Hands-on fashion history education is something of a dwindling practice these days, with more collections moving their objects to offsite storage and switching to digital only access for researchers. There is an inherent value to being able to explore the inside of historical garments, with a professor, museum professional, and classmates in the room all offering observations. As a student at NYU, I was lucky enough to have regular collection visits incorporated into our curriculum.
In the Spring of 2003, I was fortunate to have a costume history class with Professor Elizabeth Morano, author ofSonia Delaunay: Art into Fashion. The class was Clothing History IV, and was held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Costume Institute. On one particularly nice day, we explored a selection of Haute Couture garments of the 1950s. Two of these were designed by Christian Dior (I’ll be posting a second part on who else we looked at that day – stay tuned).
To our modern eyes, the above day dress appears to be a relatively simple, straight-forward belted-dress. However, when looking through the piece with our professor pointing out specific details, innovations and techniques, the real value of the garment and the importance of the designer became more evident. Being able to look at multiple pieces, by multiple designers – and comparing their styles, techniques and preferences helped us to develop connoisseurship.
“Trompette”, House of Dior, spring/summer 1950, Met, CI. C.I.54.6.3a–c
It also became evident that nothing about wearing couture in the 1950s was simple – multiple layers and heavy under-structures revealed some of the differences in social norms and expectations for women in that time period as compared with modern women. This dress in particular suggested ties to menswear through the fabric choice and the use of button detailing, but also made one question what is hidden and what is shown. The under-blouse pictured below, but also his design choice to assist the wearer of this narrow skirt in walking, by incorporating fullness at the knee into the design. The narrow silhouette, placement of buttons and the kickpleat all suggest a reference to the shape of a trumpet, drawing the eye to the back of the dress and to the calf. (Martin & Koda)
Detail photos of “Trompette”, House of Dior, spring/summer 1950, Met, CI. C.I.54.6.3a–c:
The other Dior piece we looked at that day was a silk evening gown dating to 1954. As an outside observer, this too was fairly simple looking, though elegant and slightly demure. Something about the large bow made me think it was intended for someone young and innocent.
“Priscilla”, House of Dior, fall/winter 1954–1955, Met, CI 1974.258.7
However, when a look inside reveals the the wearer of the dress was basically corseted, and the dress not as comfortable or ‘easy’ (by modern standards) as one might have thought.. The layers of chiffon-lined net add additional fullness underneath the skirt, resulting in an audible swishing sound (by rotating the mannequin back and forth) that in many ways brought the dress to life.
One could see that a simple demure-looking gown was in fact quite complicated and in many ways, contrived. Though a woman wearing this dress might in fact appear modest, knowing what was on underneath might not only affect her posture and over-all appearance, but could affect her mental attitude and behavior. Issues of sexuality and perception of ones own body immediately spring to mind. The corset itself was also an innovation for Dior, as it depicted his “H Line” which reshaped the bust into a different profile than had previously been popular. Here, he “seemed to flatten the chest and unusually widen[ed] the upper torso.” (Koda & Martin)
L'Officiel de la Mode n°343 de 1950
All this is to say: I really value my experience as it helped me learn how to think about clothing within a historical, cultural and social context, based on what was present in the object itself. Handling the materials, hearing how they sound and seeing how they move all seem important to this process. I’m concerned that future generations of students may not have this opportunity. For museum professionals, teachers and students: What has your experience or use of historic collections been like?
As an aside, I’m happy to announce two pieces of personal news: Tomorrow, I will officially take office as program chair for the Western Region of the Costume Society of America. I also have a newly designed website, going live today! It’s fully redesigned site, with much more photos and some writing that I hope you’ll enjoy.
More information:
Those interested in learning more about the history of couture, its designers and specific techniques should really venture over to the Golden Age of Couture microwebsite affiliated with London’s V&A Museum and its exhibition of the same name. Their time line feature by designer is an especially helpful element.
Going hand in hand with my love of dress history and clothing construction is my interest in historically inspired costumes, and the use and wear of those costumes in leisure activity. If you have seen my post on the Great Dickens Christmas Fair of San Francisco, California, you have some idea of an historical era being reenacted for education and entertainment. Other examples are American Revolutionary War, American Civil War (in and outside the US), medieval Europe, Renaissance Europe, and various decades of the 20th century. In addition to historical eras, there is also the enormous realm of cosplay, wherein cosplayers dress as their favorite film, animation, or comic book characters. The number of students I have interested in constructing apparel for these various pastimes grows every term, and I think it is as much fun for me as it is for them to see their ideas come to life, as they learn to sew and make something they truly can not buy ‘off the rack.’
