FIDM Museum Blog

Planes, Trains & Automobiles: Travel & Fashion

Planes, Trains & Automobiles: Travel & Fashion
June 20-July 19, 2013
Monday to Friday
10am-5pm
Free Admission

 

Planes, Trains & Automobiles: Travel & Fashion explores travel wear from the beginning of the 20^th century through the 1960s. Featuring men's and women’s travel fashions, Planes, Trains & Automobiles: Travel & Fashion examines how various modes of transportation affected 20^th century fashion. Ephemera and artifacts from the golden age of travel will be on display, including a unique Art Deco tea service used on the Queen Mary, travel accessories, stylish suitcases, and souvenir scarves collected on car trips in the 1950s.

To celebrate the opening of Planes, Trains & Automobiles: Travel & Fashion, the FIDM Museum Shop will host a public reception on Wednesday, June 19th from 6–8pm.

This special installation is a collaboration between Clever Vintage Clothing and the FIDM Museum Shop.

Vest & watch fob, 1855-65

 

Vest
United States, 1855-65
Gift of the Napa County Historical Society
2009.1001.11

By the mid-nineteenth century, male attire was configured into a standard three-piece suit consisting of a jacket, vest, and trousers. Almost a uniform, the three-piece suit was worn for business daywear, country sportswear, and formal eveningwear. Though the variations were more subtle than those seen in womenswear, men could find ways to express their personality and style within this sartorial framework.

Gatsby’s Women: 1920s Evening Dress from The Helen Larson Historic Fashion Collection

Evening Dress
Havet-Agnѐs
Paris, France
c. 1927
L2011.13.351

 

Gatsby’s Women: 1920s Evening Dress from The Helen Larson Historic Fashion Collection
FIDM Gallery Orange County
June 6-November 9, 2013
Monday through Friday (by appointment)
10 am to 5 pm

1920s evening dress was made for movement, and designed with frenetic dances like “The Charleston” in mind. Weighted with beads and sequins, these dresses swung wildly to the sounds of Jazz and clinking cocktails. The flat, two-dimensional silhouette was radically new, and body-baring fashions were all the rage—sleeveless styles showed toned, suntanned arms, while raised hemlines shockingly revealed rouged knees. Enter this short-lived, liberated era that glittered brightly with Flappers and Gangsters before the onset of The Great Depression and World War II.

Schedule a time to view Gatsby’s Women: 1920s Evening Dress from The Helen Larson Historic Fashion Collection by calling Jim Nemmert at 949-851-6200.

 

Helmut Lang sheer dress, c. 1994

If something is good, it doesn't go out of style every six months. — Helmut Lang¹

Helmut Lang
c. 1994
Gift of Doris Raymond in honor of Kevin Jones
2011.800.1

Almost classical in its simplicity, this black dress demonstrates Helmut Lang's (b. 1956) minimalist, understated aesthetic. Strong, almost angular lines are enhanced by the unusual, irregular weave of the textile. Decorative seaming and transparency conjure Madeleine Vionnet, but asymmetric sleeves, raw hems, visible stitching, and the distressed appearance of the textile evoke  deconstruction. Though elements of the dress can be traced back in time, Lang combined them without much concern for the past. As Lang stated in a 1994 interview, "I think the history and the past we have is just an energy we've built up to do what we do now."²

Out & About: FIDM Museum goes to Las Vegas

In today's post, Associate Curator Christina Johnson recaps the 39th annual Costume Society of America national symposium. It's not too early to start thinking about the 2014 symposium, which will be held in Baltimore, Maryland. The call for papers will come out soon, so start thinking about possible topics now!

**********

The Costume Society of America’s annual national symposium recently took place in Las Vegas from May 29 to June 1. Curator Kevin Jones, Registrar Meghan Hansen and I attended, and we all had a great time listening to the variety of papers and panels (this year’s theme was “Mining the History of Costume: Fantasy and Fact”) as well as seeing old friends and meeting new ones.

Kevin and I were charged with planning this year’s Silent Auction, a fundraising event for CSA. Members donate books, vintage clothes, and jewelry (my office progressively filled up with boxes in the weeks leading up to the event), and symposium participants then bid on the donated items—the funds raised go toward the educational activities of CSA. Well, we had to get the donations to the Symposium somehow, so we rented a car, and, with barely enough room for one suitcase each, drove four hours across the desert to our oasis at the Tropicana Hotel.

Kevin, Christina and a rental car full of items for the CSA silent auction.

Out & About: Lectures and events

It's been a busy month! As we noted earlier this week on our Facebook page, curators Kevin Jones and Christina Johnson, and registrar Meghan Hansen are currently participating in the Costume Society of America 39th Annual Meeting & National Symposium in Las Vegas, NV. Held every year in late May, this annual symposium is packed with fascinating research presentations. It's also a great opportunity to connect with other people working in the field. If you're on Twitter, you can follow the action by using the hashtag #CSA2013.

On Thursday, May 30, Meghan will present Beyond the Black Cape: Dress in Bram Stoker's Dracula. In this paper, Meghan uses Dracula to explore Victorian anxieties regarding class and etiquette, with special emphasis on the importance of fashionable dress in delineating these categories. You can read an excerpt from an earlier version of Meghan's research here.

