The Helen Louise Allen Textile Collection Move

By Heather Vaughan, March 31st, 2010 at 5:00 am (Museum Life, Uncategorized)

In recent months, I’ve been exploring issues related to moving museum costume and textile collections, including:  “Issues in Dress Collections: Storage & Moving” Part 1 and Part II, and “Issues In Dress Collection: Deaccessioning.” The Helen Louise Allen Textile Collection at the University of Wisconsin-Madison recently moved their collection of ethnographic textiles and I asked the assistant curator of the collection, Diana Zlatanovski (pictured above), to answer some of my questions related to planning, resources, funding, and a number of other details that might help enlighten Wornthrough readers to how this process works for a number of museum collections.

Heather: What are the first steps you took towards planning a move?

Diana Zlatanovski: Once it was decided that the relocation was definitely going to happen, one of the early steps in planning the move was determining how we would need to staff the collection packing.  I knew we would be packing as much as we could ourselves, (instead of hiring fine arts packers) so it was a matter of how many people do we need packing for how many hours a day.  I did a test run of packing a few textiles to get an average time per piece and then multiplied that out by how many textiles we have, divided by how much time we had until the scheduled move day.  Voila!  I had an estimate of how many people we needed packing and for how many hours per week in order to be finished by our move date.

HV: What, if any literature, resources or websites did you use to plan?
DZ: One of my most helpful resources is a listserve administered by the Registrars Committee of the American Association of Museums (RC-AAM).  I use it on a regular basis for information and great advice on all things museum collection related, the museum community has been really open and willing to share their experiences.  The Philadelphia Museum of Art’s website documenting their move and rehousing project is also really useful as is meeting directly with others who have moved their collections. [I highlighted their work in my earlier post, here]

(HLATC EAE1355, European piña tablecloth, 1950s)

HV: What issues/problems did you encounter and how did you address them?
DZ: We were lucky to not be faced with any huge unexpected problems, but a project of this scope will always have some issues that need addressing.  Most of our issues were spacial, objects that were too large to fit into standard box sizes; crates and cabinets that were too big to fit through doorways.   We were also dealing with a tiny tiny space which didn’t give us any room to move around and no freight elevator, just a small passenger elevator to get our entire collection from the 3rd floor down to the trucks.  Solutions involved a lot of creative thinking both on our part and from the moving company.

I did end up having some custom boxes and crates built for specific objects that couldn’t be contained in stock-sized boxes.  When ordering boxes, I made sure the bulk of the box sizes we used would fit onto our elevator, to reduce the hand carrying down the stairs to a minimum.  We did also have to widen one doorway leading out of the collection, in order to be able to remove some of our cabinets.

Staging was another obstacle during our move, the entire relocation was similar to a giant logic problem.  There were a lot of things that needed to happen concurrently as well as a lot of things that couldn’t happen before other things happened, all in very tight confines, both space and time wise.  If we’re reusing the same cabinets for storage in our new space, where do we store the boxes while we move the cabinets? We didn’t have the luxury of enough space to pack everything into boxes and leaving it waiting in our storage room until move day.  So we had to make sure to schedule everything perfectly so that as one aspect of the project moved along, another one moved into its spot.

Other problems, like Midwestern winters packing 20″ snowstorms could not be planned for, but we had contingency plans in place.  Always have contingency plans.

HV: Where did you apply for funding to help financially support the move?
DZ: The Helen Louise Allen Textile Collection (HLATC) exists as part of the School of Human Ecology (SOHE) at the University of Wisconsin.  All of SOHE , including the HLATC, was relocated due to a large renovation and new building project, so our move was funded by the overall relocation budget from SOHE.

HV: How many people were involved, what kinds of outside vendors did you use?
DZ: I was the only one assigned to the move on a full time basis, though I did also have to manage other curatorial tasks during the move process.  All of our packing was done by five curatorial assistants under my supervision.  We also had involvement from our curator as well as other departments on campus: the SOHE Dean’s office and the UW space management office.  I worked primarily with three vendors: our moving company-C. Coakley, our fine arts craters-Blueprint, and Gaylord Brothers for all of our packing materials.

