FIDM Museum Blog

Fashion Birthday: Miuccia Prada

Happy birthday to Miuccia Prada, born on May 10, 1949! Prada, the creative force behind her family's 100 year old company, has a knack for distilling her interests (in and outside of fashion) into influential collections that chart the course of fashion. Miuccia Prada's design philosophy revolves around a version of aspirational dressing: "Clothes should always represent your vision of yourself...or what you want to represent—even if it's only for one night."¹ Her approach to design is thoughtful. Rather than providing pat answers regarding her inspiration for a particular collection, Miuccia Prada offers explanations that hint at her interest in connecting fashion with broader cultural issues. Regarding her Spring 2013 collection, Prada declared, "Dream is forbidden, nostalgia is forbidden, to be too sweet is not good. Everything we used to feel historically, now you can't enjoy. The clothes are the expression of this impossible dream."²

Prada pumps
2003-2004
2005.5.91AB
Museum Purchase

Sarah Elizabeth Craft’s Easter bonnet, 1852

According to superstition, wearing new clothes on Easter Sunday ensures good luck throughout the coming year. Those with a cynical bent might suspect this superstition was developed by retailers, but it predates contemporary holiday-themed marketing campaigns. A saying attributed to Poor Robin's Almanack, a series of almanacs first published in the late 17th century, indicates the belief is at least several hundred years old: "At Easter let your clothes be new, Or this be sure you it will rue."

Poised between winter and spring, Easter marks a symbolic transition from cold weather to warmer temperatures. During the Victorian era, Easter was both a solemn religious occasion and an appropriate time to replace a tired winter wardrobe with cheerful spring attire. It marked the beginning of the spring social season and the first time it was permissible to wear new clothing after the austerity of Lent. In 1890, Harper's Bazar described Easter Sunday as the day that "new bonnets and spring gowns first see the light."¹ 

Girl's bonnet
1852
Silk taffeta & silk ribbon
Museum Purchase
2009.5.73A

Green in fashion

Thanks to Pantone, avoiding a pinch on St. Patrick's Day will be much easier this year. According to their decree, 2013 is the year of emerald green, a rich jewel tone "that enhances our sense of well-being, balance and harmony."¹ Due to Pantone's promotion of the color, retailers are well-stocked with garments and accessories featuring emerald and other shades of green. So, if you wear green on St. Patrick's Day, you'll be sporting the most fashionable color of 2013 and immune to the painful pinches given to those who shun green clothing on this informal holiday.

In the FIDM Museum collection, we are fortunate to have some wonderful green garments and accessories. In honor of both St. Patrick's Day and Pantone's color of the year, today's post features an emerald green silk bonnet from the late 19th century. Want to see another emerald garment from our collection? Revisit our post on James Galanos' vivid 1950s cocktail dress.

"Kate Greenaway" bonnet
c. 1880-89
Museum Purchase
2004.5.11

Silk handkerchiefs, c. 1926

These charmingly presented silk handkerchiefs prove that the whole is usually greater than the sum of its parts. Their colorful, festive packaging elevates them to something memorable. Carefully folded and arranged to form full skirts, the hand-painted handkerchiefs add dimensionality to a beguiling printed background. Because they're so prettily packaged, they probably retailed as a gift item. As declared in a 1924 Vogue advertisement: "Let that last-minute gift be Handkerchiefs! They are always appropriate and sure to be appreciated."¹

Handkerchiefs
c. 1926
Gift of Yvonne Sone
2010.796.1A-F

Making paper wigs

When dressing a mannequin for exhibition, it's important not to overlook the details. Careful attention to the total look makes an ensemble, and an exhibition, complete. Fully dressed mannequins also help visitors better understand the time-period on display. Once we've selected a garment for inclusion in an exhibition, we consider accessories. Is jewelry appropriate? Should she carry a handbag? What about shoes? And most importantly...what about hair?

Curly hair c. 1895 topped with a straw boater. The waves were created by cutting paper on curved lines. To keep the curls from appearing limp, individual strands of hair were curled with a pencil

Prada orchid shoes, Spring/Summer 2008

Shoes
Spring/Summer 2008
Miuccia Prada
Silk velvet, suede, leather & plastic
Museum Purchase
2009.5.11AB

Miuccia Prada (b. 1949) received a PhD in political science from the University of Milan, but altered the course of her life by entering the world of fashion. She is a major collector of modern art—a passion reflected in collaborations with emerging talents, such as artist James Jean (b. 1979), who drew enchanted forests filled with fairies, insects, and orchids for Prada's Spring/Summer 2008 line. Jean's sinuous illustrations were enlarged as a backdrop for the fashion show and advertising campaign, in addition to being printed on clothing, purses, and shoeboxes. His fantasy world came to life in Trembled Blossoms, a short animated film produced to correspond with the Prada collection. Transformation and fragility pervade the movie: a naked, nymph-like woman emerges from an orchid to be dressed in a complete Prada wardrobe by magical forest creatures that morph into clothing. Orchids blossom on the heels of this pair of pumps; their glossy sheen suggests hand-painted porcelain. The rich floral palette and girlish bows continue the theme of enchanting female charm.

