“You can be too rich and too thin, but you can never be too well read or too curious about the world.” Tim Gunn
Tim Gunn’s latest bookGunn’s Golden Rules: Life’s Little Lessons for Making It Work is a unique amalgam of etiquette guide, pet peeves, personal memoirs, and dishy tales of the divas and the don’ts of the fashion world. Says Ada Calhoun, who collaborated with Gunn, “Our operating framework was a trusted teacher’s office hours. Tim tried to think of what he’d tell students who came to him for advice on how to get along in the world,” and this he certainly does, with an abundance of personal anecdotes, so many, in fact, that you will come away from this book feeling as if he had told you his entire life story.
Gunn’s Golden Rules contains 18 ‘rules’, starting with Make it Work and ending with Carry On. Gunn gives his opinions on a range of social niceties, from holding doors to gift giving, with plenty of real life examples to back them up, including examples of his own social gaffs plus those of others, including many well-known players on the world fashion stage.
Gunn shares his wisdom from the classroom when he tells of many of his experiences as an educator, both at Parsons, where he worked for over 20 years, and at the Corcoran College of Art in Washington DC, where he held his first teaching position, plus his work on the American reality television series, Project Runway, and as Chief Creative Officer for Liz Claiborne, Inc.
One intriguing recurring theme is Gunn’s discussion of what a shy person he is, and how he has been able to Make it Work and live life successfully, despite his shyness. If you are a shy person, withdrawn and reserved, and dreaming of normalcy, I recommend you pick up this book, if only to read of Gunn’s experiences on that topic, so you too can Make it Work.
“I hear this a lot as an excuse for why people don’t take chances or don’t succeed in getting the job they want or the relationship they desire: ‘I’m so shy. I get very nervous.’ ‘I’m shy by nature!’ I say. ‘I’m withdrawn. You have to learn how to engage. If I did, anyone can.’’
This is coming from a man who threw up in the school parking lot on the way to teach his first class (fellow teachers, good story, I assure you). I was nervous on my first day of teaching, but not that nervous.
On the subject of Project Runway, Gunn certainly dishes, and throughout it all the love and respect he has for each of the designers, the way a teacher loves and respects his students (oddballs included), consistently comes through. This is no mere behind-the-scenes exposé. Gunn shares what did not work in the workroom and on the runway (and what did work), all as examples to back up the rationale behind his Golden Rules.
Woven throughout Golden Rules are intimate stories from Gunn’s personal life, ranging from his childhood as the son of J. Edgar Hoover’s ghostwriter, to a teenage suicide attempt, to his love life in adulthood. Of the many insights contained in this book, some of my favorites include:
How becoming a television personality later in his career has served to keep him grounded in reality, and prevented him from becoming a drama queen.
The striking resemblance J. Edgar Hoover bore to Vivian Vance at one point, and the surprise of meeting of Vivian Vance on a visit to Hoover’s office in 1961, while at the same time, Hoover himself was absent.
Martha Stewart’s bizarre prohibition on Diet Coke in her television studio.
His experiences and point of view on being closeted, coming out, and being a positive gay role model today.
Descriptions of the Vogue offices, and the tale of how he was almost sued by Anna Wintour.
Above all, Gunn’s message is one of kindness and consideration. As he says on the subject of holding doors for people in public places (and not only women), “It has to do with noticing our fellow human beings and saying, ‘I recognize that you’re on this planet, and I don’t want a door hitting you in the face.’”
Ada Calhoun, who helped Gunn write this book sums up her experience working with Gunn quite sweetly, “Friends keep asking me what Tim is like in person. The truth is that he is kindness and generosity personified.” After reading Gunn’s Golden Rules, I believe it.
My two favorite rules?Rule 8, Physical Comfort is Overrated, and Rule 13,Know What to Get Off Your Chest and What to Take to the Grave.
Before you all click away to order your copy of Golden Rules, take a look at this video of Gunn and Christian Siriano of Project Runway having a walk-off. The walk-off is amusing, but for me, the real high point of this film is when Heidi Klum has Gunn doubled over in laughter as she tickles him. The man’s laughter is adorable.
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Sources:
Gunn, Tim. (2010) Gunn’s Golden Rules: Life’s Little Lessons for Making it Work. Gallery Books: New York.