(WFSA3091, Chancay, Peru, 1100-1400A.D.)

HV: How did you document any treatments done to objects before the move?
DZ: Any object treatments are ordinarily documented in our object record files and in our database records.  However, we did not have any object treatments specific to this relocation.  Our main documentation with the relocation was tracking objects by recording new object locations, box numbers, etc.

HV: Where are you now in that process?
DZ: The first phase of our move was completed at the end of January 2010.  Our collection will remain boxed and in storage for approximately two more years until our new building is ready for us to move back in.

(HLATC E1242A, Opera quilt, France, 1897-1900)

HV: What would you have done differently, if you could?
DZ: I wish I would’ve known that we would end up with a cushion of time at the end, so we could have done more cataloging of pieces as we packed them.

HV: What are your future plans for the collection?
DZ: In a couple of years, the HLATC will have a new home which will be a big improvement in storage space as well as research and public spaces.  Our location will be in a central part of SOHE’s new building so we are looking forward to improved visibility and accessibility for our patrons.  We are also currently growing our online offerings, and plan to do so in the future as well.

Thanks so much to Diana Zlatanovski for agreeing to participate in this interview, and providing such useful information! For more on their move, please visit the HLATC’s blog, which includes detailed photos of their experience.

*Photos by Jeff Miller and Diana Zlatanovski via the HLATC blog

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Cross Dressing Through History – Women

By Tove Hermanson, March 30th, 2010 at 2:08 pm (History of Dress)

This is the second installation of the lecture I recently gave in a gender / sociology class at FIT. The first focused on the adoption of feminine fashion trends by men and the seemingly inevitable moral condemnation / censorship of such implied homosexuality (accurate or not); this one follows the appropriation of menswear by women — at first timidly, but sewing the seeds for the full-blown women’s dress reform in the 19th century.

I’m not pretending this is an all-inclusive history, and so I’ll jump in at the 16th century. With rigid social roles dictated by gender and reinforced by gender-specific clothing, one of the earliest and most consistent ways that women snuck into menswear was with accessories, specifically headgear. Well into the 20th century, millinery was requisite for the completion of any ensemble, male or female (in portraits with bareheaded subjects, the hat is almost always painted nearby). Hats were a subtle-enough portion of an outfit that women were able to dabble in menswear by minimally manipulating the size and scale or adding feminine feathers and furbelows (I love that word, don’t you?) to girlie it up a bit. Here we see Mrs. Henry VIII (wife #6) wearing a small, curved cap with ostrich feather that’s rather similar to her husband’s:

Catherine Parr, unknown artist, c. 1545, wife of Henry VIII

Henry VIII by Hans Holbein the Younger, 1540

In medieval days when fencing was a legitimate form of conflict resolution, slashed rents in a man’s clothing were badges of honor to the living victor of a sworded confrontation. This was appropriated into general men’s fashion in the form of “slashes” which were slits along sleeves or chest that allowed the stark white linen underclothes to “bleed” through. Though this decorative style was firmly rooted in a demonstration of sparring virility, it was soon interpreted in womenswear, muddying the symbology in a delightful manner (says me). Men’s styles at large already had a close relationship to armor with sharp V waistline, and pronounced shoulder and chest seams that impersonated metal rivets and joints:

English armor of George Clifford, Third Earl of Cumberland, c. 1580–1586

Queen Elizabeth I was known for her lengthy “virginal” (that is, unmarried) matriarchal reign and, among fashion historians, her calculated use of fashion to assert her dominance within her own court and as a world leader of one of the wealthiest and most powerful countries (an interesting topic for another post). It’s unsurprising then, that she would sport these masculine slashes, pronounced shoulders, deep V corset and phallic sword to signal her capability and equality with male rulers.

detail of Elizabeth I, c. 1560s, with lace ruff

The male-hat-adopted-by-females trend continued in the 17th century, even as the fashionable hat shape changed radically….

