FIDM Museum Blog

Alexander McQueen

Deliverance, Alexander McQueen's Spring/Summer 2004 fashion show was the hit of the season. Based on the 1969 film, They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (starring Jane Fonda), Deliverance subverted the typical fashion show narrative by reversing the order of presentation; evening gowns kicked off the extravaganza while faux-homespun daywear and a tarnished evening gown concluded the show. This narrative mirrored the film, which documents a Depression-era dance marathon. In order to earn a cash prize the hopeful participants must dance for days with only brief breaks for food and short naps. Lack of sleep and food, paired with non-stop dancing, drives the dancers to the point of emotional and physical collapse and ends in tragedy. You can watch the trailer here.

Presentations abroad!

As mentioned in this post, FIDM Museum staff are constantly engaged in collection oriented research. Currently, Christina Johnson (Collections Manager) and Kevin Jones (Curator) are at the Fashion & Materiality symposium hosted by the Centre for Fashion Studies at Stockholm University in Stockholm, Sweden. Click on the link above for more information on the conference and the other presenters. Today's post consists of their respective presentation abstracts and images. Enjoy!

“In my case the face was created.”¹ Fashion and Identity in the Life of Marlene Dietrich

by Christina Johnson

Marlene Dietrich was married to the same man for over fifty years. She did not gain notoriety in Hollywood until age thirty. She was a mother and grandmother. She was self-conscious to the point of obsession regarding her perceived bodily imperfections. She was a recluse for the last ten years of her life. She longed to be accepted, admired, and loved. These personal facts are in direct opposition to Dietrich’s public identity. She was a bisexual siren with multiple lovers. She was a self-assured woman who took pride in showcasing a “perfect” body, eternally youthful and beautiful. She basked in the admiration and awe bestowed upon her from legions of fans and friends. A glamorous public identity was materialized by Marlene Dietrich through her appearance.

This paper will study fashion and identity in the life of Marlene Dietrich focusing on a rare group of her garments and accessories from the FIDM Museum in Los Angeles. This significant collection is comprised of over fifty personal wardrobe and movie costume ensembles in addition to twenty pairs of custom shoes donated by Dietrich to a now-defunct museum from 1964 to 1966 before arriving at the FIDM Museum in 1990. These pieces date from her early career in Berlin, her Hollywood years, USO tours, and stage performances.

Snapshot of Marlene Dietrich during her USO tour
1944-45
Museum Purchase

Marlene Dietrich purchased this paisley gown in Los Angeles in the early 1940s and wore it frequently, as evidenced by the many extant photographs. During her 1944-45 USO tour, she was photographed wearing the gown onstage, as seen in the snapshot above. Dietrich also wore the gown in the 1948 film, A Foreign Affair. The image below shows how this illustrious gown is stored at the FIDM Museum.

Gown worn by Marlene Dietrich
Irene
c. 1941
Department of Recreation and Parks, City of Los Angeles, FIDM Museum
INV. 3633

This embellished jacket was part of Dietrich's personal wardrobe.

Evening Jacket worn by Marlene Dietrich
Travis Banton/Howard Greer
c. 1936
Department of Recreation and Parks, City of Los Angeles, FIDM Museum
INV. 1137

Detail of INV. 1137

Hollywood Scandal! : Edith Head and Celanese “Star in Crepe”
by Kevin Jones

This is a convoluted story of eleven dresses in the FIDM Museum’s Hollywood Costume Collection. The collection came as a loan to FIDM in 1990 from the City of Los Angeles, California, after being stored in an abandoned city jail for more than twenty years. Many of the garments have been exhibited around the world as authentic; half of these gowns, though, are spurious. While dressing the costumes for an exhibition, it was noticed that some of them did not look as they appeared in publicity stills. Were these the same garments? Had they been altered? A detailed analysis of the gowns ensued. The gowns’ provenance, though, proved to be the thriller of this drama.

In 1960, the rayon manufacturer Celanese teamed with Paramount Pictures costume designer Edith Head to launch a new material called “Star in Crepe” by showcasing eleven original “Golden Era” crepe gowns in fashion shows in the United States, with contemporary interpretations of the garments to inspire consumers to purchase the new material so they too could dress like a star. The first fashion show was held at The Plaza Hotel in New York. Thereafter, identical copies of the gowns and their interpretations were worn in fashion shows around the country. Later, the costumes were donated to Hollywood Museum Associates, an organization planning a museum of Los Angeles movie history. The copy gowns were donated to various other institutions. By 1968, Hollywood Museum Associates was defunct, bailed out of debt by the City of Los Angeles who twenty years later loaned the eleven gowns to the FIDM Museum.

Which famous dresses are these? Who were the movie queens wearing such beautiful creations? Have any of the original dresses survived? Stay tuned for the ending to this most dramatic Hollywood Scandal!

Sketch of the gown worn by Greta Garbo in the film Inspiration

Gilbert Adrian design for Greta Garbo in Inspiration, 1931
Modern Screen Magazine, March 1931
Image courtesy of Richard Atkins
FIDM Museum

Actual gown worn by Greta Garbo in Inspiration

Gilbert Adrian for Greta Garbo in Inspiration, 1931
Silk velvet and rhinestones
Image courtesy of the Drexel University Historic Costume Collection, PA
Gift of Mrs. Thomas E. Burns Jr., 76-1-1ab
Photography by Dave Gehosky
Image courtesy of the Drexel Digital Museum Project , http://digimuse.cis.drexel.edu

Fake version of the gown worn by Greta Garbo in Inspiration, created in 1961.

Fake by Edith Head for Celanese Corp., 1961
Representing Greta Garbo in "Inspiration," 1931
Department of Recreation and Parks, City of Los Angeles, FIDM Museum

Image of model wearing fake Inspiration gown in 1961 fashion show.

