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Through January 30th, 2011 Indianapolis Museum of Art
This special exhibition examines the many ways designers have manipulated, transformed and liberated the female figure. Featured designers include Rudi Gernreich, Issey Miyake, Junya Watanabe, Thierry Mugler, Jean-Paul Gaultier, Gianni Versace and other avant-garde fashion designers. “Body Unbound” will explore how these designers usedmodernconstruction and unexpectedmaterials to contort, conceal, reveal or mock their wearers.
“This exhibition gives us the chance to share the exceptional depth and quality of the IMA’s fashion artscollection from 1960 to the present daywith the public,” said Maxwell L. Anderson, The Melvin & Bren Simon Director and CEO of the IMA. “’Body Unbound’ will be an excellent opportunity to view many of the Museum’s recent acquisitions in the context of the avant-garde fashion movements that shaped our society.”
Fashions by visionaries Rudi Gernreich and Jean-Paul Gaultier illustrate how some designers played with the notions of shape and construction, challenging mid-century ideals of form. Examples by Issey Miyake and Junya Watanabe, based on the theories of androgyny and “universal beauty,” demonstrate how Japanese designers working in Paris in the 1980s and 1990s promoted an alternate way of styling the body, concealingits contours and silhouette.
Pieces by Thierry Mugler, Gianni Versace and Franco Moschino display how designers utilized innovative textiles and subversive design elements to toy with the concepts of seduction and femininity.
Featuring a range of works, many of which are recent additions to the IMA’s fashion arts collection, “Body Unbound” will demonstrate how some of the most influential designers of the 20th century helped shape the direction of avant-garde fashion. Organized by the Indianapolis Museum of Art, “Body Unbound: Contemporary Couture from the IMA’s Collection” will be on view in the Paul Textile and Fashion Arts galleries. The IMA will be its sole venue.
Museum Address: 4000 Michigan Road
Hours: Tuesday through Saturday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Thursday and Friday, 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.; and Sunday, noon to 5 p.m. The IMA is closed Mondays and Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s days.
The Textile Curator will be responsible for the textile, gold-tooled leather and wallpaper collection. European tapestries, linen damasks, oriental carpets, upholstered interior elements, European textiles (including silk fabrics) and lace represent key sub-collections. The curator should have a vision for the development of this collection, make proposals for acquisition, and implement policy with respect to the formation, maintenance/preservation and management of this sub-collection. This position falls under the Department of Fine and Decorative Arts, which comprises curators, academic staff, project employees and trainees in the area of European and Asian painting, sculpture and applied arts. The curator will make a professional impression and can communicate his or her knowledge of the collection with enthusiasm, with the aim of increasing awareness of the wealth of textile ornament and iconography and the visually prominent role textile plays in European interiors.
For more information, please see the official job description or contact Gregor Weber, Head of Department of Fine and Decorative Arts, by phone on +31 (0)20 674 7282. For questions regarding the application procedure, phone Anita Jansen, Human Resources Manager, on +31 (0)20 674 7326.
*Wedding Dress, ca 1759. Rijksmuseum – Netherlands
Keeping it Up: Developments in Textile Mounting Systems – Karla Livingston, Senior Technician and Kristina Lahde, Technician, Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, ON
Ethel Frankau and the Fashion Press – Aisling J. Joe, Graduate Student, Fashion Institute of Technology, New York, NY
Dressing the Women of St. Clara College - Susan M. Strawn, PhD, Associate Professor, Dominican University, River Forest, IL
The Calash: Unfolding Some of its Secrets – Ruth K. Mills, Milliner, Ottawa, ON
Western Split Riding Skirt – Fashion or Function – Megan Huelman, Graduate Student, University of Nebraska – Lincoln, Lincoln, NB
Annual General Meeting
Behind the scenes tours of the collections at the Canadian Museum of Civilization with Tina Bates, Curator of Home Life, and Costumes and Textiles.
Saturday, October 2:
Guided tour of Bytown Museum, a small museum which explores the evolution of Ottawa from its earliest days as Bytown
Docent tours of the Aboriginal and Inuit Art and artifacts on exhibit at the National Gallery of Canada.
Tours of the National Art Centre and the theatre archives with Gerald Grace, Archivist.