Compare to men’s:

detail of Tric-trac players, attributed to Mathieu Le Nain, c. 1650

Though women’s hair was always kept long as a symbol of sexuality, femininity and fertility, it was also always swept away from the face and neck for modesty (because of those sexual connotations). Though Henrietta Maria (below) might look perfectly feminine to modern eyes, her asymmetrical, partially dangling curls were based on men’s hairstyles (as is the hat):

detail Queen Henrietta Maria with Sir Jeffrey Hudson by sir Anthony van Dyck c. 1633

As women gradually (oh so gradually!) branched out into sports and athletic pastimes, the only existing model for sporting attire was that of men’s. Therefore equestrienne gear was one of the first places entire female ensembles were able to mimic entire ensembles of menswear, often incorporating military-inspired embellishment (continuing the theme of war that armor-influence fashion introduced). Below we see Lady Henrietta Cavendish wearing a masculine tri-cornered hat with phallic whip replacing the phallic cane Elizabeth I brandished. The skirt hemline is slightly shorter than would otherwise be acceptable, to allow improved (though still cumbersome) movement. When women were painted in such masculine clothes, the horse is almost always in the background to confirm the outfit is for a specific purpose and not daily wear.

Compare to menswear with full coat skirts, wide cuffs, long (bewigged) hair, and military-style embellishment on the chest:

detail of The Court of Chancery by Benjamin Ferrers, c. 1725

Equestrienne portraiture remained popular through the 19th century, documenting the persisting military / millinery menswear influence in that sport:

Countess Sophia Maria de Voss by Antoine Pesne, 1745

The woman below can clearly be seen wearing a top hat — headgear of the upper class 19th and early 20th century male — and jacket-like bodice with tie:

A Woman Hunting by Alfred De Dreux (1810-1860)

She looks not unlike a flaneur, a 19th century strolling man of leisure (note his female companion does not wear a top hat, as it would be inappropriate in this context):

detail of "Paris, Rainy Weather" by Gustave Caillebotte, 1877

As I suggested in my last post for men adopting female fashions, only women of the privileged upper classes could get away with wearing masculine clothes or accessories. You can see that many of the pictures I culled are royalty (who have a bit more leeway when it comes to forging fashion trends and thumbing convention), and only the wealthy could afford horseback riding as a pastime, much less specific (costly) outfits that could only be worn for that one activity. (Please comment if you know this to be inaccurate; this is my hunch.)

Next week I’ll discuss the specific influence of the Women’s Movement on fashion, and vice versa, as lower class women who simply wanted to be comfortable and hygienic championed dress reform as a movement of its own.

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CFP: Celebrity and Glamour

By Kat, March 29th, 2010 at 5:00 am (Conferences and Calls for Papers)

CALL FOR PAPERS

Celebrity and Glamour
Friday, May 21st, 2010
University of California, Santa Barbara
Consortium for Literature, Theory and Culture

“Celebrity is the advantage of being known to people who we don’t know, and who don’t know us.” — Nicolas de Chamfort

What does it mean to think about ‘celebrity’ and ‘glamour’ in the contemporary moment? What are the parameters of these two concepts? What is the relationship between celebrity and glamour? Is contemporary celebrity distinct from ‘celebrity’ in previous historical moments and cultural contexts? Can we speak of political, literary, artistic or intellectual celebrity? How are Western/American discourses and images of celebrity and glamour exported and circulated throughout the global media economy? How do non-Western audiences and culture-makers absorb and/or contest these memes from inside or outside of that same economy?

With the huge worldwide social networking and media sharing platforms, the economic travails of older media (publishing, Hollywood, etc.), the increasing ubiquity of ‘reality’ television programming, the popularity of do-it-yourself celebrity gossip blogs, we seem to have reached a moment in which obscurity and celebrity are unstable notions whose dynamic relationship demands further inquiry.  Both celebrity and glamour–past and present–are in need of interrogation in relation to the ongoing discourses concerning representation, theory, networks, the body, gender, power, community and so on.

It is with this in mind that the Consortium for Literature, Theory and Culture at the University of California, Santa Barbara has chosen Celebrity and Glamour as the themes of this year’s CLTC conference, which seeks interventions from graduate student scholars around California that consider these notions in historical, literary, cultural, or aesthetic terms.