Today’s web site is one which focuses on the reproduction of clothing of a very specific time and place, 16th century Europe. By Drea Leed, The Elizabethan Costume Page is a great starting place for anyone wanting to reproduce women’s, men’s and children’s clothing of the era (do not let the early 1990s-style title of the site deter you, it is kept up to date). Leed is the author of The Well-Dress’d Peasant: 16th Century Workingwoman’s Dress (Partizan Press, 2003), which appears to currently be out of print, but is certainly on my personal wish list.
The web site, in addition to containing numerous thoroughly researched articles and papers authored by Leed, also has an abundant collection of well organised and worthwhile links to sources for even more information. If you want to see period images of members of specific social classes of particular nationalities, this web site will help you find them, particularly those with the best depictions of clothing for those wishing to reproduce them, as in paintings with clear details, such as seam placement and the various layers of clothing worn.
One of my favorite things on the site is the Elizabethan Smock Pattern Generator. This can even be used by those with little or no sewing experience. The instructions tell precisely how to measure your body so that you can enter your measurements (bust, around the bicep, waist, hip, etc.) into the Pattern Generator and voila! you immediately get a custom pattern made to your measurements. This one, I can say I have used with success.
If any readers are historical costume buffs, leave me a comment and let me know your favorite eras and resources, for possible inclusion in future posts.
I’ve seen a lot of bodies lately. As temperatures rise in NYC and I’ve even begun to throw my own sense of modesty to the wind, more and more body parts have been out on display. While the parade of flesh that is summer in this city may be alluring to some, the reason for more exposure is most basically a desire to stay cool rather than the desire to seduce.
But in this effort to beat the heat, it really does seem as if all standards of decency have evaporated – much like the sweat on our backs. And as I’ve been observing this phenomenon these last few days I’ve also been thinking about places where women aren’t able to wear a tank top or sundress when it’s hot. Even as I write in a small apartment with no AC, I’m feeling all the more poignantly the irony that cultural modesty standards are often the most severe in places with the hottest climates. So why do they do it? Why do they wear layers and layers of clothes to abide by certain clothing guidelines – what purpose does it really serve?
While veils and other forms of modesty garments often find their origin in various religious dictates, there’s something to be gained from thinking for a moment about what it means for clothing to conceal – even to the point of invisibility – rather than revealing everything.
It’s easy for a liberated American women like myself to immediately dismiss veils and the like as oppressive and outdated, but isn’t there some valid purpose they serve?
I think at the most basic level, veils are an attempt to preserve the distinction between the public and private realms, and that might not be such a bad idea.
Putting it all out there all the time (whether it’s in the way we dress or the fact that we’re chatting on the telephone on the bus) means we really don’t have boundaries between what is private and sacred and what is for public consumption. My question is then – what are the consequences of this kind of barrier breakdown for a society at large?
Veils are so appealing in certain cultures because it’s assumed that self-control in dress implies self-control in other areas of one’s life (specifically in the sexual department). It’s precisely this self-control that makes a woman appear worthy of marriage. As Andrea Rugh writes in her great book Reveal and Conceal: Dress in Contemporary Egypt: “Modesty garments are symbolic in the sense that they mark people’s intentions concerning moral issues.”
There’s so much talk of how much clothing reveals about the self – what if we revealed more of our self (or our self-control rather) through revealing less?
In another sense, modesty garments are actually class equalizers – they are uniforms which can disguise a woman’s poverty. So rather than posing women as sartorial competitors, flaunting clothing and bodily endowment in an effort to woo men, women have to be more creative and subtly provocative. Is modesty then more a sign of a culture’s sophistication rather than primitivism?
