Fashion

I’m going on hiatus again, and my destination is True West.

I’ll be traveling to Mesa Verde Country, in what’s known geographically as the Four Corners (where AZ, UT, CO, NM meet). After some short walks in Utah national parks, and visits to some still active Indian trading posts, my goal is an American Indian Arts fair, located right in Mesa Verde National Park on Memorial Day weekend.

I’ll be visiting Park City, Utah, and Durango, Colorado, during my vacation. Both towns are noted for attracting a more fashionable class of tourist. When I return, I’ll report on what the well-dressed locals and tourists are wearing these days.

While men show a more unified presence in their two-and-three-piece suits, augmented by the ubiquitous power necktie, women have an interesting range of options for garments. Yet it hasn’t gone unnoticed that Hilary Clinton, while on the campaign trail, wears trousers as much or more than skirts. Nor does she don many dresses.

Personal appearance is a key factor in any campaign for elected office. Since fashion, however, is often a window into a person’s psyche, a look at Clinton’s, Obama’s, and McCain’s dress sense is justifiably revealing. Their political advisors (as well as spouses) have weighed in on their clothing. At present, McCain is running third in the sartorial sweepstakes, but he may have no problem with that. The last Republication to look really good in a suit was Ronald Reagan. Want more perspectives on the quiet competition between the sexes? Search in CATNYP under the heading Fashion—Psychological aspects.

The Punch and Judy Show, which has become the Democratic Party’s campaign for presidential nominee, calls for analysis of every last detail. So why not fashion? At this point in time, Hilary wins hands down for her versatile wardrobe effects. Her pastel pantsuits have grown stronger in color, embracing cobalt, coral, rust, turquoise, and ever-cheery yellow. Her matching costume jewelry choices are truly awesome to me, and she drapes a truly elegant scarf round her throat when she wishes.

Gender studies related to clothing first appeared in full force in the 1970s. One of the best, however, is a Smithsonian Institution Press study from 1989, Men and women: dressing the part. Will this year’s presidential election be about two men in suits slugging it out, or be a true battle of the sexes?

What happens to fashion when the global economy becomes strained? The answer isn’t clear, by any means, but there are hints from past circumstances. Generally, clothing stays conservative, or doesn’t vary from the ideas seen in the last pre-troubled seasonal lineup. I’d made some New Year’s predictions which seem to be falling short of expectations. Baby doll styles, shrunken jackets, and giddy colors can still be seen for sale en masse. The only thing I predicted that seems to be turning out as I’d hoped is a steady drumbeat for ecologically-minded, or green, fashion.

Which brings me to the 1930s, a time when economic bad news was pervasive. Ironically, some of the clothing to come out of that decade proved to be stylish, and came to be labeled as “classical.” Men’s suits, for example, received accolades for being glamorous: well cut, smart lapels, and textural dash. This had everything to do with the fact that Hollywood and its talkies had a great impact on popular culture of that period. Movie stars are still considered fashion icons. Financial recession these days, however, will mean that innovation is stifled. Lack of cash will force designers and companies to sit on big changes in garments. Look for classical to have a strong run this year…

Ancient peoples, especially the Egyptians, understood that perfume was both a luxury and a necessity. I’m running low on one of my favorite perfume scents. Fortunately for me, I won’t have to head out to one of the rather intimidating old-time New York emporia featured in the illustration below.

I only have to trot up the street to Saks!

The packaging of perfume, now more commonly known as branding, is a subtle business in itself. A magnificent overview of this ingenuity is richly represented in an Art title called Masterpieces of the perfume industry. You can find even more good reading by trying the following subject headings: perfume and incense; perfume bottles; miniature perfume bottles; perfume paraphernalia; scent bottles; and even cologne bottles.

Isn’t it interesting that, when searching for books on perfume bottle design, I found the most titles on the subject appeared in the 1980s? I wonder if there is a reason behind this, or if the “me decade” just made it a natural topic for investigation? Sometimes a quick visual metaphor for the 1980s still pops into my mind: Nancy Reagan in a red ball gown and a tiara.

