FIDM Museum Blog

Out & About: Fred Astaire's tuxedo on exhibit at the RISD Museum

In today's post, FIDM Museum Registrar Meghan Grossman Hansen describes the process of preparing objects for transport to exhibitions at other institutions. FIDM Museum has an active loan program, and we often have 1 or more objects on exhibit at museums near or far. Beginning April 28, see a tuxedo worn by Fred Astaire in Artist/Rebel/Dandy: Men of Fashion at the RISD Museum in Providence, Rhode Island.

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We are always excited to see the FIDM Museum collection travel. Most recently, we sent Fred Astaire's tuxedo to join many other dapper gentlemen in Artist/Rebel/Dandy: Men of Fashion, an exhibition at the RISD Museum (April 28 - August 18, 2013). Featuring more than 200 objects, this exhibit traces the history and persona of the dandy, with a focus on well-known fashionable men.

Fred Astaire was very particular about his wardrobe, with strong preferences about cuffs, jacket length, stripe width, and other minute details. He once claimed that he took each new suit to the tailor "at least half a dozen times."¹ For Artist/Rebel/Dandy, we loaned the RISD Museum a 1930s tuxedo, waistcoat, and bow tie worn by Astaire. The wool crepe tuxedo was made by Anderson & Sheppard Ltd., a Savile Row tailor still in existence today.

Fred Astaire’s tuxedo on exhibit at the RISD Museum, loan courtesy of the FIDM Museum, City of Los Angeles, Department of Recreation and Parks (L88.1.31AB). Photograph by Erik Gould, courtesy of the RISD Museum.

 

Norma Kamali fringe suit, 1986

 

Suit
Norma Kamali
1986
Gift of Liz Mazurski
2012.1142.71AB

Norma Kamali's fringed two-piece suit is a challenging, slightly eccentric, take on 1980s power dressing. During the 1980s, bland, tailored skirt suits defined women's professional dress. These power suits, derived from men's business suits, articulated the idea that dressing for workplace success meant dressing very much like a man. Power suits, with their sedate palette and uniform silhouette, also worked to disguise the individuality of the wearer. Kamali's suit, with its layers of swaying fringe and stylish bolero jacket, challenges the neutrality of the 1980s power suit.

Gianni Versace leather suit, 1994

Schoolgirl chic with a naughty edge was a strong theme throughout Gianni Versace’s Autumn/Winter 1994-95 collection. Statuesque supermodels Claudia Schiffer, Naomi Campbell, Christy Turlington, and Nadja Auermann walked the runway clad in shiny, candy-colored miniskirts paired with fuzzy, belly-baring turtleneck sweaters and Empire waist vinyl dresses with peek-a-boo midriffs. According to WWD, the “collection included hardly an outfit that wouldn't get a girl expelled."¹ The aggressive sexuality showcased in these garments was a trademark of Versace's work. According to fashion historian Richard Martin, "Versace seized the streetwalker's bravado and conspicuous wardrobe, along with her blatant, brandished sexuality, and introduced them into high fashion."²

Leather two-piece suit
Gianni Versace
Autumn/Winter 1994-95
Gift of Dorothy Washington Sorensen
S2010.1110.1AB

Adrian resists the New Look

 

In 1948, when the fashion world was atwitter with talk of Christian Dior's New Look, renowned American designer Adrian took fashion lovers to task for their over reliance on the dictates of Paris. Though the New Look had already created a radical break with the military-inspired fashions of the World War II era, Adrian insisted that a women shouldn't feel out-of-date or unfashionable simply because her suit was six months old: "Whether a woman buys an expensive or inexpensive suit one season, she doesn't like to be called an 'antique' six months later."¹ Unlike Christian Dior, who promoted extravagantly full skirts for day and evening, Adrian preferred a slim silhouette for daytime fashions, reserving full skirted looks for evening. This 1948 Adrian suit demonstrates the designer's preference for a strong shoulder and straight skirt.

Two-piece suit
Gilbert Adrian
1948
Gift of the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising
77.25.2AB

Virevolte suit, Christian Dior, Autumn/Winter 1955

 

One of the most celebrated figures in the history of fashion, Christian Dior's reputation was founded on the New Look. Introduced in 1947, the New Look silhouette presented an idealized vision of the female body: soft, sloped shoulders and defined waist accented with long, full skirts. Called Corolle (petal) in French, the collection was both a reaction to the material deprivations of World War II and an expression of Dior's romantic, yet precise and sophisticated, take on femininity. This nostalgic romanticism was most openly expressed in Dior's cocktail and evening wear, especially in the petal-like skirts of Dior's Junon evening gown.

If Dior's evening wear was extravagant and flowery, his daywear was the opposite. In black, navy or gray, Dior's daytime suits were almost austere in their simplicity. Precisely cut and tailored, they demonstrated Dior's ability to translate menswear into the feminine idiom. In the wool twill suit pictured below, Dior presented a version of the masculine suit softened only by the rounded neckline of the jacket. Dior even went so far as to mimic the look of a neck-tie by tucking and pleating the fabric of the bodice to create a trompe l'oeil knot at the collar. Despite its serious appearance, this suit has a surprisingly lighthearted name: Virevolte. A French verb meaning to dance or twirl around, it suggests that Dior's romanticism was at play in even his most austere designs.