(Please note that I’m in no way trying to make light or appear dismissive of the serious abuse that certain culture enact towards women – unfortunately the veiled woman often is the subject of much oppression and violence; yet, I do believe over-correcting to the opposite extreme of full disclosure doesn’t necessarily solve the larger problem of women being treated as objects – clearly, this is a much larger topic, far beyond the purview of my present thoughts…)
Modesty garments ultimately make apparent the struggle that every woman must encounter in any game of flirtation – how much does one reveal and how much does one conceal? The fine line between revealing just enough to keep one wanting more and spilling it all is difficult to discern. And the metaphor certainly extends beyond the purely physical…
I recently watched the video presentation of Johanna Blakley who is involved with TED (a non-profit whose conferences unite the worlds of technology, entertainment, and design), and UCLA’s Norman Lear Center, which utilizes Entertainment as a lens through which to read world events and ideas, much as I use Fashion to do the same. I recommend you take a gander (it’s relatively short):
Blakley delves into a bit of the history of copyrights, but here is an excerpt directly from the official US Copyright website:
Copyright is a form of protection provided by the laws of the United States (title 17, U. S. Code) to the authors of “original works of authorship,” including literary, dramatic, musical, artistic, and certain other intellectual works. This protection is available to both published and unpublished works. Section 106 of the 1976 Copyright Act generally gives the owner of copyright the exclusive right to do and to authorize others to do the following:
• To reproduce the work in copies or phonorecords;
• To prepare derivative works based upon the work;
• To distribute copies or phonorecords of the work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending;
• To perform the work publicly, in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and motion pictures and other audio visual works;
• To display the work publicly, in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and pictorial, graphic, or sculptural works, including the individual images of a motion picture or other audio visual work; and
• In the case of sound recordings, to perform the work publicly by means of a digital audio transmission.
In addition, certain authors of works of visual art have the rights of attribution and integrity as described in section 106A of the 1976 Copyright Act.
You might note that last sentence sounds like it might include fashion… but it doesn’t. Blakley explains that copyright protection is not afforded to a wide array of creative industries including food, perfume, hairstyling, furniture, and cars, among others. The reason for this oversight is that
…copyright protection for the designs of useful articles is extremely limited. The design of a useful article is protected under copyright “only if, and only to the extent that, such design incorporates pictorial, graphic, or sculptural features that can be identified separately from, and are capable of existing independently of, the utilitarian aspects of the article.”
(Incidentally, that same page includes a somewhat odd but interesting, lengthy comparison between fashion design and boat building.)
So useful, functional articles may not be copyrighted. Blakely paraphrases more helpfully to call the excluded group utilitarian. Fashion is too utilitarian to be copyrighted, because everyone should have access to clothes. While in abstract theory that makes sense to me, this distinguishes fashion from art, a nebulous line. A notable exception is the zipper, the failed copyrighting of which you can read about here. What the article doesn’t mention is that patenting the zipper was only possible at all because it’s technically a machine and not strictly an article of clothing. The placement and artistic design incorporating zippers are another matter.
1917 Sundback patent for the "Separable Fastener"
And yet there are growing (though still alternative) factions within other industries that are technically applicable for copyright protection, but that choose to publicize and gift their ideas. My computer-saavy partner convinced me to give open source Ubuntu a try, and once installed on my little laptop (wiping out the familiar PC interface with more than a little trepidation), I admit I soon took pride in joining the freeware community and the cache it gave me among tech-savvy folk. There are extensive online forums with a never-ending supply of techies willing to sooth my freeware freakouts. Though Open Office is undeniably, perhaps irretrievably inferior to the Microsoft original, I find it inspiring that computer programmers are willing to invest their personal time and energy in developing these systems (most of which are far better than the Office knockoff).
The DIY movement shares this free information standpoint, in that sites like Instructables and Make Magazine offer step-by-step tutorials on how to build relatively complex-looking items your very own self, ranging from lights to tables to computers, to upholstery. Part of the appeal is that it’s anti-establishment, anti-consumerist (which the Fashion Industry is certainly not) ; part of the appeal is that you have more opportunities to customize your software / shelving unit / whatever. While these movements deliberately reject copyrights for their own projects, this returns me to the question: why should fashion design be copyrighted when it seems other creative industries can manage without?