This week, I’m pleased to bring you a useful review of Patrik Aspers new book,Orderly Fashion: A Sociology of Markets(July 2010, Princeton University Press). It was written by Joseph H. Hancock, II who is an Associate Professor in the Department of Fashion, Design & Merchandising, Drexel University. He has a twenty-year retailing background (The Gap Corporation, The Limited, Inc., and the Target Corporation) and a PhD from The Ohio State University. He is currently authoring an Introduction to Fashion textbook for Berg Publishers and a work on contemporary fashion for Texas Tech University Press.
Orderly Fashion: A Sociology of Markets is divided into seven chapters and five appendices. Stockholm University sociology faculty member, Patrik Aspers believes that there has been little research conducted from a social science perspective (5). This book attempts to give the reader a sociological perspective of the fashion industry. The author has obviously neglected to engage in American scholarship on fashion and consumer science that is oversaturated with this sort of work. Had he read Dr. Susan Kaiser’s (1996) landmark book, The Social Psychology of Clothing: Symbolic Appearances in Context, or any issue of the Clothing and Textiles Research Journal, he would have known that he was not a pioneer in this area.
At first, the text appears to be a new perspective on how the fashion system operates and is an ordered structure. The goal of the author is to “zoom in on branded garment retailers…to investigate order in relation to their activities in markets. It is the order of the branded garment retailers (BGRs) and the markets in which they operate that is the central empirical object of this study (1).” Aspers believes that fashion markets must work in an orderly fashion in order to survive and prosper. His idea is to connect the various organizations involved in the fashion process such as manufacturers, retailers and consumers. However, after many struggles to move through his misuse of retailing and business terminology and the lack of background information on each of the mass fashion retailers used in the “Introduction” of the text, it becomes apparent that the author really does not understand how the various aspects of the fashion industry work, nor that each company has its own corporate cultural characteristics and thematic concepts of order.
Additionally, his thesis statement is not well defined nor specifically designated to his final outcome. Aspers states that he is focusing on “large and medium-sized branded retailers in the global fashion industry, such as C&A, Gap, H&M, Macy’s, Old Navy, Topshop, Next, French Connection UK, Marks and Spencer, and Zara, as well as smaller retailers (2).” Clumping such a group of stores together as a single-type or entity clearly indicates that the author may not understand retail store categories. Retailers like Macy’s cannot be explicitly identified as a “branded retailer” in the same spirit of the Gap – these stores are not the same! It appears Aspers would like to create a well-defined ordered thematic ideal of how fashion works. But in order to do this he must realize that most vertically integrated manufactured based specialty retailers such as Gap Inc., (who also owns Old Navy, which the author does not mention) cannot easily be lumped into the same category as a full-line department store like Macy’s. Aspers clearly needs to make these differentiations in the “Introduction” to keep the reader from thinking he does not know what he is writing about – this does not happen. And many readers, like this reviewer may not be able to overlook the lack of definitions in this section.
Aspers focuses his study on the retailers of Great Britain, Sweden and the manufacturers of India and Turkey (2), but does not include the United States – which is the largest retailed nation in the world. This becomes confusing as Apers previously mentions the retailer Macy’s, which has no branches in Great Britain or Sweden. His reasons for the exclusions of the United States are the demands for production of a larger scale and because the United States puts a lower emphasis on fashionable clothes than that of Great Britain and Sweden (2). But what the author immediately does not do is define fashionable, and the differences between styles for each of the countries, until the next chapter. Additionally, to compare the entire United States to Britain and Sweden is like comparing an apple to an orange. It becomes clear that Aspers has never traveled to the United States and if he has, he does not grasp American fashionable styles. Or that regions of the United States have fashion centers that are much larger than those of Great Britain and Sweden, such as New York City, Chicago and Los Angeles whose volumes in fashionable style outweigh that of both those countries. There is no comparison.
Although this is Aspers second book on fashion (his first book was Markets in Fashion in 2006), it reads like a dissertation written without academic mentoring by someone who was versed in discipline of fashion studies or that understood how the retailing and manufacturing industry worked. This text is a futile attempt by a non-fashion scholar to re-invent the wheel of scholarly theory while neglecting what has already been done. It ignores previous works of how fashion operates, without truly understanding fashion and the detailed nature of the business of retailing. While the target audience for this text is scholars engaged in sociology, fashion, and retailing, I would suggest that a reader predispose themselves to other books that might give them a better understanding of fashion systems and how they work. Such books would include:
The Thoughtful Dresser, a new book by the British writer Linda Grant, seeks to uncover the importance that clothes have in our lives. From the outset Grant clearly defines herself as just a fan of fashion—“I am not a fashion writer just an amateur enthusiast… I think about clothes and fashion in two ways. With the attention of the average person who simply wants to know what next to wear… but also with the interest of a writer who is curious about all our human dimensions, our comedy and our tragedy…”[i] Known as a novelist, in this book Linda Grant tries to prove that fashion is not trivial by looking at it through a strictly non-academic lens and by attempting to humanize the study of fashion.
