FIDM Museum Blog

Court gown and train, 1907

 

Ladies attending Their Majesties' Courts will appear in Full Dress, with Trains and Plumes.¹

 

Court gown & train
London, England
Redfern
1907
Museum Purchase, Funds provided by Yvonne Hummel
2008.932.19AB

Worn only during the ceremony in which selected individuals were introduced to the King and Queen, court dress was an elegant, highly regulated uniform. Adhering to the spoken and unspoken regulations governing court dress was almost as important as having the "correct" background. Each European court had its own version of court dress, which was more or less elaborate depending on the wealth of the particular court. The court gown and train pictured above are both on display in FABULOUS!, our current exhibition.

We are fortunate to know the provenance of this court gown. It was worn by American Ann Bloomfield Gamble Post during her 1907 presentation to King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra of the United Kingdom. Edward was a popular leader; his accession to the throne in 1901 transformed the somber court of his mother Queen Victoria into "an exceptionally brilliant spectacle."¹ Alexandra exerted a major influence on fashion. Presentation at their court was a eagerly anticipated social privilege.

A Step Ahead of the Competition

 

As we've discussed here, here and here, many of the objects in our collection are donated. Our donors are extremely generous, and we've been gifted with many wonderful pieces over the years. To round out our collections, we also purchase objects. In this post, FIDM Museum curator Kevin Jones describes this process and reveals how his extraordinary patience helped bring an unusual pair of 1959 Roger Vivier evening shoes into our collection. These shoes are featured in both FABULOUS! and the companion catalogue.

Evening shoes
Paris, France, 1959
Roger Vivier for Christian Dior
Kingfisher feathers & leather
Museum purchase
2009.5.50AB

Evening glamour, c. 1922

Evening dress
c. 1922
Gift of Laura Stoneman
96.657.2

During the 1920s, nightlife was an important aspect of popular culture. In the United States, the Prohibition of alcohol led to the rise of speakeasies, where patrons could dine, dance and drink in an atmosphere of illicit pleasure. Glamorous evenings required eye-catching garb, such as the beaded velvet evening dress pictured here. As described in this post on the 1920s silhouette, the favored silhouette for both day and evening wear was slim and straight, uninterrupted by the curves of the body. Dresses were reduced to two simple panels of fabric, joined at the shoulders and side seams. For evening, these flat panels became canvases on which beading, sequins, embroidery and other embellishments created abstract or pictorial imagery.   

Transforming the Rudi Gernreich Archive

If you read this post, you'll know that the FIDM Museum houses an extensive Rudi Gernreich Archive. The Archive numbers nearly 1,000 items and includes not only garments and accessories, but patterns, furniture, scrapbooks and other miscellaneous items. We received the objects that now comprise the Rudi Gernreich Archive soon after Gernreich's death in 1985. At that time, the objects were placed in a separate storage area, away from the bulk of the FIDM Museum collection. Though intentions were good, objects were not always stored with an eye to long-term preservation.

Pages from one of the Gernreich swatch books.

Fashion and feathers

Today, hats are worn primarily on celebratory or festive occasions, but in the 19th century, hats and bonnets were an essential element of every woman's wardrobe. Beginning in the 1890s and continuing until about 1915, many hats were extremely large and served as an ideal canvas on which to display a variety of trimmings, feathers included. Egret, heron, hummingbird, pheasant, ostrich, seagull and peacock were all popular as sources of feathers, though milliners did not limit themselves to these birds alone. As you can see from the image below, creative milliners went far beyond the use of a single elegant plume. Sometimes an entire wing was given pride of place, or even a full bird, as in the example below.

Hat
c. 1905
Purchase
2008.25.17