Part of the difficulty in determining whether fashion designers should be allowed to patent their designs is that the original purpose of U.S. government copyrighting is not to willfully deprive inventors of fame and money for their inventions, but to encourage innovation within the U.S. market. Chia-Yu Chang writes:
Innovation in the fashion designs has not suffered for 2 reasons: One, innovative fashion designs still commands very high premiums in the high-end market; and two, a design’s value drops precipitously after just one season. So, high-fashion designers can bring in sufficient profit from one design, but only for a very short period of time. They must continue to innovate to sustain the business. Protecting the less-valuable older designs is relatively unimportant.
She tempers this assertion by asking, but “what about protections for the young designer dreaming about establishing herself by innovating for the mid-end market, which commands lower premiums? What about the need of mid-end and low-end markets for innovative designs?”
The music industry’s battle with copyrighting has been in the spotlight ever since the internet was used in conjunction with programs like Napster, iTunes, and the soon to be defunct Songza that allow the instantaneous sharing/copying of music files. Blakley mentions that Charlie Parker invented beebop because he didn’t think it could be mimicked (or stolen) by white musicians. While I strongly believe artists should be compensated for their time, effort, and talent, I do think there’s something valuable in being able to test, sample, and share music without the fear of prosecution. The fashion industry somehow doesn’t get as much press (or respect) in its similar struggle, though it’s been an issue to those directly involved for decades. Way back in 1977, former Register of Copyrights Barbara Ringer stated that the issue of design protection was “one of the most significant and pressing items of unfinished business.” And the issue is still open.
From her own open source platform of complete internet lecture video footage, Johanna Blakey suggests using fashion as a model for an inter-disciplinary discussion about what needs protection, what needs to be in the public domain, and what will lead to the most innovative ideas. I still don’t have a clear answer. Do you?
Further Reading:
Here is an impressive breakdown of the issues involved in fashion copyright law by Jennifer Mencken.
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!
“I had heard from my London connections—Michael Benthall and Bobby Helpmann—that the one person to do the clothes was a Doris Langley Moore.She had a Museum of Costume.* John had written me about someone else but I told him about Doris—FLASH—he changed without any argument. I met her. She was a charmer and had a lot of all sorts of petticoats and underwear. She had been brought up in Africa, and this was a very lucky thing for me that we had her. She said that the materials we used must be able to stand sweaty heat—and not muss too easily and not show dirt and not show whether they were wet or dry. So our first meeting with her and Huston and me. He was fascinated by the underwear. I tried on every variety of split-pants, of chemise—and I was terrified that he was going to have me wear nothing but an envelope chemise in the picture.”
* “The Fashion Museum collection was started by Doris Langley Moore, a collector, costume designer and author. She gave her collection to the city of Bath in 1963, and Bath City Council used it to found the Museum of Costume. The collection is now three times its original size and the museum changed its name to the Fashion Museum in 2007.” (Museum of Costume, Bath website)
A long standing fan of director / writer John Waters, I am delighted that the Pope of Trash is appearing with greater frequency in periodicals these days due to his new book Role Models. I’m going to brush aside the content of the book (though it looks awesome!) to concentrate on the style of Mr. Waters and his aesthetic philosophy. In his Flavorwire list of advice for “functional freaks” he dispensed some wonderful fashion advice:
“You don’t need fashion designers when you are young. Have faith in your own bad taste. Buy the cheapest thing in your local thrift shop — the clothes that are freshly out of style with even the hippest people a few years older than you. Get on the fashion nerves of your peers, not your parents — that is the key to fashion leadership. Ill-fitting is always stylish. But be more creative — wear your clothes inside out, backward, upside down. Throw bleach in a load of colored laundry. Follow the exact opposite of the dry cleaning instructions inside the clothes that cost the most in your thrift shop. Don’t wear jewelry — stick Band-Aids on your wrists or make a necklace out of them. Wear Scotch tape on the side of your face like a bad face-life attempt. Mismatch your shoes. Best yet, do as Mink Stole used to do: go to the thrift store the day after Halloween, when the children’s trick-or-treat costumes are on sale, buy one, and wear it as your uniform of defiance.”
I love this whole thing. Every sentence. Every suggestion. (Well, I might question “ill-fitting is always stylish.” Though a great fan of belting things too big for me, I strongly believe that tailoring to fit your body makes everything look good. We’ll let that one pass, John.) The suggestion of wearing band-aids as jewelry reminded me of rather trashy D-actress Bai Ling, a regular fashion victim/goddess of Go Fug Yourself. In addition to favoring dresses that reveal her nipples, Bai also regularly sports what the Go Fug Yourself ladies refer to as her “Band-Aids of Truth” that have various nonsensical phrases scrawled on them with permanent marker:
"The Hit Song" on the left, "China Girl" on the right. What? Exactly.