While the book is divided into chapters that address different themes—the act of shopping, shoes and how our clothes become our friends, for example—the themes are pretty loose, and are there to give form to the personal stories she includes. Most of the experiences and thoughts she details are her own; used to show how we create our identities through the clothes we choose to wear. Interwoven into the book is the story of a Holocaust survivor, Catherine Hill, who went on to open a major fashion boutique in Toronto. Grant uses Hill’s tale to show that fashion is an essential part of life, stating, “…it is in the pleasure that we take in clothes that we are at our most elementally human. Wearing clothes, the story of the human race begins.”[ii] In much the same way that she uses Hill’s life to prove fashion’s value, Grant as eagerly uses it as a way to justify her own love of shopping and beautiful things. Though she repeatedly says that she does not care if she is judged for these passions, Grants uses catastrophes, including WWII and 9/11, as examples of how fashion survives in the face of adversity and how it is essential for morale. These ideas are not new, though she does not refer to any earlier studies or books on the subject; the use of which would have benefited The Thoughtful Dresser immensely.
Grant states that she is “not attempting to offer a theory of fashion or an investigation of the academic thinking on the subject. I have only a passing interest in it because what I really care about is what I myself wear, and not so much what it all means.”[iii] Seeking to maintain her personal approach to the subject of dress, Grant disregards almost all prior work done in the field, with Barthes’ The Fashion System drawing most of her ire, and upholds Elizabeth Wilson’s 1985 book Adorned in Dreams for its precise dissection of fashion theory. Though Grant apparently has little time for theory, she does pepper her text with references to important events in fashion history, which is limited apparently to Dior, Chanel and Poiret.
When she began writing this book in 2007, Grant set up a blog, also called The Thoughtful Dresser, where she worked through some of her ideas on the subject of clothes. Though this book is supposedly all new material, the connection between the book and the blog can be clearly seen. While Grant is obviously a talented writer—this book is easy to read and engaging—much of it feels more like a collection of articles than a book. A former newspaper columnist, it seems as though she had trouble translating her ideas into the larger scale of a book. She repeats ideas over an over, and for emphasis makes large all-encompassing pronouncements about fashion and clothing, such as “We dress for our lifelong journey through time, the transformation of the self, a recognition that we are in thrall to the ticking clock.”[iv] Rather absolute, these statements can be quite jarring when you come across them in the middle of a discussion of the trends she wore as a teenager. Caroline Weber, the historian, found these, in her review in theNew York Times Book Review, to be a mix of “just-folks aphorisms,” “the language of New Age self-discovery,’ and “glib platitudes.”[v] Weber also takes offense to Grant’s implication of “the reader in her own “lifelong journey” toward “identity””[vi] through her use of ‘you’ pronoun. Other reviewers also found fault with Grant—Zoë Heller, in the Sunday Times of London , calls out her “pose of Paris Hilton style complacency” and her lack of thought about those who are unable to afford the £300 Dolce & Gabbana heels she buys in a fit of lust.[vii]
The Thoughtful Dresser is definitely written more for a sometime follower of fashion, rather than for the fashion historian. While it is a quick and at times enjoyable read, its frustrations in many ways outweigh the good points. Grant’s wish to keep it personal at all costs means that many interesting ideas on the culture of fashion are sometimes backed up with little more than someone’s reminiscence of their mother. Nothing in the book has any academic validity, though I doubt she would care. Looking over public reviews on Amazon, the consensus is overwhelming positive—hopefully those who are attracted to this book because of her engaging writing style and personal approach will agree with her thesis on the importance of fashion and seek to learn more of the theory and history.
Bibliography
Barthes, Roland. The Fashion System. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1990.
Paris: City of Light. International fashion capital. Epicenter of fashion as we know it.