"Virevolte" 3-piece suit
Christian Dior
Fall/Winter 1955
Black and white wool twill
Gift of Mrs. Herbert Lawrence
81.443.1A-C

 

Thierry Mugler suit, 1998

 

Thierry Mugler
S/S 1998 Ready-to-wear
Museum Purchase
2005.5.22AB

The work of Thierry Mugler is noted for its theatricality and an emphasis on exaggerated, aggressive femininity. Mugler began his career as a freelance designer in the early 1970s; by the end of the decade he had opened his first boutique in Paris. From the beginning, Mugler used fashion to create a stylized feminine archetype: "square shoulders, slender waist, full hips and tight skirt-preferably slit to the hip."¹ Mugler presented his designs in spectacular runway shows that resembled stage productions. You can watch the La Chimere (A/W 1997/8) couture collection presentation here. At about 2:22 the mythical human/animal Chimere herself appears. Her costume clearly demonstrates the inherent theatricality of Mugler's aesthetic.

Sewing patterns from the FIDM Museum

Within the FIDM Museum collection are a number of smaller mini-collections. Some, like the Rudi Gernreich Archive, consist of large groupings of objects that document the work of a specific designer. Others, like our photograph collection, are less focused groupings of objects collected to help us interpret fashion history. One of my favorite mini-collections is our collection of paper sewing patterns. In addition to their entertaining envelope illustrations, sewing patterns are a valuable source of fashion information because they help us understand how high fashion or runway garments are interpreted for the mass market. This is particularly true for patterns associated with known designers. They can also point to the social context of specific garments or styles. Because many patterns are copyrighted, they can be very useful in dating extant garments. Sewing patterns also allow us the opportunity to engage with fashion on a very personal level. With a bit of practice and patience, any sewer can create a custom-designed garment demonstrating either a highly individual sense of style or one perfectly attuned to the latest runway fashions.

  Misses' and Women's Slack Suit and Coverall pattern
Simplicity
1942-45
2003.46.10
Gift of Andrea Tice In Memory of Carmelita Johnson

Christian Dior's New Look at the FIDM Museum

With it's slope shouldered, close-fitting bodice, wasp waist and extravagantly full skirt, Christian Dior's New Look of 1947 is one of the most distinct and recognizable silhouettes of the twentieth century. In contrast to early 1940s feminine dress, which borrowed heavily from masculine military uniforms, the New Look exaggerated the curves and contours of the feminine form. To create this idealized female body, the New Look relied on a rigid framework of strategically placed padding and boning, not to mention corsets and petticoats. The full skirts of the New Look required a tremendous amount of fabric, up to 15 yards in some cases! After the restrictions and rationing of the World War II years, the New Look was scandalous in its extravagant usage of raw materials and in its presentation of the female body. Though perceived as shockingly new, the New Look was actually a return to physical ideals of the later nineteenth century and a continuation of a trend interrupted by World War II. Despite these precedents, when it appeared in 1947, the New Look was a watershed moment in fashion. Though other silhouettes achieved popularity in the 1950s, the New Look informed (either negatively or positively) all subsequent fashionable silhouettes through the 1960s.

The signature ensemble of the New Look was the Bar suit. A two-piece suit consisting of a pale, fitted jacket with narrow waist, padded hips and a black, mid-calf, knife pleated skirt--the famous mid-1950s image by Willy Maywald often serves as visual shorthand for the New Look. Though this suit was reportedly the best selling item from the first New Look collection, very few existing versions have found their way into museums. (If you happen to have a Bar suit hanging in the back of your closet, feel free to donate it to the FIDM Museum!) Though we don't have an original Bar suit in our collection, we are fortunate to have a replica Bar suit. Sewn from the original pattern pieces, it was donated to the FIDM Museum by Marc Bohan (then chief designer for Christian Dior) in 1981. Though many museums choose not to accession replica artifacts, we did so in the interest of research. Because we are affiliated with a teaching institution, this iconic garment is an important resource for students and faculty.

Reproduction of the Bar suit designed by Christian Dior
1981 from the 1947 design
Silk faille (jacket) and wool crepe (skirt)
Gift of Marc Bohan for Christian Dior
79.780.1AB

Pantsuit dressing, c. 1972

As described in this recent post on our Sonia Rykiel tunic, women gradually adopted trousers as everyday dress in the 1970s. While the Sonia Rykiel tunic demonstrates a somewhat ambivalent acceptance of trousers, this tan wool pants suit from our Study Collection would have been worn by a woman entirely convinced that trousers were here to stay.

Two-piece pants suit
c. 1973
Gift of California Hospital Medical Center
S2007.165.11AB

Boy's jacket and vest, 1870-1874

In the nineteenth-century, children were idealized as "perfect beings who were not only without sin, but who offered adults a model of unworldly goodness."¹ As children grew towards emotional and physical maturation, they inevitably lost their innocence. To designate and preserve this special status as long as possible, gender distinctions in nineteenth-century infant and toddler dress were minimal. Infants of both sexes wore long, white dresses. As mobile toddlers, boys and girls wore loose-fitting, calf or ankle length dresses that borrowed details (neckline, sleeve, etc.) from adult dress. Both boys and girls wore their hair long, as seen in this c. 1900 cabinet card of a young boy sporting long, curly locks.

By the age of 5 or 6, gender distinctions in dress became more obvious. Girls continued to wear skirts and dresses, but boys were "breeched," meaning they began wearing short, bifurcated garments. Breeching was a milestone event, indicating that a boy had demonstrated increased maturity. The exact age at which a boy was breeched varied, depending on family beliefs and individual behavior. In the 1870s, boys who had been breeched wore knickerbockers, short trousers which fastened at the knee. If a boy was lucky enough to attend school, his knickerbockers were probably worn with a jacket and vest similar to those pictured here. Unfortunately, we don't have the accompanying knickerbockers, but they were probably made of a sturdy brown fabric, possibly corduroy. The complete ensemble would have also included a white shirt, wool socks, laced leather boots and a cap or hat.

Boy's jacket and vest
1870-75
Museum Purchase
84.5.3AB