They’re delightful in their ridiculous whimsy, non? I think John would approve of her nipple and band-aid antics.
I myself have been experimenting with turning clothes inside-out, upside-down, and backwards. I love to reveal the normally hidden construction of garments — stitches are so cool looking, why would you hide them?! I also like the connection to the fashion sustainability movement. By the simple act of pinning or rotating a skirt, one can create a fresh “new” skirt without spending a dime and without discarding a perfectly functional garment. For her recently completed Uniform Project sustainable fashion experiment, Sheena Matheiken wore her one dress (same style, 7 copies for laundering) in infinite permutations by alternating creative and colorful accessories. She collaborated with her designer friend to create the staple dress “so it can be worn both ways, front and back, and also as an open tunic.” I don’t believe it can be worn upside-down, but it’s a pretty good start:
I very much enjoy John’s suggestion to raid thrift stores for costumes. While I don’t generally seek out Halloween costumes like Mink Stole, I absolutely raid the prom / bridesmaids section of Goodwills. Like costumes they have generally been worn only once, and I firmly believe one can never be too fancy (and therefore one can never have too many fancy frocks). I literally wear some of these prom dresses as nightgowns and I recommend it. Um, I also realize that I totally have a homemade blue gingham dress that I am positive was made for a high school production of either Oklahoma! or The Wizard of Oz. Jealous much?
<Ahem.>
Back to John. On his own style icons: “Rufus Wainwright always has a look. Joan Kennedy always looks startling. Kate Moss has never looked bad in her life. And the Jackass boys. If ever there was a gang of boys I could hang out and get fashion lessons from, it’s them. And, oh! Kitty Carlisle Hart.”
Rufus Wainwright & Johnny Knoxville of Jackass, fashion icons?
When asked about his preference for the Three Stooges over Charlie Chaplin in a recent Salon interview, Waters said,
“They’re more fun, and they have a better fashion sense. I hate people who wear top hats, they look like assholes, but Moe with his bangs? He inspired the shoe-bomber fashion. The shoe bomber looked exactly like him. Imagine if you got on the plane, and he sat down next to you with Moe Howard’s haircut and shoes with big fuses sticking out of them and dynamite. Trying to light the match and it wouldn’t go off.”
I respectfully disagree with this one. While I do think people in top hats can look like bourgeois assholes, Chaplin wore a bowler which was a democratizing sartorial symbol that blurred class lines, and which looks fantastic in my opinion. And while I can get behind a lot of questionable fashion, I’m not really feeling the Moe / shoe bomber haircut, hilarious as it may be. Call me fickle.
Moe Howard and shoe bomber Richard Reid, questionable fashion inspiration and typical John Waters non-sequitur comparison.
Waters is an avid contemporary art lover. “Good contemporary art makes people angry,” he has said, and “the art I like is always what at first makes me angry” (he sites the messy Cy Twombly and Mike Kelley as favorites). I think he’d agree an element of outrage is true of good cutting edge fashion, too. In his NY Magazine interview from November 19, 2006 he said, “My whole look is ‘disaster at the dry cleaner.’ Usually it’s Japanese.” For his plein air interview for NYPL in Bryant Park last night he wore slim, short Comme des Garçons tuxedo slacks, a black Junya Watanabe jacket with a bold blue black and grey geometric pattern, pointy orange Paul Smith shoes and socks, and GAP boxers — which was pretty much what he said he was wearing for the NY Mag interview 4 years ago. Even if you don’t care for his style, the man has consistency, and though I’m originally a vintage purist, I’ve grown to appreciate — nay, love — fashion that infuriates and confounds. I’d add Netherlandish Viktor & Rolf to his Japanese designers who consistently deconstruct and shock. Waters loves that he can wear a costly designer shirt to Baltimore a bar and have people pity him that he can’t afford a shirt without oil stains and tears, and he always has difficulty explaining to his dry cleaners to leave untouched his uneven hems and holes. Though he can afford to pay retail, he recommends you stain and rip your own clothes for the same look. This dovetails with Waters’ distinctly anti-snob , anti “high” culture philosophy, I think.