This post is for anyone burning with that particular desire often possessed by the aspiring designers in my classrooms: the desire to see Paris. Did I say often? Try always.
Here are some of my favorite resources for fashion scholars preparing for a first visit to Paris, particularly those unfamiliar with the culture and the language, and those travelers making their trip as a pilgrimage to fashion’s holy city.
General Travel Guides
For a general travel guide, I prefer Rick Steves’ Paris. He updates it yearly, and while Steves is solidly embraced by baby boomers, the guide is also hip enough for generation y and good for families with children of all ages. A great companion is his pocket-sized French Phrase Book and Dictionary.
French Culture
If you are unfamiliar with French culture, start studying. Now. Knowing something about the culture and history of the great nation of France will make all the difference in terms of how much you get out of your trip. You will see more, learn more, and appreciate more, which of course is why you are going there in the first place. One book I recommend is Sixty Million Frenchmen Can’t Be Wrong by Canadian and American husband and wife, Jean-Benoit Nadeau and Julie Barlow.
Museum Exhibits
You may want to (make that should) plan your trip around an important exhibition, or simply visit as many fashion exhibits as possible. This year, until August 29, the Petit Palais, the City of Paris Museum of Fine Arts, is hosting the world’s first large Yves Saint-Laurent exhibition, The World of Yves Saint-Laurent. Check the Fashion and Textile Museum at the Musée des Arts décoratifs at the Louvre, and the Musée Galliera (the City of Paris Fashion Museum), for their current shows, and visit the Pierre Cardin Museum.
Shopping in Paris
If you are going to Paris to shop (and if you are reading WornThrough, I imagine you are at least halfway considering it), then you will want to know where the various shopping neighborhoods are, plus where to find what you want, and quickly. Think you can plan your tour of the little boutiques of Paris with a google search? Think again. Many, if not most, of Paris’s unique shops do not maintain an internet presence. Therefore, I recommend you pick up more than one guide to the type of shops you seek, with the shops organised by arrondissement. (For those unfamiliar, Paris is divided into municipal districts, or arrondissements, numbered from 1 to 20.)
Vintage Paris Couture: The French Woman’s Guide to Shopping: It would probably take me a whole month of nonstop shopping to see every place in this guide. It covers all levels of the market, from thrift or charity-style shops, to antique eighteenth-century clothing, to twentieth-century designer couture, including the Paris flea markets. Price levels are given for the shops covered. There are so many great photos in this book that I recommend you buy it even if you are not planning a trip any time soon. It makes a great smaller-sized coffee-table book for you armchair travelers. This book has a hard cover, so I recommend photocopying the pages with info on shops you are interested in, take the copied pages with you, and leave the book at home. Lighter baggage on the way there, more room for your purchases on the way home.
Paris: Made by Hand: 50 Shops Where Decorators and Stylists Source the Chic & Unique: I wanted to go to practically every shop in here. It leans towards hand crafted items for gifts and interior design, yet also covers shops with the raw materials for your own chic creations, plus apparel, including children’s apparel. Another one with great photos, it also includes some ateliers, or studios. Also happens to be paperback and relatively compact, meaning you can put it in your day bag with your phrase book.
Chic Shopping Paris: Yet another almost-pocket-sized book with great photos, and like the above, shops organised by arrondissement. Covers a variety of boutiques, including apparel and accessories, in addition to fine china, linens and flatware. In short, everything you need for an elegant Paris pied-à-terre.
Bon Voyage!
Now that you have your recommended reading, here is a brief clip from a 1986 film by William Klein, featuring three models dressing (and undressing) in the popular fashions of the twentieth century, decade by decade. They look like they are probably wearing museum pieces, which should make your inner historian cringe, but try to enjoy it for what it is, an amusing romp.
For those of you who have traveled, studied, lived, and worked in Paris, what can you recommend? How did you get there? What are your favorite places in the city? What, in your opinion, should every fashion student be sure to see?
I have recently come to the conclusion that I am hopelessly and quite happily addicted to collecting books. My book shelves are filled to overflowing, some are filled two-deep, and I continue to make weekly trips to the library and regular stops at my favorite used book shops. Am I delusional about the amount of time available in any given day to devote to reading? Yes and no. During the school year, I do not have a lot of time for what my fifth-grade teacher called ‘pleasure reading.’ This summer, however, I have discovered many pleasurable hours free to devote to catching up on reading Vogue magazine, W, Women’s Wear Daily, the latest fashion textbooks, background reading for my discipline, and those books read just for enjoyment’s sake.