Over the weekend, I was engrossed in a murder mystery set in medieval Cambridge. The suspense centered on men who were sneaking around after dark doing nefarious deeds. They masked their identity with their hat, which went by the name of a liripipe. The author never gave a particularly cogent description of this item, so I looked it up in the Encyclopedia of Clothing and Dress. I learned that a liripipe was a 14th century headdress of an eccentric nature—and an important object of masculine fashion. Worn over a gorget, a form of hood and neckpiece, the liripipe was composed of soft tubes of cloth, up to two feet in length, with drooping points. They could be suspended, worn over the shoulder, or wound round the gorget like a turban. Fashionable men went to great lengths to twist the liripipe like a scarf, and drape it in dashing modes. Villains, on the other hand, as my book demonstrated, used it as a means of concealment.

Speaking of concealment (or not), there was a local television story last week about pork barrel monies in the finally-passed New York State budget. $5000 was approved for a group called Men of Exquisite Taste. Anybody know anything about this intriguing organization?

The cloche hat was all the rage in the Art Deco decades. The bell-shaped cloche had a close fit and narrow, dipped brim suited to the shortened, or bobbed, hair of the young flapper. She was a new incarnation of the modern woman, with places to go and things to do. Why, she’d even smoke cigarettes in public!

Want to have a good laugh? Or maybe purchase something, once the offerings are made clear? Go onto www.20sgangstercostumes.com and get yourself a flapper costume. I think my first memory of this stereotypical dress was during an episode of the original Star Trek television series, when Captain Kirk and his landing party ended up on a planet where everybody dressed and acted like 1920s gangsters and molls.

A colleague of mine at the Library knows a place in the Garment District where you can go and have your own cloche hat constructed for you! You can pick out the fabric and trim, and even watch the hat being blocked. We’ve always meant to go there, but invariably we get distracted by something or other at work. One day we will go—if only to release our inner flapper!

There are a number of great quotes to be found in The Rise of Fashion: A Reader, a compilation in the Art Department. Short essays or extracts from larger works by famous intellectuals and scholars can be found here. I looked at Oscar Wilde’s contribution to this anthology. Wilde (1854-1900) was famous for so many things, but what many people most remember is his biting wit.

His piece, “The Suitability of Dress,” from 1882, was written years before his notorious trials, conviction, and tragic physical breakdown. The opening lines remind me of the late William F. Buckley in full spate:

“Nothing, in general, bewilders or tortures the female mind more than the endeavor to establish some kind of harmonic relation between the law of the fashion book and the law of life, the one being for the idler, the other for the worker. Yet with some resolute self-assertion and heroic defiance of conventional prejudice, a compromise might be effected, the result being increased comfort to the workers in life’s thorny paths without even the sacrifice of beauty.”

The exhibition of Christian Louboutin shoes at the Museum of the Fashion Institute of Technology is a must-see for those who love or loath high heels. French designer Louboutin gained fame for learning well from the “everything old is new again” maxim. His shoes have his signature red sole, a convention that may come down from the days of King Louis XIV.

At the same time, despite his historical references to footwear from the late eighteenth through nineteenth centuries (see the illustration above), Louboutin moves his shoe designs from the pretty to the provocative. The exhibition text delightfully suggests the sexual and other connotations that spring to mind when we look at a pair of spiked heels.

Alas, I belong to the legion of women who have had to put heeled shoes behind them. It didn’t help that I never had the kind of legs that looked slinky when thrust into a pair of really high heels. Yet this exhibition allows for plenty of fantasizing. To give yourself a preview, in order to get in the mood for a trip to F.I.T., go to Google Images and put in Christian Louboutin’s name. Prepare to be dazzled—and more than a little bit excited…

I spotted this statement on a tee shirt worn by a young woman in Grand Central Station, just the other day.

From a file I was putting away at my desk, I ran across some quotes I’d gathered for the “Rakish History of Men’s Wear” exhibition. The following lines are by Georg Simmel (1858-1918), who wrote an academic treatise called “Fashion” in 1901:

“..we see that fashion furnishes an ideal field for individuals with dependent natures, whose self-consciousness, however, requires a certain amount of prominence, attention, and singularity. Fashion raises even the unimportant individual by making him the representative of a class, the embodiment of a joint spirit.”

If true, and I suspect it is, the young woman’s tee shirt makes even more sense…

Don’t Forget! Costume and Fashion History class this Thursday at 12:30 p.m. in South Court Classroom B.