Junya Watanabe S2007, Viktor & Rolf S2010RTW, Comme des Garcons F2007
As genuinely enthusiastic as I am about John’s fashion advice, I suspect most find it humorous more than words to actually live by. This is confirmed by the well documented numbers of actors who have literally cried when they’ve been introduced to their wardrobes for Waters’ movies.
So I’ll leave you with John Waters’ most deliciously smarmy trademark, his Little Richard-stolen mustache (which, he claimed, is the reason he doesn’t want to have an open casket funeral– he doesn’t trust anyone else to draw it on just right):
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.
A few weeks ago I was privileged to attend a panel discussion at the San Francisco Museum of Performance and Design focusing on San Francisco Rock n’ Roll clothing (costume & fashion) of the 1960s: items worn and designed locally, for and by rock musicians (both locally and internationally recognized groups between 1963 and 1973). A quick word to the wise: Don’t assume San Francisco was interested in tie dye or disco at this time – the participants of this panel were quick to assign responsibility (and blame) for those trends to Los Angeles and the 1970s.
The panel was led by co-curators Alec Palao and Melissa Leventon and included rock costume designer Jeanne Rose, (Big Brother and the Holding Company, Jefferson Airplane, the Young Rascals, Country Joe & the Fish); Helene Robertson (who owned the boutique Anastasia’s, a mod shop in the Bay Area and Los Angeles); musician Peter Kaukonen, (Jefferson Airplane & Jefferson Starship, designed stage and street clothes for himself) and George Hunter (founder of The Charlatans, a San Francisco’s band and created the look for the band). Audience members had dressed in vintage Mod and Hippie attire, contributing much to the atmosphere.
The Charlatans, as pictured in the exhibition on view at the San Francisco Museum of Performance and Design
Stylin’: Bay Area Rock Fashion 1963-73, opened with an introduction and brief history of the museum by the organizing curator, Brad Rosenstein, and flowed quickly into a discussion of slides moderated by Leventon. It included a number of interesting, if slightly rambling, insights by the panelists into the beginnings and development of the counter-culture music and fashion scene of San Francisco.
Jeanne Rose (or Jeanne Colon/Jeanne the Tailor as she is alternately known) was the first to talk. Her interest was primarily in designing costumes and clothing for men. The male aesthetic seemed to appeal to her – and she preferred to design for their straight lines. She felt clothes just looked better on men, but recognized the need to design clothing for women as well. As she put it, the groupies wanted her clothes too! Rose/Colon was influenced strongly by natural fibers: silk and linen cotton, handmade and hand-crocheted pieces, as well as some historical reference. Most of the clothes she sold had been made on her 1910 treadle sewing machine. She designed almost exclusively for Jefferson Airplane, but also designed for Big Brother & The Holding Company (including Janis Joplin), as well as the Young Rascals and Country Joe & The Fish. Be sure to check out more photos of her 1960s and 70s rock designs on her website.
Hand-crocheted pants by Jeanne Rose, modeled by Katherine Smith, May 2010.
Jeanne Rose in hand crocheted pants, 1970
Next on the panel was Helene Robertson, owner of Anastasia’s a boutique. Robertson opened the original shop in 1961 because she had specific (and unique) career aspirations. “I didn’t want to wear shoes, I didn’t want to have to work until 11am, and I wanted to take my dog to work with me.” Robertson said that her mother had always sewn her clothes, and felt it was a natural progression to open up a boutique. The location of the shop contributed to its continued success: it was directly across the street from an early rock club in Marin, California called the Trident (follow the link for more of it’s amazing history). Robertson frequently traveled to London for design inspiration and to get her hair cut. Consequently, her clothes were reminiscent of the Carnaby street Mod’s, though her store was known for both its hippie and mod styles. Robertson, and her shop were featured in a clip from a 1967 KQED documentary called Come Up the Years: Spirit of ’67that was played during the discussion.
Helene Robertson in the 1967 Documentary by KQED, Come Up the Years: Spirit of ’67.
Lecture slide featuring Helene Robertson in hippie clothing, and with Sonny & Cher.