One of the first books I picked up this summer was The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde by Neil McKenna, and I have concluded that there is very little of Wilde’s life that was ever secret, but I have found the book to be a useful introduction to the life of Wilde, as it is a chronology of events in his personal life during the writing of each of his major works, and an in-depth look at his trials and imprisonment and the Victorian view of male homosexuality. On the subject of fashion specifically, there is even some good basic coverage of the origin and meaning of the wearing of green carnations, and the general wearing of the color green by gay men in Europe in the nineteenth century.
Next came Christian Lacroix: The Diary of a Collection by Patrick Mauries, which I recently received as a gift (lucky me!). The book is a visual treat, and is essentially a scrapbook of Lacroix’s Spring/Summer 1994 Haute Couture collection, with full details on his inspiration and design processes behind it, including his sketches and excellent photos of antique textiles and modern fabric swatches. Quality images of the finished looks (rather than in-progress-mostly-finished-polaroids) would have made the book complete.
Coming up on my reading list are two textbooks, Fashioning Society: A Hundred Years of Haute Couture by Six Designers by Karl Aspelund and Menswear: Business to Style by Michael P. Londrigan (to be read in between comic books and graphic novels from my local library, of course). Leave me a comment and let me know your suggestions for summer reads, and perhaps I will cover one in a future post.
Here is a quick round up of new books out in the next few months that will be of interest to Worn Through readers. Watch for full reviews of a few of these later on. I am particularly interested in the Emilio Pucci and High Style. What books are you looking forward to that you’d like to see reviewed here? Did I miss one? Feel free to leave comments and let me know!
With the Memorial Day weekend behind us, summertime weather is conceivably within our grasp. For many of us, summer (and indeed Memorial Day) means more leisure time and travel. This of course requires the appropriate attire: sportswear. Historically speaking, both sportswear and leisure travel were relatively new phenomenons, one that designer Claire McCardell contributed to immensely. Leisure and sportswear both began their ascent into popularity in the 1920s and 1930s. Claire McCardell began her rise to fame in the 1930s.
Travel & Sportswear
Travel and vacationing became more accessible to more people as the automobile grew in popularity and availability. Production of automobiles more than doubled between 1920 and 1930 (Olian 2003). Driving also became a leisure activity in and of itself, as well as a symbol of freedom and independence to women – who had learned to drive out of necessity during World War I (Olian 1990).
Wealthy New Yorkers took full advantage of the growing tourism industry and flocked south and west in the 1920 and 1930s. [1] In the 1920s, couturiers picked up on the needs of wealthy clients engaged in this new activity. “The iconography of sports and the design of sports clothing became a focus for the new modernity. Couturiers opened specialist departments, and none took this aspect of clothing more seriously than Patou, who designed for professional sports people.” (Mendes & De La Haye 1999).
St Petersburg Florida 1930s
Despite the financial difficulties of the 1930s and its impact on travel for leisure, the decade saw a host of travel innovations that helped people get to more remote locations in much quicker and luxurious or convenient ways. The Greyhound bus line was inaugurated in 1930 and the largest ocean liner, the Queen Mary, was launched in 1934. In 1938, the Queen Mary crossed the Atlantic Ocean in just over three days – a record at the time.
I’ve previously mentioned that Claire McCardell is one of my favorite designers. Along with Bonnie Cashin, Elizabeth Hawkes, Vera Maxelll and others, Claire McCardell helped to define the look of American Sportswear. “These designers established the modern dress code, letting playsuits and other activewear outfits suffice for casual clothing; allowing pants to enter the wardrobe, often as an alternative in an outfit also offering a skirt; and prizing rationalism and versatility in dress, in contradiction to dressing for an occasion or allotment of the day.” [2]
McCardell was a rising star in the 1930s, and in 1931 was appointed to the position of head designer at Townley Frocks. By the late 1930s she had become recognized for using menswear design and detailing, for mix-and-match separates, and her simple, direct design aesthetic (Mendes & De La Haye, 1999; Buxbaum, 2005). Her wool jersey separates of 1934 “could be combined in different ways to meet almost any sartorial situation on a short trip traveling light. A low-backed halter top, a covered-up top, long and short skirts, a culotte.” [3] In 1938, she designed the simple belted ‘Monastic Dress’, Harem pants, as well as gymnastic outfits (or playsuits) with her signature details.