Paper topics may include but are not limited to: celebrity, glamour, stardom, fame, distraction, ’15 minutes’, new models of public visibility, visuality and visual culture, celebrity in history or literature, alternative constructions of celebrity, culturally specific celebrity, virtuosity, obscurity, technocelebrity, political celebrity, fandom, infamy, spectacle, gawking, political iconography, popular culture, media ecologies, the making of global celebrities, soft power in the form of glamour, empires of glamour or celebrity, etc.

Please send paper title and an abstract of no more than 300 words to [email protected]

Paper title and abstract deadline: April 15th, 2010.

Click here or contact Allison Schifani ([email protected]) for more information.

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On Teaching Fashion: Fashion Jeopardy and Mid-Term Exams

By Lauren Michel, March 26th, 2010 at 5:00 am (Teaching)

Above: Fashion Jeopardy with Andre Leon Talley

One of my courses this semester is a basic textiles course for our Fashion and Interior Design majors. For students inspired to study fashion or interior design by Project Runway and ANTM and HGTV and Martha Stewart (and hopefully, Brini Maxwell), this course can be a little dry.   As I cover the subject matter spelled out in the approved course objectives, each semester I work to create new activities and learning modules to add to the way I teach a course. This week, I subjected my students to their first mid-term exam. I began with two challenges: 1) how to give the students a worthwhile review session before the exam, and 2) writing an all-new exam for them to take.

For a variety of reasons, I am using a new (new to me) textbook for the course this term. This means that my previous exams were based on the format and presentation of the material in the text I used the last time I taught this course. Therefore, I am essentially re-writing all of my exams this term. Without going into a discussion of the merits of each of a variety of test formats, trust me, most professors do not want to sit down and create 50 multiple choice, true/false, fill-in-the-blank test questions if they can avoid it.

Second, because of the nature of the material covered in this class, I decided to spend one class period focused on review for the exam. Rather than bore us all to death with a slide presentation review, I decided to use the opportunity to play games in the classroom, which I have done previously, with success.

Here is how classroom games as a means of reviewing course material in preparation for an exam translated into a reduced workload for me when it came time to write my all-new midterm exam:

• A week and a half before the exam, I gave the students the following homework assignment: write two quiz questions on any of the course subject matter to be on the exam, in the format of the questions and answers on the television game show, Jeopardy.  After I received the questions, I edited them and printed them on index cards. In the last class period before exam day, I had the students form teams, which they named themselves (The Spinnerettes and the Chiffon Sistas are two examples), and each team took turns sending a representative to read questions to the class.

• As the questions were read aloud by the student in the role of the announcer, my role was to watch to see which team had a member with a hand raised first, indicating readiness to answer a question. One point was awarded for each correct answer. The team with the most points at the end of the game won the game. Sometimes, when playing a classroom quiz game, I give out candy as a prize to the winning team. Other times, I give candy to each student in the class, but give more candy to those members of the winning team. Whether to give prizes at all is a matter of personal preference.

• After the game, I gave the students the full set of quiz questions from which to study for their exam, as, and this was the bonus for me, I used a number of the questions on the exam. As the quiz game was played, I was able to gauge which areas the students were quite familiar with and which areas needed to be strengthened, and naturally, they were able to observe this about themselves, too, further enhancing the learning opportunities.

For the results of the students’ achievements on their exam, you will have to wait for a future post from me. I chose to administer the exam in an unorthodox way, which I will be sure to tell you all about, and I have not finished grading them, so I do not yet have my results for analysis and discussion. In the meantime, take a look at some of the Jeopardy-style “questions” written by my students:

1. It is said to be the strongest of all plant fibers and has the highest safe ironing temperature.
2. This manufactured fiber was originally created as an artificial silk.
3. This is the most used manufactured fiber in the United States.
4. It is the formation of groups of short or broken fibers on the surface of a fabric that are tangled together in the shape of a tiny ball.
5. It is the ability to increase in length when under tension and then return to the original length when released.
6. The spinning method in which a solid material is melted to form a liquid solution that is forced through a spinneret and into cool air, where the liquid fiber streams harden into continuous filaments.