The final two participants were Peter Kaukonen and George Hunter. Both men are musicians who also had a strong interest in clothing. Kaukonen, who created the amazing patchwork jeans pictured below, was interested in color, visually exciting garments and especially in things that implied movement and kinetic energy. The example pieces he brought in showed a strong interest in ethnic clothing, as well as an appreciation for handwork. His emphasis was clearly on craft, and it’s part in the 1960s aesthetic. Hunter, who founded the San Francisco band The Charlatans, seemed more drawn to historical menswear, especially the “wild west” and dandyism (as is evident by the video below).
The evening ended with an impromptu fashion show of Jeanne Colon/Jeanne Rose pieces, followed by questions from the audience. The panel was clear in it’s discussion of tie dye in the Bay Area, with Melissa Leventon proclaiming that San Francisco was a tie dye free zone and a disco free zone (as it really didn’t start to come into play until 1969, with the advent of the Grateful Dead. Panelists suggested that some over-zealous journalists got overly attached to the notion of tie dye, and that “Los Angeles Musicians tie-dyed everything. Even their cats.” More to the point however, was the ending comment that artists and musicians of the San Francisco Bay Area gave a generation of early rock music fans a visual identity through fashion. “People were all interested in looking like musicians.”
Clothing by Jeanne Rose (Melissa Leventon pictured with microphone)
Janis Joplin costume on the left, and I believe a Jimi Hendrix vest on the right.
*Jeanne Colon and Friends, 1967. Photo by John Gorham. Courtesy of Jeanne Rose. (“Out on several limbs, these far-out fashions by Jeanne Colon are modeled by some of Jeanne’s friends. The friends: A. Jana Miles, professional model, wears a psychedelic hooded silk print; B. Michele Sevryn, a “love knot” dress of patterned silk; C. Bard Dupont, bell-bottomed peone pants and a pull-over shirt; D. Liane Chu, owner-manager of Berkeley’s Red Square boutique, a peacock’s eye “butterfly” dress; E. Jeanne herself, in a corduroy hip-hugger pants (with a Spanish influence), hand-crocheted lace top and body necklace; F. art and dance student Jacqueline Chris in a San Francisco Fog Suit, ideal for open convertibles; G. Maureen Kirby in a man’s shirt of Irish linen and hand-crocheted lace copied from a 1780 French model. H. Amber Rose, Jeanne’s daughter, in a washable cotton tot’s dress with widely belled sleeves; I. Janis Joplin, lead singer of Big Brother and the Holding Company, in a poncho of antique Moroccan fabric over velvet peone pants, And George, the dog who immodestly, declined an outfit.”)
After seeing Gisele Bundchen’s latest Vogue shoot entitled “Call of Duty” in various military-inspired ensembles, my conflicted feelings about the sexifying of war gear swung hard and fast in the “that’s not cool” direction. Huffington Post presents these images with significantly less conflict: “let us know which is Gisele’s fiercest moment.” I should mention that this was shot for Vogue Korea no less — presumably South Korea, but formerly united with insular, distinctly militaristic North Korea which now has the highest percentage of military personnel per capita of any nation in the world with approximately 1 enlisted soldier for every 25 citizens. I mean, I wonder if anyone involved in this Vogue fashion shoot experienced any irony whatsoever. Photographed by Nino Muñoz, clothes are from Balmain, Alexander Wang, Chloé and others in Call of Duty (in case you didn’t get the soldier reference from the images alone). Some choice selections follow.