“[McCardell] created garments without traditional, structural elements. A particularly popular one, later known as the ‘Monastic’ dress, took on form when simply belted at the waist. It was this, as well as other loosely fitted dress designs, that helped establish her as one of the initiators of the “American” look. Her garments were detailed with little brass hooks and other hardware closures, such as ‘spaghetti’ or ‘shoestring’ ties, double outline stitching, and big pockets.” (Buxbaum, 2005).
Below is a small gallery of images depicting McCardell’s sportswear designs from the 1930s and 1940s meant to be taken out of a suitcase and worn on sunny summer days.
Lounging Pajamas (1938) by Claire McCardell for Townley Frocks. Gift of Claire McCardell, 1949. Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute. No. C.I.49.37.2a, b.
Sundress (1945) by Claire McCardell for Townley Frocks. Gift of Claire McCardell, 1956. Brooklyn Museum Costume Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of the Brooklyn Museum, 2009. No.2009.300.230.
Wool and Cotton Ensemble (1946) by Claire McCardell for Townley Frocks. Gift of Claire McCardell, 1956. Brooklyn Museum Costume Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of the Brooklyn Museum, 2009; No. 2009.300.231a–c.
Playsuit (1948) by Claire McCardell for Townley Frocks. Gift of Claire McCardell, 1949. Metropolitan Museum of Art, Costume Institute. No. C.I.49.37.20a, b.
Wool enseble (1949) by Claire McCardell for Townley Frocks. Brooklyn Museum Costume Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of the Brooklyn Museum, 2009; Gift of Claire McCardell, 1956. No. 2009.300.236a, b
Shoes (1953) by Claire McCardell made by Capezio. Gift of Ben Sommers, 1953. Brooklyn Museum Costume Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of the Brooklyn Museum, 2009; No.2009.300.3146a, b.
[1] “America By Car: Mr. Miami Beach.”American Experience PBS special.
Until recently, I didn’t have much of an interest in quilts or their history – I just didn’t feel an intellectual or academic interest in the subject. My only real exposure has been of a personal, rather than academic, nature. I had a ‘blankie’ growing up, a quilt made specifically for me by a close family friend and skilled quilter. Historically speaking, it seems curious to me that the tradition was still in practice (in the late-1970s) – it was the midst of the woman’s movement and many women were rejecting many feminine traditions.
I suspect though, that many people my age have similar personalized quilts. My husbands grandmother made him several quilts. One, which I’m sitting under now, made in the shape of Mack truck complete with a CB radio in the window and quilted wheels. The same grandmother made a quilt to commemorate our marriage, and it is now treated as a special personal object. Quilting and quilts seem most often used for celebration or commemoration, similar to the place photography used to have – to mark a birth, marriage, or military service.
A quilt, by my grandmother-in-law, to commemorate our marriage.
As you might have guessed, my academic ambivalence towards quilts changed recently, when I came upon and thumbed through a new book, Quilts 1700-2010: Hidden Histories, Untold Stories by Sue Prichard, published in March by the V & A (distributed by Abrams in the US). Prichard documents the history of quilts, not only through the objects themselves, but also through paintings, etchings, lithographs and other printed ephemera. Focused on objects produced in the UK, the book provides a wonderful visual history of quilts, quilted clothing (including tie-pockets, capes, jackets, etc) as well as other home-wares (pillows, curtains, infant bedding, etc).The book presents a series of topical essays by the likes of Clare Browne, John Styles, Claire Smith, Linda Parry, Christopher Breward, Jenny Lister, Dorothy Oser, Joanne Hackett, Angela McShane, Joanne Bailey, and Jacqueline Riding. Through these essays, quilts are examined through many lenses, providing a thorough presentation of quilting styles, types and changing trends (crazy quilts, block quilt, patchwork quilt, etc).
Doublet and Breeches. Quilted white satin handsewn with silk braid and silk ribbon. England, 1630-40. (V & A)
Prichard’s book, and it’s contributed essays– of course– discuss quilts as celebration and commemoration, but the authors also look at the creation and use of quilts within the context of larger histories, personal creativity, gender studies, craft, technique studies and present a variety of viewpoints. Who knew that male soldiers made quilts between 1851-1910 ? Christopher Breward provides an enlightening and illustrated essay on just this subject.