Closing reception and presentation by Andree Pouliot of Sister Bazaar.
Andree shares her in-depth knowledge of woodblock printing and costumes of India, with lots of hands-on material for your inspiration. Rare and unique hand-crafted scarves and shawls sourced directly from contemporary artisans in India will be available for purchase. (cash or cheque only, Canadian or US dollars)
Otto Thieme Memorial Internship Silent Auction. Lee-Ann Blase will be accepting treasures for the auction which will take place simultaneously with the reception.
Full Registration, Travel and Accommodations Information is available at the Symposium web site, along with a registration form. Registration closing date is September 10, 2010.
Among the many delightful personality traits common among my generation y students is their love of tattoos. While I, personally, am ambivalent on the subject, I still appreciate well executed skin art when I see it.
One of my courses this fall addresses personal and professional appearance. With visible tattoos being common among generation x and y workers (and their bosses), the rules of professional dress and tattoos have changed in recent years.
For this course, I use a textbook last updated in 2004, and although that is relatively old for a fashion text, I use it because it is still very appropriate for the requirements of the course. When it comes to subjects like tattoos, I bring in my own more recent sources, including information on how tattoos are perceived by different generations and those from varying cultural backgrounds, and the process of laser tattoo removal (it turns out it is not nearly as quick and simple as some students think it might be).
I don’t tell my students not to get tattoos, but I do gently recommend that they consider how they may at some point in their lives have a situation (such as employment, for example) in which all ink must be covered all the time. We also talk about health regulations in the tattoo industry (in my region, for example, a business license is all that is required to operate a tattoo studio), and safety when getting a tattoo.
To see images of contemporary tattoos from around the world, the internet is a great resource (pre-internet, your local beach,or tattoo magazines and conventions were your only options). There are several large tattoo photo-sharing websites, but for ease of browsing, quality of photography, and interesting subject matter, my favorite at the moment is flickr. I find sewing related tattoos particularly fascinating. Here are some of the highlights from a recent flickr search.
Image Credits: Each image in this post, while hosted on WornThrough, is linked where it was originally posted on flickr. Additionally, links to the flickr profile pages for the users who posted these photos to flickr are included below.
The Costume Society of America, Western Region invites members and non-members alike for a special curators tour of three exhibits at the Fowler Museum at UCLA on August 21, 2010 (register by August 17). The press release for the exhibition notes the impact the making of cloth has on these women’s lives:
“In the Southeast Asian archipelago, making cloth is regarded as the archetypal form of women’s work and creativity. Traditionally, women learned the textile arts — typically weaving or making batik — before they were eligible for marriage. Later in life, excelling in making cloth, and especially in mastering complex natural-dye processes, was regarded as the highest measure of a woman’s achievement.”
Attendees will be treated to three personalized tours by well-spoken curator Roy Hamilton: The largest exhibition Nini Towok’s Spinning Wheel: Cloth and the Cycle of Life in Kerek, Javachronicles the last place in Java where batik is still produced on handwoven cotton cloth. The exhibition concludes with a series of seventeen outfits, each specific to a particular individual according to their sex, age, social status, occupation, and place of residence. Also on view will be Fowler in Focus: Courtly and Urban Batik from Java, an exhibition drawn from the Fowler Museum’s extensive holdings of Indonesian textiles and contrasts both courtly and urban batiks. Lastly is Weaver’s Stores from Island Southeast Asia which examines textile arts in Southeast Asia through video recorded in eight sites in four countries.
CSA Members
$10
CSA Student Members
$ 5
Non members
$15
Student non members
$10
For more information and directions, download the: Registration Form (PDF).