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Exhibits!

By Kat, March 25th, 2010 at 5:00 am (Exhibitions, Uncategorized)

“TIME AND PLACE”
ONE NIGHT ONLY! – March 26th
Kill Devil Hill [Brooklyn, NY]

Much like an old photograph, a vintage garment preserves the life and identity of a person. Time and Place explores the power photography and clothing have to evoke emotions and conjure memories. Photographs and garments from a variety of time periods will be on view to relate how we connect places, people and the past.  Curated by FIT Graduate students Sarah Byrd and Nicole Bloomfield, this exhibition exemplifies their passion for fashion, history and photographs in an intimate venue.

The show is only open for the one night, March 26th. The public is welcome to stop by throughout the afternoon. An opening reception will be held from 6:00 – 8:00.

Click here for details.

“BERNHARD WILLHELM & JUTTA KRAUS”
Through April 11
The Groninger Museum [Groningen, The Netherlands]

This exhibit will offer an extensive selection from the 30+ collections over the course of ten years by Willhelm and Kraus. Willhelm and Kraus’s unconventional fashion is characterized by an outspoken visual language in which they give expression to the grotesque, the childish and the fantastic, which they transform and combine in an unparalleled way with elements from pop culture and haute couture. The outfits will be presented in an associative and intuitive way, in exceptional tableaux that highlight and contextualize the background and inspiration of the designers.

Click here for details.

“TOGETHER ALONE: AUSTRALIAN AND NEW ZEALAND FASHION”
Through April 18, 2010
The Ian Potter Centre in the National Gallery of Victoria [Melbourne, Victoria, Australia]

This exhibition highlights the practices of eight leading Australian and New Zealand fashion houses:  Akira Isogawa, Toni Maticevski, MaterialByProduct, Romance Was Born, Doris de Pont, World, Nom*D and Zambesi. Resisting dominant fashion trends, these designers have developed their own aesthetics and have garnered attention locally at Australian and New Zealand fashion weeks and on the global stage in London, Paris and New York. As close neighbors, Australia and New Zealand share common fashion ground. Intellectual and creative undercurrents bind the region, while geographic, historical and cultural nuances generate a range of creative responses. As regional identities in a global fashion system, antipodean designers have received international recognition for their distinctive and original approaches.

Those residing outside of the country can check out the museum’s wonderful Panorama video footage.

Click here for details.

“APRONS: FIFTIES FUNCTIONAL FASHION”
Through April 18
The American Textile History Museum [Lowell, MA]

This exhibit showcases a fun and fashionable collection of the popular accessory from the fifties. Aprons on display range from practical to stylish and bring to mind the housewives, waitresses and hostesses who wore them. A section of novelty aprons, such as those made from handkerchiefs, and travel souvenir aprons will also be on display.

Click here for details.

*Thank you to the Costume Society of America and Nicole Bloomfield for this information.

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Early Cinema Costume: Tille’s Punctured Romance

By Heather Vaughan, March 24th, 2010 at 5:00 am (History of Dress, Uncategorized)

Tille’s Punctured Romance was a Mack Sennett comedy that premiered in New York on Dec. 21, 1914. It stared Charlie Chaplin, Mable Normand and Marie Dressler. Dressler, the real star of the show, was primarily a physical comedienne better known in the legitimate theatre.

This film has been touted by film historians as the first full-length slap-stick comedy (in six reels),  but as you might have guessed, my interest lies in the costumes. Tillie’s Punctured Romance began as a stage production in May of 1910, under the name Tillie’s Nightmare. Of the stage costumes Ms. Dressler noted:

“You remember I was ‘broke’ when illness forced me to shake the dust of London from my reluctant feet..I hadn’t any money and I had to have a lot of clothes [for Tillie] There was only one way to get them and that was to make them. This I proceeded to do. I recall one item of what the papers spoke of with proper reverence as ‘Miss Dressler’s gorgeous collection of Paris creations.’ It was a silver coat composed of yards upon yards of silver lace. I wore it over a stage wedding gown of pink velvet. And if I do say so as shouldn’t, Lillian Russell in her palmist days never boasted anything more frou-frou. For years after my dressmaking venture with Tillie, I made all my own clothes and those of my friends. I still like to sew. I never use a pattern. I simply take a squint at my intended victim, squat down on my heels with the material on the floor in front of me and my eager scissors in my good right hand. Once the garment is cut out, I lie down flat on my stomach and stitch her up. From this point on, my conscience is my guide. At that, my things must have turned out pretty well, or else my friends were gluttons for punishment in the old days. They kept right on begging me to sew for them. Even after I was able to afford ‘store bougten’ clothes, I continued to be own designer and dressmaker. Not only do I love to flourish a needle, but I loathe fittings.”[1]

Charlie Chaplin attempts to con his way into the high life by courting Tillie Banks, played by Marie Dressler (BFI)

For the film version, she was paid a salary of $30,000, though it isn’t known if the same costumes were reused, if new ones were created, or if she used her salary to purchase clothes for the film (as was often the case in early film history). [2] In an amusing description of an early scene in the film, a 1999 biographer notes:

“Her costume for the elopement with Chaplin was one of her own creations: a modified adaptation of a clown’s outfit, with low waist, huge buttons, and a hat resembling a chamber pot topped with a flower and bird. . . Later, dressed in her ‘dancing frock’ that resembled a slip over Christmas tree, Tillie gyrated with startling abandon.”[3]

The ‘Clown’ outfit can be seen above – complete with the strange hat. The ‘Christmas tree’ frock refers to the lampshade tunic and harem pants ensemble that Marie wears towards the end of the film, for a tango scene with Charlie Chaplin (pictured below). The ensemble bears a striking resemblance to those designed by french couturier Paul Poiret, especially those created for his extravigant Thousand and Second Night party held in 1911. Lampshade Tunics worn over harem pants or hobble skirts were popular during these years, primarily due to Poiret’s promotion of the ‘oriental’ look.

Tillie Banks (Marie Dressler) and Chaplin attempt to tango in "Tille's Punctured Romance" (1914) BFI.

Marie Dressler on the set of "Tillie's Punctured Romance" (1914)

In 1914, Poiret’s work was illustrated in the Gazette du Bon Ton by ilustrator George Le Pape, showing his continued support for the style. It is possible, given the salary paid to Marie Dressler, that what appears in the film is an actually Paul Poiret tunic ensemble. However, it is also possible that it is the handi-work of the actress herself (given her disdain for fittings, and her own talents). In Tillie’s Puncture Romance, Dressler clearly wears the look to suggest wealth, but also to make fun of “style,” and the rich. (video of that scene here, the entire film can be seen here).

Fancy dress costume, 1911 by Paul Poiret (Met, CI)

George Lepape (illustrator) Denise Poiret at "The Thousand and Second Night" party

1914 by Paul Poiret (Met, CI)

George LePape du Paul Poiret, Gazette du Bon Ton, 1914.

[2] (Oderman, Stuart. Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle: A Biography of the Silend Film Comedian 1887-1933. London: McFarland & Company, Inc, Publishers. 1994. 61)

[3] Kennedy, Matthew. Marie Dressler: A Biography London: McFarland & Company, Pblishers, 1999. (83) (no source cited)

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Fashion Projects Issue 3 Available Now

By Monica Sklar, March 23rd, 2010 at 5:00 am (Uncategorized)

Our friends and colleagues at Fashion Projects have published issue #3 entitled “On Fashion and Memory.”

It features interviews including: NY-based British designer Shelley Fox, London College of Fashion/V&A research Fellow Judith Clark, and artist Euginia Yu, among others. It also highlights the Cooper-Hewitt‘s textiles collection and Ohio Knitting Mills. The publication is full of color images to grab the eye and make the articles come alive.

Check it out!