One of my favorite parts of the book shows how the materials used to create quilts are often artifacts in and of themselves- using, as The Guardian put it “scraps of the real world.” Small pieces of paper (often scraps of newspapers, books and old letters), were used as templates for the geometric shapes. These templates were frequently left inside the quilt, adding to their historical relevance. Obviously, recycling and the ‘make to and mend’ influence is much visible with fabric use as well. Much like lace making, quilting has its own set of terminology – and the books useful glossary, along with an index and bibliography, help to educate readers. Overall, it is an excellent reference of over 300 years of quilting history in the United Kingdom.
Reverse of a revamped quilt with an intricately design of diamonds revealing a newspaper layer, detail. Patchwork of silk, satin and velvet. England, mid-19th century. (V & A Images)
The book is meant to accompany the current exhibition on view at the V & A, of the same name. The website for the exhibition at the V & A has a number of really interesting applications, tools and ancillaries – that should lead other museums to take on similar practices. Videos, a pattern maker, and a blog from the exhibits curator help draw potential visitors, or those who can’t see the exhibit, into the world of the show. It’s a wonderful kind of audience engagement. Also accompanying the exhibition is the much smaller, and more practical book, Patchwork for Beginners- a book I hope to test now that my interest in the history of quilting has been peaked.
The BBC also produced and narrated aslide-show giving an overview of the exhibition. I highly recommend watching it, and the video below.
“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.
This week, I am pleased to bring you a book review from Clare M. Sauro, an assistant teaching professor and the curator for the historic costume collectionat Drexel University. Prior to her work with Drexel, Ms. Suaro worked for the Fashion Institute of Technology, in a variety of museum related positions (including assistant curator of accessories and of costume). She holds a Masters degree in Museum Studies: Costume and Textiles from F.I.T. and a Bachelors in English from the State University of New York College at Oswego. Among many other publications, Sauro contributed the chapter, “The Artful Accessory,” in Ralph Rucci: The Art of Weightlessness(Yale 2007).
Edith Wharton and the Making of Fashion (University of New Hampshire Press) by Katherine Joslin is a recent publication in the exciting series Becoming Modern: New Nineteenth-Century Studies by University of New Hampshire Press. Joslin is a professor of English at Western Michigan University who has published biographies of Edith Wharton and Jane Addams. The publication of this book and the accompanying title, Emily Dickinson and the Labor of Clothing (by Daneen Wardrop) represents the growing recognition of clothing by scholars outside the historic costume community. This interdisciplinary approach is appreciated and long-overdue. Joslin’s analysis of Wharton’s work is fascinating and has inspired me to dust off my old paperbacks and head to the library for the rest. Organized into thematic chapters, such as “The Underside of Fashion” which deals with the harsh realities of the nineteenth century garment industry and “Desire in the Marketplace”, which documents the rise of couture and the department store, the book attempts to trace the history of costume through the writings of Edith Wharton. Her assertion that Wharton deliberately depicted her protagonists in clothing that would resonate with the readers at the time of publication is a strong one and worthy of further discussion .
However, despite my initial enthusiasm, I was sorely disappointed with this book. While Joslin is obviously a confident literary scholar, it is clear she has only recently begun to study costume history. Throughout the book she relies heavily on secondary sources to provide historical context for her assessments . The footnotes for these portions of the text are frustrating and inadequate. For example: when analyzing the attire of Ellen Olenska (who was notoriously allowed to wear black to her coming out ball) in The Age of Innocence Joslin references the designs of Madame Paquin. The couturière is credited with introducing black as a fashion color- an intriguing bit of new information for me but- alas- no footnote !
The mention of Paquin, a couture house founded in the 1890s, while discussing a novel set in the 1870s, is another problematic aspect of the book. Joslin frequently jumps across decades in her analysis of fashion and while this approach works in the context of her assertion that Wharton did not always dress her characters with historical accuracy, Joslin’s intent (with this exploration) is not always clear to the reader. Her approach also excludes the historical and social context of clothing described in the novels. Joslin cites the chaste virginal attire of May Welland in The Age of Innocence as indicative of her sexual allure and rightful place as the future wife of the protagonist, Newland Archer. However, Joslin neglects to point out that this was the “correct” dress for all unmarried women in the 1870s and what Ellen Olenska should have been wearing for her coming out ball .