As a young woman who has atypically looked forward to turning shocking silver (I’ve even promised myself to grow my pixie haircut at that time to accentuate it), I’ve read with some curiosity but ultimate skepticism, the rash of articles and blog posts about the supposed trend of women embracing grey hair. The most recent that I read, in UK Telegraph, was one of the more thoughtful ones; it concentrated on 46-year-old ’90s supermodel Kristin McMenamy’s latest photo shoot for Dazed and Confused magazine. Having always been a rather startling-looking woman with Tilda Swinton-like pallor and a broad sneer of a mouth, the shock of flowing, natural grey tresses doesn’t seem so out of place on McMenamy. “You can get older and still be rock’n'roll,” she told the magazine. “I thought all that grey hair would make a beautiful picture.” Below are two photos (neither from the D&C shoot) that exemplify how grey can be romantic…
in Vogue, August 2010
sleek…
in Calvin Klein RTW F2010
or totally fucking fierce:
on the Givenchy runway, S2008
This is not the first time grey hair has been in style; compared to the 18th century, this current fad is a drop in the pan. Men and women alike oiled and powdered their hair shades of grey and white starting in the mid-1700s. Oil was necessary to make the powder stick, and yes, oil and powder was unavoidably shed with movement; you can see Charles-Alexandre de Calonne, below, is leaking powder on his shoulder, like dandruff, where his ponytail rubs:
detail of Charles-Alexandre de Calonne by Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun, 1784
Below Madame Grand (later Madame Talleyrand-Périgord, Princesse de Bénévent) models the bouffant du jour in the late 18th century:
Madame Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, later Princesse de Bénévent, by Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun, 1783
Mature as her dusty locks make her to our 21st century eyes, this is only a 22 year-old woman; you can see her cheeks are still youthfully plump and rosy (though blush undoubtedly assisted). Here is the same woman — approximately 25 years later:
detail of Madame Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, later Princesse de Bénévent by François Gérard, c. 1808
In addition to the change of hair color and style, it is obvious by this comparison that there was a radical change of silhouette in the costume of the mid-late-18th century and that of the early 19th century. As with the turn of the 20th century, a great deal of bulk and fussiness was discarded in favor of a sleeker and ultimately more youthful, modern look in hair and costume. I don’t think it’s the powdered grey hair alone that ages our subject, but rather the compilation of big, fussy, surreal hair with busy bows and lace and volume in the dress and accessories. In my humble opinion, the neo-Classical look of the early 19th century just feels more modern. But I digress.
Marie Antoinette (1755 – 1793) was both early champion and ultimate victim of powered coiffures. The Flour War of 1775, caused by the de-regulation of wheat prices by the government, lead to hoarding, gauging, and the inability of lower classes to afford simple bread, and was the ominous precursor to the crescendo of the French Revolution. Wig powder, a product of finely ground starch (a.k.a. flour), was used liberally by the naive queen in her legendary towering bouffants, casting her and her fashion statements in a distinctly unflattering, frivolous light. French historian Caroline Weber observed, “…although historians have established that Marie Antoinette never uttered the legendary remark “Let them eat cake,” it is not implausible that the lasting association between her callousness and baked edibles in fact originated with her habit of parading her powdered, wedding-cake hairstyles before a bread-starved nation.”
Here is Marie Antoinette in the very year of the Flour War, seemingly flaunting her willful ignorance of the economic struggles of her country, and all to achieve that trendy grey hair:
Marie Antoinette by Jacques-Fabien Gautier D'Agoty, 1775
With no small irony, according to legend Marie Antoinette’s hair turned grey with stress and fear the night before her execution; grey hair as fashion statement had clearly run its course as it became associated with the demonized, decapitated monarch. Two years later the English government levied a tax on hair powder, the last coffin nail of that grey-haired trend… until today?
Granite hair was on the 2010 runways shows of playful Giles Deacon and goth Gareth Pugh, and the Telegraph article quoted high end hairdressers claiming to have more young clients who want grey, like Peaches Geldof, Kelly Osbourne, Kate Moss and Victoria Beckham. This kind of minimal evidence has prompted sites like trendhunter.com to prematurely declare “For decades men and women have been trying to mask signs of aging, but a new wave fashionable gray hair is reflecting a shifting attitude regarding the physical effects of getting older.” A more tempered NYTimes article quoted colorist Sharon Dorram, “who said that among her downtown New York patrons, it is mostly younger women, renegade types, who request gray. Not lost on Ms. Dorram is the irony that their older, more conventional counterparts spent $1.3 billion to cover their grays last year, according to Nielsen.”