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CFP: Material Culture, Craft & Community: Negotiating Objects Across Time & Place

By Lauren Michel, March 22nd, 2010 at 5:00 am (Conferences and Calls for Papers)

May 20-21, 2011

University of Alberta

Material Culture Institute

This interdisciplinary conference will explore the varied expressions of craft – social, cultural and material – in past and present societies. Craft has a rich history and vibrant present-day practice, sustaining communities while negotiating cultures. Craft-made goods were and continue to be created for domestic or institutional use, for local or international markets; they express gender roles and cultural aspirations, sustaining economies. At the same time, craft practice defined and continues to define communities and groups, in the midst of global trade networks. Moreover, the flow of ideas, goods and peoples animate the making, circulation and meanings of craft goods.  These issues will be addressed over the course of the conference.

Keynote Speaker:

Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Harvard University

Confirmed Speakers:

Eiluned Edwards, London College of Fashion, UK

Edward S Cooke, Yale University

Janice Helland, Queen’s University, Kingston

Laura Peers, Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford

Ruth Phillips, Carleton University, Ottawa

Call for Papers:

Paper proposals are invited on topics ranging from the history to present practice of craft production, use, trade, culture and meaning. Proposals are invited from all disciplines. The proposal package should include a paper summary of 150-200 words along with a two page CV. Proposals should be received by October 10, 2010.

Conference Organizer: Beverly Lemire, Department of History & Classics and Department of Human Ecology, University of Alberta

Proposals should be sent to: [email protected]

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Exhibitions: New York Happenings Highlights

By Lucy Collins, March 18th, 2010 at 9:58 am (Uncategorized)

Just wanted to take a moment to mention a few events/exhibitions occurring in NYC:

Greg Lauren: Counter Culture – Ralph Lauren‘s nephew, Greg Lauren, (Alliance Francaise Gallery, February 4 – March 6) uses only white paper, specially treated with Japanese oil, to create garments which reflect his own obsession with detail. He admits that his concern over the smallest features of a garment – a pocket, collar, or a button – is what drives his work. His choice of paper as his medium also reflects the fact that fashion in society can sometimes seem “paper thin.” For more on paper garments, see Tove’s post here.

American Beauty - I recently attended a tour of the current exhibition (Museum at FIT, November 6 – April 10) guided by curator Patricia Mears in which she explained everything from the physical set-up of the exhibition to the history, importance, and relevance of each garment. Overall, the exhibition is another lovely, grand, and appropriate homage to American style, with a quite impressive range and breadth of garments on display.

Fashion + Film, the 1960′s Revisited – In conjunction with the James Gallery‘s exhibition (March 12 – May 1) of the same name, last Friday the CUNY Graduate Center hosted a full day of papers related to 60′s cinema and fashion, generally in reference to Italian and French films. Most notably, Stella Bruzzi delivered a paper on Pasolini’s Teorema, in which she pointed out how absolutely crucial the costuming elements, whether on or off the body, are to the film’ narrative. During the panel there was the mandatory mentions of Hitchcock and La Dolce Vita and Antonioni’s Blow-up, and despite some interesting points made along the way, it seemed that most of the presenters had a difficult time connected thoughts on both film and fashion – they either tended to discuss one or the other.

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Book Review: Jacqueline Groag, Textile Designer

By Heather Vaughan, March 17th, 2010 at 5:00 am (Book Reviews, History of Dress, Uncategorized)

“By the mid-1940s, Jacqueline was arguably the most influential designer of surface pattern in Britain.”

–Book review by Lisa Santandrea

An opening spread in  Jacqueline Groag: Textile & Pattern Design: Wiener Werkst,tte to American Modern pictures the designer. White-haired with bangs and a pixie cut, an aquiline face, one graceful hand rests on her chin; the other holds a smoldering cigarette. She looks into the camera; her gaze is direct, yet not quite serious. Although she is in her 50s, her skin is lineless, glowing.  The image does not reflect the hardship of her experiences—WWII displacement; a beloved husband later described as a “bad tempered old man.”  Instead, what shines through is the pert curiosity of one who claimed her “inner age” to be eight years old. It is the face of a woman you’d hope to sit next to at a dinner party.

Jacqueline Groag, by John Garner, 1957. Design Council archive, University of Brighton Design Archives.

