a deep-seated pride in her appearance. It was a pleasure to catch them on camera.

Sources:
Craik, J. (1994) The Face of Fashion: cultural studies in fashion. London and New York: Routledge.

Church Gibson, P. (2000) ‘No one expects me anywhere’: invisible women, ageing and the fashion industry. Fashion Cultures: theories, explorations and analysis, London and New York: Routledge, pp. 79-90.

The representation of fashion in the 2013 film adaptation of the novel The Great Gatsby, directed by Baz Lurhmann, has raised a number of significant questions with regard to both its role in the portrayal of key notions of femininity and fantasy, but also the tense relationship between the past in which the film is set and the present in which we view and interpret it. In her first scene, the character of Daisy Buchanan, played by Carey Mulligan, wears a cream sleeveless dress consisting of a structured lace bodice and full skirt of organza ‘petals’, cinched at the waist by a flowing beige tulle sash. Daisy’s portrayal of femininity, however, assumes a complex and problematic nature due to its play with the familiar binaries of feminine representation. The delicate elegance of her dress contributes to an ideal, or even potentially overly idealised, image of purity and incorruptibility yet its form-revealing bodice, fleshy tones and transparent panel are highly suggestive of a corporeal sensuality that does not correspond so comfortably with this ideal. The viewer is invited to realise Gatsby’s sexual attraction to Daisy while, simultaneously, fully comprehending her prevailing untouchable nature. Aesthetically, her presentation is undoubtedly beautiful, impeccably and ethereally so. Yet through an emphasis on a dreamlike fantasy of exaggerated femininity, the portrayal of her character is weakened and the audience’s view of her on the whole becomes, much like Nick and Gatsby’s in the narrative, characterised by a certain distance.

Conversely, the viewer’s introduction to the character of Tom Buchanan’s mistress Myrtle Wilson, played by Isla Fisher, is defined by a heightened fantasy of blatant and unashamedly erotically suggestive imagery, as she appears in her husband’s garage in a blur of glossy Bakelite bangles, heavy make-up, brightly coloured prints and fishnet stockings. Although the most significant and obvious function of this depiction is to offer further juxtaposition of the figures of devoted wife and wanton mistress, the viewer’s sensory perception of each operates very differently. Every element of Myrtle’s physical appearance, from her red lipstick to the vivid clash of green headscarf against tight, red curls of hair, visually magnifies her sexuality to the point that it begins to border on clichéd fantasy and even caricature. We can see how the fabric of her dress clings to and reveals her physical form, and a mass of red ruffles draws the eye towards a historically anachronistic display of cleavage. The notion of touch is only a secondary consideration in this instance since the flat, graphic lines of the dress and texture, which is suggestive of a cheap synthetic quality, is offset by the plastic sheen of her stacks of smooth, thick bangles.

By contrast, throughout the course of the film the presentation of Daisy’s dress is dominated by an engagement with touch, from her variously embellished dresses to the juxtaposition of a luxuriously soft fur coat and intricately textured lace dress, which are worn in the final scene. The use of conventionally feminine colours, such as cream, pale pastel and shades of gold, displace the sensual emphasis of sight and transfers it to touch, by allowing the muted hues to provide a foil for the textured fabrics, iridescent pearls and hard glitter of diamonds. These present an overall and lasting impression of luminous wealth and decadence rather than, as in Myrtle’s case, sexual availability and immediate sensual gratification.

The film’s emphasis on fashion, hairstyles and visual display can be considered an essential factor in the film’s overall audience appeal. The decorative excess of these visual codes, however, is also necessary in the formation of a feminized world in which extravagant and exciting performance predominates, thus creating a pleasingly disordered synthesis of historically conflicting styles and influences – all wholly appropriate, of course, to the original novel’s privileging of desire and escapism.

The French documentary filmmaker Chris Marker wrote of the women he photographed on his travels: ‘I stare at them, but not enough, not long enough’. Paraphrasing the poet Valery Larbaud he mused: ‘perhaps, if I could catch up with them [his female subjects]… perhaps I could conquer a world. Or rather they would conquer a world for me’. The first photographs in Marker’s ‘Staring Back’ series, which spanned six decades (c.1950s- 2000s), featured subjects of both sexes in a post-colonial Cold War world, one in which France’s grip on its colonies was continually challenged, and the balance of global power had shifted from Europe to the United States and the USSR.

Marker, a progressive left-wing intellectual was conscious that he did not want to replicate the conventions of colonial European photographers who shot their subjects from the position of perceived racial and intellectual superiority. His above comment, that no amount of staring was sufficient to fully grasp the character of the subject, is pertinent because it suggests that he relinquished the photographer’s traditional claim to mastery over the subject. In a photograph of Russian girls listening to poetry, made in the 1950s, Marker positions himself as a witness to their engrossment. The girls are shot side-on in soft focus with their eyes downcast. The edges of the auditorium seats around them are blurred so as to suggest that everything is touched by the poetry’s rhythm. The girls’ sweaters seem non-descript second skins and the highlights at the crown of their heads take on a dandelion texture, which gives the impression that they too dissolve into the verse’s cadences. The vagueness of the composition appeals to the spectator’s sense of ‘haptic visuality’ which, as the film theorist Laura U. Marks argues, acknowledges the limitations of visual knowledge and uses the ‘resources of memory and imagination to complete’ the image. Haptic images, Marks continues, ‘force the viewer to contemplate the image instead of being pulled into the narrative’. Thus, the vague apparitions in Marker’s image elude their exact location and ethnicity and instead evoke the immediate and universal act of listening. While Marker does not pretend to fully compass his Soviet subjects, his soft-focus treatment indicates his empathy with their poetic transportation.