Edith Wharton and the Making of Fashion is an ambitious book that feels rushed and underdeveloped. Joslin’s analysis would have been enhanced by primary sources such as etiquette books and fashion publications such as Harper’s Bazar. Consulting a fashion historian as a reader in the editing stages would also have helped with the dating and identification of garments in the photographs as well. While Joslin makes some excellent points in her analysis of specific works and characters, she stumbles when she attempts to address the “making of fashion.”
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(July 2010, Princeton University Press). It was written by Joseph H. Hancock, II who is an Associate Professor in the Department of Fashion, Design & Merchandising, Drexel University. He has a twenty-year retailing background (The Gap Corporation, The Limited, Inc., and the Target Corporation) and a PhD from The Ohio State University. He is currently authoring an Introduction to Fashion textbook for Berg Publishers and a work on contemporary fashion for Texas Tech University Press.
, or any issue of the 
(2005) by Grant McCracken
(2009) by Joseph Hancock.jpg)
.
. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1990.
. Piscataway, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2003.
by Canadian and American husband and wife, Jean-Benoit Nadeau and Julie Barlow.
: It would probably take me a whole month of nonstop shopping to see every place in this guide. It covers all levels of the market, from thrift or charity-style shops, to antique eighteenth-century clothing, to twentieth-century designer couture, including the Paris flea markets. Price levels are given for the shops covered. There are so many great photos in this book that I recommend you buy it even if you are not planning a trip any time soon. It makes a great smaller-sized coffee-table book for you armchair travelers. This book has a hard cover, so I recommend photocopying the pages with info on shops you are interested in, take the copied pages with you, and leave the book at home. Lighter baggage on the way there, more room for your purchases on the way home.
: I wanted to go to practically every shop in here. It leans towards hand crafted items for gifts and interior design, yet also covers shops with the raw materials for your own chic creations, plus apparel, including children’s apparel. Another one with great photos, it also includes some ateliers, or studios. Also happens to be paperback and relatively compact, meaning you can put it in your day bag with your phrase book.
Covers a variety of boutiques, including apparel and accessories, in addition to fine china, linens and flatware. In short, everything you need for an elegant Paris pied-à-terre.
by Neil McKenna, and I have concluded that there is very little of Wilde’s life that was ever secret, but I have found the book to be a useful introduction to the life of Wilde, as it is a chronology of events in his personal life during the writing of each of his major works, and an in-depth look at his trials and imprisonment and the Victorian view of male homosexuality. On the subject of fashion specifically, there is even some good basic coverage of the origin and meaning of the wearing of green carnations, and the general wearing of the color green by gay men in Europe in the nineteenth century.
by Patrick Mauries, which I recently received as a gift (lucky me!). The book is a visual treat, and is essentially a scrapbook of Lacroix’s Spring/Summer 1994 Haute Couture collection, with full details on his inspiration and design processes behind it, including his sketches and excellent photos of antique textiles and modern fabric swatches. Quality images of the finished looks (rather than in-progress-mostly-finished-polaroids) would have made the book complete.
by Karl Aspelund and 
by Michael P. Londrigan (to be read in between comic books and graphic novels from my local library, of course). Leave me a comment and let me know your suggestions for summer reads, and perhaps I will cover one in a future post.
and 
by Jan Reeder Publication Date: June 15, 2010
by Nadine Coleno Publication Date: July 15, 2010
by Joy Totah Hilden Publication Date: July 5, 2010
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Prestel, 2005.
. Thames & Hudson, 1999.
Dover Publications 1990.
by Sue Prichard, published in March by the V & A (distributed by Abrams in the US). Prichard documents the history of quilts, not only through the objects themselves, but also through paintings, etchings, lithographs and other printed ephemera. Focused on objects produced in the UK, the book provides a wonderful visual history of quilts, quilted clothing (including tie-pockets, capes, jackets, etc) as well as other home-wares (pillows, curtains, infant bedding, etc).The book presents a series of topical essays by the likes of Clare Browne, John Styles, Claire Smith, Linda Parry, Christopher Breward, Jenny Lister, Dorothy Oser, Joanne Hackett, Angela McShane, Joanne Bailey, and Jacqueline Riding. Through these essays, quilts are examined through many lenses, providing a thorough presentation of quilting styles, types and changing trends (crazy quilts, block quilt, patchwork quilt, etc).
- a book I hope to test now that my interest in the history of quilting has been peaked.
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.
(Yale 2007). 