Gisele is so parched from her desert swim that she must provocatively douse herself with her canteen:
The practical cargo shorts paired with the distinctly impractical shorty army-issued t-shirt and stiletto-heeled combat booties are almost laughable:
This one has clean lines and uniform (as opposed to combat) tailoring that generally appeal to me, but it’s still disturbingly devoid of irony or socio-political critique:
Now, shall we look at some historical moments when military uniforms crossed over into day wear? Frederick Law Olmsted (1822 – 1903) noted that after the Mexican War (1846 – 48) “a great deal of military clothing was sold at auction in New Orleans, and much of it was bought by planters at a low price, and given to their negroes, who were greatly pleased with it.” Not only did military uniforms carry the associations of literal warfare, but they had the compounded layer of becoming sloppy seconds for African American slaves. Later, the surplus army clothing of the Civil War (1861 – 65) was adopted by Western frontiersmen: functional heavy coats and trousers, double-breasted pullover shirts, boots, and individually crimped hats were appealing to those living a rugged civilian lifestyle. And many men who served in WWII found many articles of clothing designed for warfare (i.e. khaki pants) to be comfortable, practical, and even stylish. War generals Dwight D. Eisenhower, George Patton, and Douglas MacArthur became fashion icons of sorts, and the practical “Eisenhower jacket” was adopted by men and women for its formal practicality:
In the years immediately following WWII, record numbers of veterans entered colleges (in 1946, 75% of entering Harvard students were former G.I.s), bringing with them the comfortable and practical khaki pants, fitted tailored shirts, and casual military jackets. With America’s current casual collegiate styles this might not seem noteworthy, but pre-WWII college students typically dressed in suits and ties, emulating the businessmen many aspired to become, and the casual military look was a sharp turn.
But the natural dissemination of actual army/navy clothes into regular society is a far cry from the fashion industry appropriating military as a trendy look (see Style.com “Marching Orders” trend). In one aberrant season of Rudi Gernreich (1922-1985), better known for his whimsical ’60s graphic mini dresses and topless swimsuit, his 1970 resort collection was distinctly military inspired. His muse and model Peggy Moffitt actually brandished a rifle in a different shot, as did the models on the live runway (this is one of the tamer looks):
Generally embracing a mod-meets-hippie look, Gernreich showed this controversial collection just months after the Kent State shootings and during the dragging Vietnam War (1955 – 75). During a 1985 retrospective presentation at the Smithsonian Institute, Gernreich commented, “I did the military look in the late 1960s because some designers were making Scarlett O’Hara clothes, which I thought was an insult to women when they were becoming totally equal to men.” I’m the first to admit military-influenced styles of WWII acted as a gender equalizer (see my other posts on War), but Gernreich’s feminist message was lost, but this is an inherent problem with glorifying military clothes: there is too much damn violence in the world for it ever to be appropriate without implied commentary (making it shorter/tighter/sexier does not count unless you’re trying to say “war is sexy”).
On the one hand, I have residual fondness for pairing fancy bling with camo — I think it can call attention to the inherent disconnect between wealth, individuality, style, and the mostly poor, conforming, functional purpose of military uniforms. On the other hand, glamorizing the military — especially when one’s own country is in a dragging, controversial war — seems problematic. As a designer (or a photographer, or a model), how do you make this distinction? I am all about playful fun in fashion, but glamorizing bigotry and government-sanctioned violence is distasteful at best and irresponsible at worst. Practical innovations that have come from military issued uniforms should absolutely be adopted by the general public: deep cargo pockets and trench coats are utilitarian and stylish. But making sexually provocative military clothes is not conceptually provocative.
There is some interesting art incorporating fashion and the military. Peter Gronquist’s show entitled “Firearms and Fashion” included weapon objets d’artes with fashion house labels, alluding to a complicit (if vague) relationship between corporate fashion and violence. Below is a Burberry rifle from the collection:
Bringing back the Korean military thread, I saw a powerful piece last summer of Do-Ho Suh’s entitled “Uni-Forms: Self-Portrait/s: My 39 Years” from 2006:
This is a sartorial timeline of Suh’s mandatory life in the South Korean army, from the disturbingly tiny boy’s crested jacket to the full-grown man’s camo and khakis.
Martha Rosler is known for collaging images of the Vietnam battlefield and magazine clippings from the home front including fashion models, washing machines, living room sofas, Playboy nudes, etc. Here is a more recent 2006 work using Iraqi/Afghani footage with a superimposed fashion model who appears to be turning away from the confrontation:
Though the model doesn’t actually wear military gear, it does point to an irresponsible relationship between the fashion world (and the public that so eagerly consumes it) and concurrent warfare.
So readers, do you think it’s ever ok to sexify military wear, and if so, in what context?
Further Reading:
NYTimes article on “Houlihan” M*A*S*H cargo pants (especially funny, since M*A*S*H was a deeply anti-war film and TV series)
*
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
by Patrik Aspers Publication Date: July 26, 2010 
, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991., 250)
*
Prestel, 2005.
. Thames & Hudson, 1999.
Dover Publications 1990.
*
