FIDM Museum Blog

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

Christian Dior New York evening gown, c. 1953-55

Christian Dior's New Look, introduced in February 1947, was a dramatic turning point. Banishing the boxy suits and dresses of the World War II era, the New Look ushered in an era of exaggerated femininity. Based on shapely curves and contours, and using an extravagant amount of fabric, Dior's New Look appealed to consumers starved for luxury after the deprivations of World War II. The silhouette was instantly popular, and Maison Dior struggled to fulfill orders. Based on the spectacular success of this first collection, Dior and his business partners began enacting plans for international expansion. Eventually, Dior would open retail outlets in London, Venezuela, and New York.

Evening gown (bodice detail)
Christian Dior New York
c. 1953-55
Gift of Anonymous Donor
2003.40.31

Moschino Couture! evening gown, 1992

Made of rainbow-hued silk satin, this Moschino Couture! evening gown was worn to an early 1990s costume ball. Though we have few details about the event, if all the costumes were this eye-catching, it was surely a splendid evening. Any guesses as to the identity the wearer wanted to assume? Think of a well-known historical figure, one who supposedly said, "Let them eat cake!"
Evening gown
Moschino Couture!
1992
Gift of Eden Riegel
2010.1007.1

Jeanne Lanvin fashion figure

Fashion Figure
Winter 1921
Jeanne Lanvin
Museum Purchase
2008.25.1

The original purpose of this extremely rare Jeanne Lanvin (1867-1946) fashion figure is a mystery. It may have been associated with an extensive display of figures at the International Silk Exhibition held in New York City's Grand Central Palace in 1921.¹ Its construction is unusual: a flat, wooden body with lightly padded contours covered with flesh-colored silk crêpe and articulated copper arms with flipper-like hands in the angular Art Deco style. The haughty, painted face with its target-like rouge mimics the highly stylized makeup of the maison's super-attenuated fashion plate figures.

A corresponding croquis from the Lanvin Archive reveals this modѐle's title: "Rose Poupon," which translates to "Plump Rose." It is also a play on words referencing the fashion figures of the eighteenth-century called "poupées," or "dolls," that were sent worldwide to showcase the latest Paris fashions. Lanvin's romantic robe de style—a full-skirted dress with concentrations of gathers at the hips—was the antithesis of the sleek, tubular silhouette that dominated the 1920s. Gathered ribbon roses with hand-tinted pink centers trim the neckline and form a trellis on the skirt. They were called "roses de Polignac," after Gabrielle, comtesse de Polignac (1749-1793), confidant of Queen Marie Antoinette (1755-1793). Lanvin's daughter and muse, Marie-Blanche (1897-1958), was a twentieth-century comtesse de Polignac.

1 Vogue (April 1, 1921), 42-43.

 

Fashion Birthday: Hubert de Givenchy

Couturier Hubert de Givenchy was born on this day in 1927. Now retired, Givenchy is one of the last living couturiers to have learned his art during the golden age of the haute couture. His training began in 1945 when he took a position with Jacques Fath. By December 1951, when Givenchy opened his own couture house, he had trained under Jacques Fath, Robert Piguet, Lucien Lelong and Elsa Schiaparelli. Vogue highlighted Givenchy's February 1952 debut collection, calling it "one of the most news-worthy happenings in Paris this spring."¹ The collection was notable for its emphasis on separates, including the crisp white Bettina blouse, modeled by Bettina Graziani. A version of the Bettina blouse is seen in this March 1952 Life magazine article on Givenchy's debut collection.

Evening dress
Hubert de Givenchy
Autumn-Winter 1968-69
Silk velvet, cockerel feathers
77.116.14
Gift of Mrs. Alfred Bloomingdale

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!

**********

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

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

From the Archives: Holly's Harp evening dress

 

Today's post features a late 1970s Holly's Harp dress. We've reposted this garment today because it is currently on view at The Autry in California's Designing Women, 1896–1986. On view through January 2013, this exhibit focuses on women who have helped shaped California design. In addition to our Holly's Harp evening dress, we also loaned two bathing suits to this exhibition: a Cole of California fringed bikini, and a knit Catalina suit.

**********

Los Angeles based designer Holly Harp (1939-1995) began her fashion career in the late 1960s, designing theatrical, psychedelic clothing for iconic performers such as Janis Joplin and Grace Slick of Jefferson Airplane. Harp's early designs were in tune with the catch-all aesthetic of late 1960s hippie fashions, and her garments quickly gained a reputation for "being wild and wonderful, feathers and fringe."¹ A maxi-dress worn by the singer-songwriter Dory Previn was typical of Harp's aesthetic. Constructed of an old table cloth, green doily and a piece of vintage satin, it was described as a "clothing mosaic."² In 1968, Harp opened Holly's Harp, a small boutique on the Sunset Strip where she sold both her ready-made and custom-designed garments.

Within a few years, Harp's designs had taken on a very different character. Instead of merely incorporating bits and pieces of the past by using vintage textiles, Harp started designing slinky, overtly sexy dresses and separates that referenced the glamour of Old Hollywood. Using silk textiles such as jersey, crepe and chiffon, Harp created what she called " fantasy-oriented...mood clothes."³ These mood clothes often referenced 1930s evening wear, as in the Holly's Harp bias-cut dress seen here.

Evening dress
Holly's Harp
c. 1978
Gift of Gloria Strasburger
99.655.3

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

Bubble silhouette, 1958-59

 

Cocktail dress
1958-59
Gift of Steven Porterfield
S2007.897.8

In March 1958, Vogue lauded the new variety in fashionable silhouettes: "a whole lovely flight of new forms--winged, floating, or held slightly away from the body in some mysterious way. It is the variety of shapes that marks these Paris collections."¹ In the accompanying 20-page editorial, readers were introduced to St. Laurent's A-line trapeze dress for Dior, Cardin's bubble hem skirt suit, Madame Grès empire-waist chiffon day dress, and Chanel's slim, two-piece wool suit. The hodge-podge of silhouettes presented in the article suggests that Christian Dior's 1947 New Look silhouette was finally being surpassed by new approaches to the body. The 1958 Vogue article credited the availability of varied silhouettes to the body-skimming chemise dress, which had become popular the previous year.