Marker’s interest in his female subjects’ elusiveness forms the subject of his 1962 ciné-roman La Jetée, a film composed almost entirely of black and white still images, which centres on the protagonist’s obsession with the image of a woman from his childhood. Even after he enters the post-apocalyptic scenario of World War III, he greets her in parallel universes. Although the film is set in the future, the female protagonist played by Hélène Chatelain aspires to a 1960s French New Wave conception of timelessness. Styled in unadorned black and white shift dresses, her face free from obvious make-up and her shoulder-length blonde hair flyaway or in a statuesque high chignon, Chatelain recalls Jeanne Moreau in Francois Truffaut’s 1962 film Jules et Jim. In both films the heroine’s understated styling enables a focus on the corporeal essentials that define the hero’s relentless fixation: the smile, the hair and the hands flying up to frame her face. As Janet Harbord argues, the woman’s hands ‘do not so much obfuscate her expression as stand in the place of it, and mediate it’. The fleeting encounters of the man and woman in their post-apocalyptic worlds reach varying levels of communion, as the film shows how an encounter with a childhood vision can be richly experienced, but not fully achieved.

Marker’s post-war images of women express his extraordinary sensitivity to the tiniest mutations in the female face. However, in the course of this poetic journey, he also exposes the futility of the photographer’s quest to capture the true essence of his mutable subjects.

The above works can be viewed at Chris Marker: A Grin Without a Cat at the Whitechapel Gallery until June 22, 2014.

Sources:
Marker, C. (2014) ‘Chris Marker: A Grin Without a Cat’, Exhibition Wall Text, Chris Marker: A Grin Without a Cat, Whitechapel Gallery.

Marks, L. U. (1999) The Skin of the Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment and the Senses Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, p. 163.

Harbord, J. (2009) ‘Chris Marker: ‘La Jetée’ London: Afterall Books, p. 45.

The first thing that strikes you is the sheer volume of fabric. Dove grey silk taffeta – and lots of it. Packed into a suitcase, this Charles James dress was a complete surprise. And a wonderful treat for my students and me!

But I’m running ahead of myself, I should backtrack and explain. A couple of weeks ago, out of the blue, I received an email from Niccola Shearman, a research student at The Courtauld. She had seen some quotes from me in an article on the current Charles James exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, and wondered if I’d be interested to know that she had two James dresses.

You see, Niccola is James’ great niece, and she has inherited two precious reminders of his skill and creativity – the grey dress, which he made for her mother, Jane Smith’s 21st birthday party held at the Café de Paris in 1954, and a wedding dress. The latter is an especially intriguing piece of fashion history, originally designed by Charles Frederick Worth for James’ mother’s wedding in the 1880s, James later adapted it for his sister’s 1930s marriage, and then reworked it again, two decades later, for Niccola’s mother to wear, when she married John Shearman (one-time Deputy Director of The Courtauld).

Hearing this news was thrilling, and you can imagine our delight when Niccola arrived in my office with the grey dress, photographs of both gowns and fascinating stories about her family’s history. Born to an American mother and British father, James spent part of his life here in London. His obsessive approach to pattern cutting produced a series of extraordinary garments that were sculpted to the torso and engineered to spread out from the body in architectural folds.

Niccola’s mother’s dress bears these hallmarks. The bodice is constructed to fit like a second skin, mimicking mid-nineteenth century lines, it comes to a slight point at the centre of the waist. It has whale boning to make sure the fit is precise and that it stayed in place when worn. The sweetheart neckline is edged with self-coloured velvet ribbon, pleated to soften the line and flatter the skin with its textural contrast. The cap sleeves are pleated to make them curve out from the top of the arm to balance the overall silhouette. It is lined with palest peach-pink silk, that provides a secret complement – known only to the wearer – to the opalescent grey taffeta seen by onlookers.

And then there is the skirt. Pleated into the waistband – again an homage to the previous century – it stands out in deep folds from the fitted waist. The hem is held out by a wide band of woven horsehair that ensured the dress maintained its bell-shape swing throughout the party.

The dress therefore combines the fashionable 1950s style with its nostalgic references to Victorian femininity. And importantly, bears James’ signature in its attention to detail – it is hand stitched – his love of sculptural forms, created through clever construction techniques, and his fascination with lush silks and hidden contrasts.

It was wonderful to have the opportunity to examine the dress close up, and we are so grateful to Niccola for sharing this amazing piece of her family’s (and fashion’s) history with us.