Fake gown by Edith Head for Celanese Corp., 1961
Representing Greta Garbo in Inspiration, 1931
Model wearing the costume for a Celanese Fashion Show, 1962
Department of Recreation and Parks, City of Los Angeles, FIDM Museum

1 Dietrich, Marlene. Marlene. trans. Salvatore Attanasio. New York: Grove Press, 1989.

Mae West

Mae West's (1893-1980) most famous attribute was her figure. Buxom, rounded and held in place by rigid corsets, West's silhouette provoked a degree of outrage, while also serving as her best publicity. Her hourglass shape was immortalized in 1937 when the couturier Elsa Schiaparelli used West's silhouette as the basis for her Shocking perfume bottle. Hired to design costumes for West's 1937 film Every Day's a Holiday, the Paris based couturier would not travel to Hollywood and West could not travel to Paris. A solution was reached whereby a torso based on West's measurements was sent to Schiaparelli's Paris workshop. The resulting perfume bottle serves as an iconic representation of both Mae West and Elsa Schiaparelli.

Shocking by Schiaparelli
c.1937
Gift of Annette Green
F2005.860.820A

Adrian: Hollywood Costume Designer

Because of our location in Los Angeles, the FIDM Museum is fortunate to house costumes from a variety of Hollywood films. Many of these costumes are associated with the early years of the film industry and were worn by stars such as Marlene Dietrich and Rudolph Valentino. You can look forward to seeing some of these costumes in future blog posts!

This week we're going to feature a few Hollywood related highlights from our collection. Today begins a two-part post on Adrian (1903-1959), who was both a costume designer for Hollywood films and a successful designer of couture and ready-to-wear women's clothing. Between 1922 and 1926, Adrian worked in New York and designed costumes for a number of stage shows and also designed costumes for the Rudolph Valentino film A Sainted Devil (1924). In 1928, Adrian signed a contract with Hollywood based MGM, where he remained as chief costume designer until 1941.

As a costume designer, Adrian only designed for women, while his assistants developed costumes for male actors. This lead to Adrian's cinematic credit line, "Gowns by Adrian." Working with superstars such as Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford and Greta Garbo, Adrian created costumes which were intended to reveal information about setting, character and plot through fabric, fit and embellishment. In a 1937 interview Adrian noted that "Few people in an audience watching a great screen production realize the importance of any gown worn by the feminine star...the fact that it was definitely planned to mirror some definite mood, to be as much a part of the play as the lines or the scenery, seldom occurs to them."¹

Period costumes are a particular challenge to the costume designer, as they must be both authentic to the era depicted and accessible to the audience. Adrian excelled at balancing these competing priorities and created costumes for numerous period films. These included Marie Antoinette (1938), Anna Karenina (1935), Romeo and Juliet (1936) and Pride and Prejudice (1940). Adrian also designed the fantastical costumes for one of the best-loved films ever, The Wizard of Oz (1939).

Bonnet
Adrian
1940
Gift of Stacy Behlmer
2003.798.2

The bonnet above was donated to the FIDM Museum in 2003 and came to us with an attribute of Adrian for the 1940 version of Pride and Prejudice. It bore a label reading "Ann Rutherford." Rutherford was a well-known actress, starring in numerous films throughout the 1930s and 1940s. Shortly after the donation, our curator, Kevin Jones, happened to be watching television and came across the same movie during the exact scene in which Ann Rutherford wears our bonnet. Kevin was able to actually see the label reading "Ann Rutherford," proving that our bonnet was worn in the film and was therefore designed by Adrian. You can watch the 1940 trailer for Pride and Prejudice here. The New York Times named it one of the top 10 films of 1940, calling it "one of the most charming and elegant costume pictures ever made."²

Adrian often used images of historic dress as a reference point, taking authentic period styles and altering them to appear more dynamic onscreen. With its tall, upright, flattened brim, our bonnet is a case in point. Though the trimming of feathers, vines and ribbon are period-appropriate, the overall silhouette is exaggerated beyond what was actually worn in the 1830s. The various greens used in the bonnet were not popular in the 1830s. These colors, which appear as shades of gray in the black and white film, must have been chosen for their onscreen appearance.

Back view of 2003.798.2

Though Adrian designed specifically for the screen, his aesthetic was highly influential in mainstream fashion. MGM used Adrian's costumes as a promotional tool, allowing industry magazines to document the process of costume making so that home-sewers could mimic his aesthetic. Dresses based on "Gowns by Adrian" were sold through Macy's Cinema Shops, which sold variations of dresses featured in Hollywood films. Other Adrian knock-offs were also available, including a line designed by "Adrienne," which featured dresses named after Hollywood stars. Perhaps most influential was the dress worn by Joan Crawford in Letty Lynton(1932). A floor-length, full skirted dress with a fitted bodice and exuberant rows of ruffled fabric at the shoulders, the dress was a sensation. Versions were sold at multiple price points throughout the country, demonstrating that costuming and plot were equally important to the film-goer.

By 1941, Adrian costume designs were both widely admired and widely imitated. He had worked with some of the most iconic women in Hollywood, helping to shape their cinematic personas and thus influencing fashion for all women. It was time to move on to new challenges. In August 1941, Adrian left MGM with the intention of opening his own shop.

Check back tomorrow for a look at one of Adrian's designs under his own label!

 

1 quoted in Gutner, Howard. Gowns by Adrian: The MGM Years: 1928-1941. New York: Abrams. 2001. p. 9.

2 Crowther, Bosley. "Again the 'Ten Best' " The New York Times. 29 Dec. 1940.:X5.