Sung to the tune of any Amy Winehouse song:

Spring is coming early this year,
Just in time to erase any fear,
I might have of wearing a silly bonnet,
With lots of flowers and bunnies on it.
After all Easter is more than just a religious holiday,
It’s the time that the fashion-conscious hit the streets to say-
We’ll wear whatever it takes to get on the air,
You wouldn’t believe the time it took to prepare
This chapeau in the greatest taste,
Couldn’t let all that tinsel go to waste…
My grandmother wore hats year round,
But that craze has gone to ground.
I’ll wear this hat and look really funny,
All to honor that cute Easter Bunny.

And the Easter Bunny replies with the immortal words from the Bugs Bunny cartoon:

“I’m the Easter Bunny, hurray—
I shoulda stayed in bed today!!!!”

The issue of whether to wear fur or not has only become a politically correct one in recent years. Back in the 1920s and 1930s, the wearing of luxurious furs was something that many women aspired to. I can readily understand the mystique, which streched back over the centuries. By the twentieth century, however, the need to wear furs was becoming more and more just an option. The creation of new synthetics, especially after the two world wars, makes the wearing of fur unnecessary.

Then, too, there are the issues of animal cruelty in harvesting pelts. Unsavory practices at mink farms and other facilities has thrown the practice into an unfavorable light, aided by PETA. The history of creating fur-trimmed garments can be seen in remarkable Library works like Mama Made Minks and Fur in Dress. The Native Americans of various tribes had a practical approach. When they'd stalked an animal and made ready for the kill, they offered a prayer to the animal and its' protecting spirit. The hunter would thank his prey for the gift of his life and pelt, saying that he appreciated this since he needed the food and warmth.

Me, I have rabbits at home. No spirit would protect me from their wrath if I should choose to wear fur. Hurray for synthetics...

Part of my daily job is ensuring that people doing costume and fashion history research get the prepping they need for their research. To aid that purpose, I offer classes on this research several times a year. A class is coming up: I’ll offer “Researching Costume and Fashion History” on Thursday March 27 at 12:30 p.m. in the South Court classrooms. The next one will be Thursday, May 8, at the same time and location.

For those far away, or who cannot get away for a class, I do have a Research Guide on our Library website on Costume and Fashion History. It’s a great way to start in. One of the primary hurdles for people doing such research is understanding that library research isn’t as simple as doing a Google search. When you work with library catalogues, including our CATNYP, your best approach is not a word search, but choosing the right subject heading to get to the material you want. And this is a bit dictatorial, for we all use Library of Congress Subject Headings. This means, for example, that searching under the subject heading Fashion History will prove disappointing, when what you really want is Costume—History. Want to know why? Come to my class and I’ll explain...

Well, The New York Times Style Magazine offered its “Men’s Fashion Spring 2008” issue on Sunday. The emphasis was on hard-edged masculinity, a trend to be expected now that troubled times and belt tightening are in order. Although the occasional pale pink shirt could be found in an ad here and there… The emphasis was on hard-edged masculinity, a trend to be expected now that troubled times and belt tightening are in order. Although the occasional pale pink shirt could be found in an ad here and there…

Here’s a rather appropriate quote I found in my research papers for “A Rakish History of Men’s Wear,” from an old-time academic, Friedrich Vischer (1807-1887), writing an essay entitled “Fashion and Cynicism” in 1879:
“We cannot escape fashion once it has assumed the place of traditional dress. As we just said, fashion represents through and through the keenly roused spirit of modern culture, including, to be sure, all its bad habits, but fashion represents spirit.”

After a delay necessitated by my jaunt to the Southwest, I can turn my attention now to the latest fashion summaries. I usually find that the New York Times Style Magazine serves as an excellent bellwether for the latest word on fashion musts, pop culture, and targeted consumerism. The February 24 “Women’s Fashion Spring 2008” offers a wrap-up of all the trends in the recent round of spring fashion shows. The results are actually fairly agreeable and promising. First of all, the colors on view are great. Red is one, already foreseen in all the glamorous gowns worn by attendees of the Academy Awards. But I was also struck by the effusive hues of blue, yellow, and mint green that appeared in ads.