I don’t think gunmetal tresses were a sign of the fetishization, or even simple respect, of mature women in the 18th century, and I don’t think that’s the case in 2010 either. It’s an unusual, edgy color precisely because so many women with natural grey hair color over it, so it really pops when a woman such as Kristin McMenamy rocks it. I think that even if more grey hair dye is being sold, it is unfortunately not a sign that older women — specifically, naturally mature women — are all of a sudden welcomed back into the fold for the general, fashionable, youth-obsessed public. Pixie Geldof, for example, I don’t think could be said to be furthering the cause of women aging gracefully, though her hair is certainly grey:
Pixie Geldof
Along a similar line, premature articles claiming the emergence of older models on runways and magazine spreads as being indicative of older women being accepted as beautiful and sexual are, I think, overlooking that those older models might be over-the-hill 30+, but they are recognizable and have proven themselves exceptionally good at selling products — hence their previous successes. In economically strapped times I think we all return to the familiar, tried-and-true methods of existence, and I believe designers are returning to supermodels of yesteryear because they have the most experience and accomplishments, and fame/notoriety that can only come with age — also, they are still smokin’ hot. Kate Moss is still landing covers at age 36 (which is, by the way, close to the height of a woman’s biological peak of personal sexuality), and 37 year-old Heidi Klum is even modeling in Victoria Secret lingerie shows (after having popped out 4 children). This is evidence that magazines and designers don’t want to take as many risks these days, when merchandise is harder to move off shelves. They know Moss and Klum, they know their scopes, their talent, and the sales they still consistently generate. After all, you don’t hear about a surge of random, unknown older women taking up the runways — that would demonstrate real progress in my eyes. May I suggest Gloria Steinem for that next stage?
The 19th Annual 18th- and 19th-Century British Women Writers Conference The Ohio State University Columbus, OH “Curiosities” March 31- April 3, 2011
Call for Papers:
The theme for this year’s conference is “Curiosities.” We encourage submissions that consider how the concept of curiosity—in its dual meaning of intellectual pursuit and particular material objects—influenced the lives and work of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century women writers, and continues to drive our scholarship today. We welcome interdisciplinary approaches to this topic, and are especially interested in both the ways in which women of this period expressed curiosity about their world through science, politics, philosophy, travel, religion, and art, and the ways in which these same questing, curious women became the subjects and objects of inquiry themselves.
Proposals for panels and individual papers might consider, but are not limited to, the following issues in women’s writing of the “long” eighteenth and nineteenth centuries:
Curious Bodies • Maternity; Sexuality; Race and ethnicity • Women and disability • “Freak” studies • Bodies on display: actresses, dancers , “public women”
Morbid Curiosity
• The Gothic
• Supernatural investigations; spiritualism; afterlife
• Scandal; roman à clef
• Bluebeard Tales: the “dangers” of female curiosity
Curiosity vs. Privacy
• Voyeurism and eavesdropping
• Gossip
• “Private” Genres: letters, diary, closet drama
• Epistolary novels
• The private sphere
• Private legacies: wills, estates, inheritance
Cabinets of Curiosities • Collections and collectors • Women and/as commodities • Domestic objects • Consumerism; shopping; possessions • Exhibitions and museums
Curious Inquiries
• Science and medicine; The Case Study
• Education/ the pursuit of knowledge
• Philosophical and religious investigations
• “The Woman Question”
• Journalism
• Crime and investigation: women’s crime fiction; mystery writing; the female detective
• Experimentation (artistic, scientific, personal)
**Note: The journal Prose Studies will be publishing a special issue based upon papers presented at this conference; therefore, we especially encourage proposals focusing on forms of non-fictional prose in addition to work on poetry, drama, fiction, etc.
Individual proposals should be two pages: a cover sheet including name, presentation title, university affiliation, address, e-mail address, phone number, and brief biographical paragraph; and a 500-word abstract.
Panel proposals should include a coversheet—including panel title, presenters’ names, presentation titles, university affiliations, addresses, e-mail addresses, phone numbers, brief biographical paragraphs, and the name of a moderator—followed by separate abstracts (500-word) that describe the significance of the panel topic and each presentation.
Please do not include any identifying information on the abstracts.Proposals must be submitted electronically as an attachment in .doc or .rtf format by Nov. 1, 2010 to the conference e-mail address at: bwwc2011@gmail.com
*
. St Martin’s Press: New York, NY.