Born in 1903 to Jewish parents in Prague, Jacqueline Groag—born Hilde Pilke —traveled to cosmopolitan Vienna to study textile design at the influential Kunstgerbeschule. At 23 and already a widow, a career in art and design was one of the few avenues acceptable for women at the time. A self-described ‘sophisticated naïf,’ Groag apparently flowered under the tutelage of instructor Franz Cizek, who gave his students colored chalk and drawing pads, and asked them to draw while inspirational music played in the background. Impressed by her progress, Cizek convinced architect Joseph Hoffman, head of the Werkstätte, to waive admission requirements, and she spent the next two years as the architect’s pupil. By 1930, she was already being described in print as a “front runner of the Hoffman school,” and was designing textiles for couturiers including Chanel, Lanvin, Worth and Schiaparelli.

Further accolades followed quickly. In 1931, she won an award for lace design at the Paris Exposition Coloniale International. This was followed by a gold medal for textile design at the Milan Triennial in 1933. Personally life was blossoming as well. At a Werkstätte masked ball in 1930, she met the respected Modernist architect Jacques Groag, who was also a Jew from Czechoslovakia. In 1931, they were engaged, and married in 1937—when she changed her first name from Hilde to Jacqueline. “His wonderful, never aging, youthful enthusiasm took me to spheres so high and unearthly as no man ever did and no man can imagine,” she later wrote. The couple—both shining stars in Vienna’s intellectual circles—is thought to have collaborated on many projects during this time.

But the Nazi threat was looming. When Austria and Germany united in 1938, the couple was forced to relocate to Prague. Just one year later, as Germany occupied their native land, they fled to Britain.

As the home of the Arts and Crafts movement, Britain was considered hallowed refuge for artists. However, by 1939, the reality was different. “On arrival in London they found themselves members of an uprooted group of disoriented and anxious patriots in a country shaken to its roots and preparing to fight for its life.” Nonetheless, Jacqueline soon found work designing textiles for export, as war restrictions resulted in very limited textile printing for the home market. Jacqueline’s designs had a playful eclecticism, often incorporating a “rational underlying grid associated with Joseph Hoffman.”  Flipping through the book’s abundant full-page color plates, the essence of the “eternal eight-year-old” is clear.  Vivid colors, strong lines, even a certain fearlessness is evident in her work. It provides insight into her personality—insight that is much valued. As much as this book has to offer, the text left me wondering. Just what was the personality behind that face that so compelled me?

The authors, Geoffrey Rayner, Richard Chamberlain and Annamarie Stapleton, clearly know their subject. Yet much of the book reads like an extended resume. The reader learns that Jacqueline received important commissions by the Design Research Unit (DRU) as well as industrial designer Gaby Schrieber. We find that her tulip design for Edward Molyneux made it onto a dress for Princess Elizabeth. We read that she designed interiors for the airline BOAC, greeting cards for Hallmark, textiles for the Associated American Artists, and, eventually, plastic laminates.  We note that she became a Royal Designer for Industry, “the ultimate accolade for any designer in Britain,” in 1984.

But her professional achievements seemed in stark contrast to struggles at home. Jacques , whose career floundered in England, had a nervous breakdown, and Jacqueline became the primary breadwinner…how did she feel about that, I wonder.

And that, I realize, says more about me than I should admit to.  I wanted a page-turner, a behind-the-scenes US magazine look at a woman working and thriving in WWII and beyond.  This was not the authors’ intent. Instead, they provide an excellently researched, beautifully illustrated and clearly written reference, one that honors Jacqueline’s illustrious career by the purity of its focus on her work.  Indeed, the straightforward tone of the text drove me to more closely examine her designs for clues. And it is, after all, this work that is being celebrated here. Job well done.

Sample page spreads from Jacqueline Groag: Textile & Pattern Design: Wiener Werkst,tte to American Modern are below, or a larger excerpt, can be downloaded here:

Jacqeline Groag – selection of spreads (PDF)

–Lisa Santandrea is lecturer in costume history at Parson’s School of Design and at the NYU graduate program in Visual Culture: Costume Studies.

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