Christina will participate in the Scholar's Roundtable on Saturday, June 1. Roundtable participants are selected based on their contributions to dress scholarship, and serve a two-year term. During the annual symposium, members of the roundtable present research highlights, and discuss issues related to furthering the field of dress studies.

In June, you'll have two opportunities to explore fashion history with FIDM Museum staff. On June 8 at 2 pm, curator Kevin Jones will speak at the Fowler Museum at UCLA. Offered in conjunction with the exhibition Resplendent Dress from Southeastern Europe, Kevin's lecture will explore how fringe has been used in both modern and historic dress. More information on this event here.

We're all looking forward to Fashion in the Age of Louis XV on Saturday, June 15. This lecture and demonstration by historian Maxwell Barr will offer an unusual peek inside the wardrobe of an 18th century Parisian woman. Using a live model and historically accurate examples of period clothing, Barr will explore morning, midday, afternoon, and evening dress in the age of Louis XV.

Tickets for this event are $35 per person or $20 for students with ID. Purchase tickets via the FIDM Museum Shop. Fashion in the Age of Louis XV will be held at the Fullerton College Wilshire Auditorium, 321 E. Chapman Avenue, Fullerton, CA 92832.

United States Army Air Forces dress uniform, c. 1943

 

Freedom's On Me, an exhibition of Poto Leifi's poignant, stylized portraits of fallen soldiers, opens today. This free exhibit will be open daily, 10 am-5 pm, through June 1, including Memorial Day. In honor of this commemorative exhibit and Memorial Day, today's blog post features a World War II military uniform.

If you can read their meaning, insignia worn on military uniforms offer a tremendous amount of information about the wearer. Each pin or badge signifies something specific, including rank, accomplishments, special skills, length of service, location of service, and honors. To those outside the military, the variety and meaning of these insignia can be bewildering. To those in the know, insignia offer a way to quickly establish who's in charge, and help situate members of the military in relation to each other.

United States Army Air Forces dress uniform
c. 1943
Gift of Fullerton Museum Collection
97.1942.980.51A-D

Versace Mare bikini, c. 1994

According to the inimitable fashion editor and curator Diana Vreeland, a bikini reveals "everything about a girl except her mother's maiden name."¹ As Vreeland noted, bikinis are defined by their scant coverage and are rarely more than a few triangles of fabric stitched or strung together. Though the bikini is now a widely accepted type of swim and beachwear, it took years for the bikini to go from scandalous to unremarkable. Bikinis, or bikini-like garments, appear in ancient Roman murals, and relatively modest two-piece suits were worn in the 1930s, but the scanty modern bikini didn't appear until 1946. Sources differ, but it seems that the revealing swimsuit was introduced almost simultaneously in summer 1946 by haute couture designer Jacques Heim and engineer/fashion designer Louis Réard. Heim called his scanty two-piece suit the atome, while Réard labeled his the bikini. Both names made reference to the US military's July 1946 nuclear tests on Bikini Atoll, a low-laying island located in the South Pacific. Réard's name for the revealing swimsuit stuck, and a new style of swimwear was born.

Bikini
Gianni Versace/Versace Mare
c. 1994-1999
Gift of Dorothy Washington Sorensen
S2010.1110.83A-D

Evening dress, c. 1926

No matter what your feelings about director Baz Luhrmann's new cinematic adaption of  F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic American novel The Great Gatsby, you can't deny that the film is generating interest in 1920s fashion. Though reaction to the film itself has been mixed, retailers, fashion bloggers, and magazine editorials all display symptoms of Gatsby fever. Retail collaborations pay homage to the era while also promoting the film. The Great Gatsby, a new collection from Tiffany & Co., features sparkling jewelry designed in collaboration with The Great Gatsby's costume designer Catherine Martin. Brooks Brothers has also introduced new styles based both on 1920s menswear, and the new film version of Gatsby. Though it remains to be seen how much the film and its costumes will affect mainstream fashion, it's interesting to see fashion history encroaching on popular culture.

Evening dress
c. 1926
France
Gift of Roxanne Wilson
2003.1.2

Memorial Day Exhibition: "Freedom's On Me"

Freedom's On Me
Presented by the FIDM Chapter of the Student Veterans of America

Open Daily
May 25, 2013 - June 1, 2013
10 am- 5 pm
Open Memorial Day
Free to the Public

Commemorating Memorial Day and members of the US Military fallen in Iraq and Afghanistan, Freedom’s On Me is an exhibition of poster art featuring poignant, stylized portraits of soldiers who were killed in action. Created by FIDM Graduate Poto Leifi, the posters are reminiscent of the patriotic posters displayed in America’s downtown storefronts during World War II. The title of Leifi’s special art project Freedom’s On Me is a patriotic twist on the expression, “Drinks are on me.” Learn more about Leifi's project on the artist's website.

Freedom’s On Me opens at the FIDM Museum on Friday, May 24, 2013 at 11:30 am. The opening event will include a public ceremony, a Color Guard, greetings from the City of Los Angeles Mayor’s office, and a welcome from the artist Poto Leifi. To attend the opening event, please send an email to RSVP@FIDMmuseum.org.