FIDM Museum Blog

From the Archives: Fancy dress costume, 1883-87

Halloween is next week! Will you be dressing up? For those of you who need a little costume inspiration, we offer you this post on an 1880s fancy dress costume in our collection. First posted in 2009, it's one of our most popular blog posts. Read through to the end for access to an amazing 19th century fancy dress manual. Enjoy!

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Contemporary Halloween celebrations offer an opportunity for young and old to dress in costume, but in the 19th and early 20th century, Halloween was primarily geared towards children. Adults who wanted to dress-up attended or hosted fancy dress balls. Not connected to a specific holiday, fancy dress balls and parties took place throughout the year and could be small private events or large-scale public fundraisers. Some fancy dress balls were thematic and related to contemporary or historic events while others were more open, simply requiring attendees to come in costume. Unlike the macabre and/or sexy Halloween costumes of today, fancy dress costumes covered a much broader range of topics: historic figures, abstract concepts, works of art, pieces of furniture, natural phenomena, animals and popular novels or plays. Suggested costumes were published in fashion periodicals and in descriptive manuals. Our fancy dress costume represents an undetermined character, though we think it might be intended as gypsy dress.

Fancy dress costume
c. 1883-87
Swan & Edgar
Gift of Helen Larson Estate
2001.31.15AB

Chanel day dress, c. 1937

Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel's (1883-1971) reputation is staked primarily on her exploration of menswear-inspired suits and her promotion of the understated little black dress. Though these creations are an important part of her aesthetic, her designs didn't always exude a strict less-is-more philosophy. Many of Chanel's evening wear designs, particularly during the 1920s and 1930s, glittered with embellishment. She also designed feminine, romantic day wear like the c. 1937 afternoon dress pictured here.

Afternoon dress
Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel
c. 1937
Gift of The Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising
79.25.5

Girl's embroidered ensemble, c. 1865

Girl's ensemble
c. 1865
Silk faille, cotton embroidery floss & mother-of-pearl
Museum Purchase
2010.5.4A-C

Pink for girls and blue for boys is a twentieth-century adage; these colors were not always gendered this way. During the nineteenth century, pink was seen as a shade of red: a forceful color aligned with traditional masculinity and thus appropriate for growing boys. Blue was symbolic of the Virgin Mary and conventional femininity, making the dainty shade suitable for little girls. Colors aside, young girls and boys alike were clad in skirts as a testament to their residency in the nursery, a feminine realm of mothers and nursemaids. Clothing construction was gender specific: girls' dresses buttoned up the back, training them to require help dressing, while boys' had center front closures, preparing them to be self sufficient. Both the hand-embroidered blue butterflies fluttering around this ensemble and its back-fastening bodice confirms that it was made for a little girl. The butterfly motif has long signified the transience of childhood: youngsters grow quickly into adults, just as butterflies metamorphose from caterpillars. Significant, too, is the suggestion of chasing butterflies, a spring pastime traditionally depicted as part of childhood play. The link between butterflies and childhood was carried into the twentieth century; this 1920s hand-painted "Dainty Blossom" ensemble also features fanciful  butterflies.

Gothe evening gown, early 1950s

How do you pin a corsage on a strapless gown? This question was posed by florists in the early 1950s, when strapless evening and ball gowns were all the rage. In lieu of pinning the corsage on a shoulder strap, florists suggested creative alternatives. Create a floral medallion by tying a single bloom with silver cord, suggested a Pennsylvania florist in 1950. Or use a wire base to distribute the weight of the flowers more evenly; this solution was the idea of a Chicago floral design instructor.¹

c. 1953
Gift of Geary Roark
S2009.1000.3

Todd Oldham patchwork vest

Todd Oldham
1991-92
Museum Purchase
2005.5.9

Todd Oldham's (b. 1961) designs were anything but basic. Instead of tasteful button down shirts or quiet business suits, Oldham offered eclectic ornamentation and an exuberant, catch-all approach to inspiration. During one of Oldham's first shows, highlights included an "interesting but unwearable" vest made from wire, a patchwork suit made from thin strips of cork, and a suit with pockets beaded in the style of paint-by-numbers paintings.¹

Surrealist circle skirt, c. 1955

There's so much to say about this skirt! It's a classic 1950s circle skirt, but the embroidered, bejeweled hands decorating the skirt can be interpreted through a variety of lenses. More than just a decorative motif, these hands reach toward artistic movements of the 20th century, including Surrealism and Mexican folk art.

The ghostly white, disembodied hands suggest the work of Surrealist artists, including that of Elsa Schiaparelli, queen of Surrealist fashion. The primary goal of Surrealist art and literature was to liberate individual and collective consciousness by integrating the world of dreams with conventional perceptions of reality. In visual terms, this goal was expressed through startling, sometimes shocking, juxtapositions that forced familiar objects into new realms. Meret Oppenheim's 1936 fur-covered teacup, saucer and spoon is a classic example of the way Surrealist art forces the viewer to reevaluate conventional reality.