Butterflies abound

Though we're not a natural history museum or a science center, we have lots of butterflies in our collection. No taxidermy specimens here, FIDM Museum butterflies are woven, printed, painted, and embroidered. Our curatorial team has no specific intent to collect garments and accessories decorated with butterflies, but the popularity of the motif makes it easy to acquire compelling pieces featuring this colorful, winged insect. According to our Curator Kevin Jones, "I would never accept an object into the collection just because it has a certain motif. It would have to be fab for a number of other reasons."

Butterflies can be found on every continent, with the exception of Antarctica. Diverse cultures have developed symbolic interpretations of the butterfly, many of which focus on its dramatic life-cycle. Hatching from the egg as a larva or caterpillar, the insect grows and eats until it reaches the chrysalis stage. During the chrysalis, a shell forms around the caterpillar, protecting the insect as it undergoes a metamorphosis into a beautifully colored butterfly. In ancient Greece, butterflies represented the soul, while Christian interpretations use the butterfly's life-cycle to symbolize resurrection. In parts of Asia, pairs of butterflies represent marital harmony and happiness. Butterflies have also been used to symbolize the transience of childhood, and are often used to decorate garments worn by little girls.

Child's "Dainty Blossom" Ensemble
Daisy Stanford
Hand-painted silk
c. 1925
Museum Purchase
2003.5.24A-C

L'Aimant by Coty, 1950s

According to this article, downtown Los Angeles (home of the FIDM Museum) has experienced snow only 6 times since a January 1949 snowstorm sprinkled downtown with less than 1 inch of snow. The last recorded snow downtown occurred in 1962, so it's unlikely that we'll get any this year. Instead, we'll just have to enjoy this charming promotional photograph for Coty's L'Aimant perfume.  The photo features a swan sled carrying two bottles of L'Aimant across a frozen pond dusted with glittering snow.

L'Aimant by Coty
Promotional photograph
c. 1950-59
Gift of the Annette Green Museum at the Fragrance Foundation
F2005.860.1372

Peter Max umbrella, c. 1968-70

The kaleidoscopic vision of this umbrella cover is the trademark style of Peter Max (b. 1937), New York's East Village illustrator who gave the hippie generation its far-out graphics for Central Park "Be-Ins" and Woodstock-era rock 'n' roll concerts. Influenced by early-twentieth-century Fauvist artists—particularly Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) and Henri Matisse (1869-1954)—as well as his childhood comic books, Max designed this chromatic burst of twenty-two human faces and figures morphing into another. Stars and moons circle in a kinetic rhythm of psychedelic colors titled "Astrological Astroplane," attesting to the artist's deep interest in astrophysics. In reference to this era, Max wrote: "My Cosmic period of the late sixties was a visual translation of the euphoria and expansion I experienced during those times. It seemed that art was no longer something I did, but something that happened to me."¹

Umbrella
c. 1968-70
Peter Max, Illustrator
Museum Purchase
2007.5.11

Bat hat, c. 1916-18

What's Halloween without a bat? These small, flying mammals are a favorite Halloween motif, appearing as costumes, decorations, even candy. Though they're generally harmless to humans, western cultures usually consider bats the eeriest of creatures. Blame this bad reputation on their nocturnal lifestyle, and the blood-sucking habits of vampire bats. Though most bats eat insects or fruit, vampire bats eat blood, sucking it from cows, chickens or other livestock in the dark of night. Though humans aren't the vampire bat's preferred meal, they occasionally bite people, sometimes transmitting rabies. Though a vampire bat's bite doesn't turn an animal or human into a blood-sucking monster, western culture typically associates bats with death, danger and disease.

During the latter half of the 1910s, the bat was a surprisingly popular motif. In 1916, Vogue featured a cut-steel bead bag with a red-eyed bat as the central motif. A year later, a Vogue article on women's millinery fashions highlighted a hat with two fully extended bat wings cupping the crown of a beige hat trimmed with sable fur. Bats were not the only animal-based millinery embellishment; feathers and fur were also widely used to create the statement hats popular during the second decade of the twentieth century. Our bat hat is composed of silk velvet, faux astrakhan fur and bat heads.

Hat
c. 1916-18
Museum Purchase in honor of Julia Long
2009.5.69AB