Surrealists often featured disembodied body parts in their visual art. Eyes, hands and lips were removed from the body, floating through space with no anchor or hint as to their practical purpose. Elsa Schiaparelli used a pair of manicured hands to fasten her 1934 belt; this clasp that has been imitated many times since. Though created in the 1950s, after the 1930s heyday of Surrealist art, the embroidered hands decorating this circle skirt suggest a link to the work of Surrealist art.

Circle skirt
c. 1955
Cotton with wool and metallic embroidery
Gift of an Anonymous Donor
S98.10.2

Fashion birthdays: Madeleine Vionnet

 

French couturier Madeleine Vionnet was born on this day in 1876. Born in Chilleurs-aux-Bois, about 75 miles from Paris, Vionnet was apprenticed to a local dressmaker at age 11. She spent several years in this first apprenticeship, moving to a small design house in Paris when she was 17. She later worked in London for several years, returning to Paris by 1901, where she worked first for Callot Soeurs and later for Doucet. In 1912, Vionnet opened her own salon, but closed the business at the beginning of World War I in 1914. After spending the war years in Italy, Vionnet returned to Paris and re-opened her couture house in 1918.

Though Vionnet began her training in the late 19th century, when artifice and decoration were the foundations of fashion, she developed a startlingly modern, deceptively simple approach to design. Many of her garments were based on simple geometric forms; square, circle or rectangle. The bias cut was integral to her work, and largely eliminated the need for shaping darts. Vionnet disliked corsets, and designed her garments to be worn without this confining undergarment. House models were encouraged to go without undergarments during fittings.

In honor of Vionnet's birthday, we're reposting a late 1930s Madeleine Vionnet evening gown embellished with metallic embroidery. We first posted this gown in October 2011, when the gown was on exhibit in the FABULOUS! exhibition. 

Evening gown
Madeleine Vionnet
c. 1936-1938
Museum Purchase, Funds provided by Mrs. Tonian Hohberg
2008.5.50AB

Black silk faille formal dress, 1894-96

 

Studying period garments, fashion illustrations, reference books, and whenever possible, photographs, helps create a mental checklist against which to compare undated garments and images. Unfitted, columnar dress with elaborate beading? Start thinking about the 1920s. A women's suit with fit and styling reminiscent of menswear? Consider the styles of the World War II era. Of course, you'll need to watch out for styles that reference past fashion trends. Carefully examining labels, fabric, trim and construction details can help you ferret out whether a garment is a period original or later revival. There will always be tricky garments that defy exact dating, but understanding when specific styles emerged and declined enables researchers to date and contextualize historic garments.

Two-piece formal dress
1894-96
Gift of The Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising
87.25.1AB

Chains of Chanel

 

Gilt chains are a recurring visual theme in the Chanel lexicon. Beginning in the 1920s, Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel promoted costume jewelry as an alternative to jewelry made of gold and studded with pearls and precious stones. Chanel didn't just promote costume jewelry, she also wore it herself, pairing bold necklaces of faux pearls, gilt and glass stones with her straightforward daywear. In a famous 1937 photo by Horst P. Horst, Chanel casually reclines and her necklaces fall to the side. Who cares if they are real or faux? In 1938, it was said that her " "gold" necklaces were the biggest and most flamboyant in Paris."¹

After 1953, when Chanel emerged from retirement, she applied gilt chains to her garments and accessories for both decorative and functional purposes. The now iconic quilted leather Chanel bag with a chain strap was first introduced in 1955, and is often called 2.55 because it was released in February 1955. Based on a bag Chanel used in the 1920s, this modest rectangular bag has a chain handle that can be slung over the shoulder, or carried at the elbow. A Chanel suit also features a gilt chain, though it is frequently hidden from sight. The jacket always features a lightly quilted lining with a gilt chain hand-stitched to the interior hem of the jacket. The appearance of chain is echoed in braided trim that is often used to reinforce and decorate cuffs, collar and pockets of the suit jacket.

Chanel
Karl Lagerfeld
1985
Gift of Barbara Bundy
2006.37.4

In his designs for Chanel, Karl Lagerfeld has often reworked the iconic signatures of Coco Chanel. In this black wool dress, Lagerfeld pays homage to Chanel by layering trompe l'oeil chains at the waist of a sleeveless black wool dress. A mix of leather, gold embroidery and bugle beads, the chains reference Chanel’s love of costume jewelry and the casual, carefree way that Chanel wore her own jewelry. The simple silhouette and black ground serve as the perfect foil for the richness of the appliqued belts.

 

1 "New Costume Jewelry" New York Times 30 Jan. 1938: 80.

 

Spring flowers

 

Spring is here! Today, March 20, is the first day of spring for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere. Spring brings longer days, warmer weather and a host of colorful blooms. In celebration of spring's arrival, we offer you an array of flowers from our collection. Enjoy!

Evening boots
1850-55
Gift of Barbara Bundy
2006.37.3AB

This pair of nineteenth century evening boots feature a pattern of roses and twining foliage. Made of a lightly iridescent silk damask brocade accented with green leather foxing at the heel and toe, these boots were almost certainly made to match an evening gown. Because of their delicacy, they would have been worn indoors only. As was common throughout much of the 19th century, these boots have undefined left and right soles. Shoes with distinctly different shapes for the left and right food didn't became widespread until the late 19th century.