To my great pleasure, articles in the magazine offered many takes on everything old is new again, including mentions of Pre-Raphaelitism, Art Nouveau, Art Deco, and retro modernism. Textile designs seemed to be tributes to ornamentation from those periods. An American actress from the 1920s was treated to a flapper evaluation. Big cuff bracelets were in evidence, a satisfying sign to me! Accessories were sensible and attractive, with one huge exception. The platform and stiletto shoes shown in spreads were among the most obscene styles I’ve ever encountered; the milder versions of this footwear had “dominatrix” stamped all over them.

Two exhibition footnotes that appeared must be shared. The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) is having an exhibition on that enigmatic designer, Madame Grès, maker of divine draped and sensual dresses, through April 19; and “Wiener Werkstätte Jewelry” will show at the Neue Galerie here in NYC starting March 27. Got to see that one: the Wiener Werkstätte contributed greatly to Art Deco’s liveliness.

My Art Deco research shows that the fashion for a slender woman in artistic depiction evolved roughly in the waning decades of the 19th century. Those familiar with Art Nouveau will remember the elongated feminine models favored by Alphonse Mucha and Gustav Klimt. There is another culprit, however, who endowed the attenuated feminine figure with erotic force. Aubrey Beardsley (1872-1898) created erotic sketches that displayed the human form in a new light. His pen and ink drawings, particularly his plates illustrating the tale of Salome, are rife with sexual angst.

Beardsley’s drawings for The Yellow Book (1894-1897) were masterful renderings of his contemporary society. The matron illustrated above has opulent curves that lose out against the growing movement toward Modernism. Anything angular, elongated, and suggestive of lithe speed fit the new Modernist aesthetic. And as Ann Hollander noted in her Seeing Through Clothes, this Modernist viewpoint was teaching people to see themselves as shapes, even those angular and geometric in nature.

Beardsley helped this trend by using differing body types in his erotic drawings in a satirical fashion, and having the very slim figures be the sexually charged objects of desire. One of the best biographies of his life, which can be found in the Art Division, has an apt title: Aubrey Beardsley: A Slave to Beauty.

One of the most eye-catching sights of the New York Fashion Week just passed was the proliferation of modish, almost byzantine, feathered hats. This visual reference is a deliberate case of everything old becoming new again.

Yet writing on the subject isn’t easy to find. Millinery was a major aspect of women’s costume until the mid-20th century. You can find pockets of this fashion in certain places – like the hats on the British ladies who attend Ascot races. The Library has a marvelous U.S. publication, complete with dyed feather patterns mounted on plates, from 1888, entitled The Practical Ostrich Feather Dyer. Also at SIBL, a Parisian study by Francis Beltzer, from 1923, treats the manufacturing collusion between hat-makers and featherwork. Take a visual tour through the Digital Gallery, also, using the terms feathers, hats, and ladies hats, to see how inspired these creations could be.

I’m wondering if I’m the only one who thinks that men get a better deal from the fashion industry? Historically, men did own fashion: peacocks out-strutted peahens every time. The NYPL exhibition “A Rakish History of Men’s Wear” told the story of how men were the fashion leaders until the early modern era, coinciding with the birth of haute couture, and then gave up their primacy to women.

With sufficient perspective, however, I wonder if men just didn’t take a roundabout way into a new form of fashion dominance. Other social and costume historians have been pursuing the same theory, with varying conclusions. One of the best studies is by Tim Edwards, Men in the mirror: men’s fashion, masculinity and consumer society. This 1997 publication traces the often surprising emphases placed on modern masculinity through the 20th century, and how the workplace shaped clothing choices.

And, if I want to be devilish, the recent outcry about skinny male models at the New York Fashion Week shows brings a new speculation to mind. While anorexia and eating disorders occur in young men, too, this phenomenon is most usually attributed to the immense social pressure placed on girls and women to be fashionably thin. Could we be heading to an “equal opportunity” attempt to point out this problem with men? The fashion industry gets blamed for many things. Is super-skinniness a new problem for the opposite sex?

The verdict is in (on my part) on the New York Spring 2008 Fashion Week results. Men’s Collections: 6, Women’s Collections: 2.

Diddy seemed to enjoy putting touches of European classicism into his Sean John collection. Many designers, especially Robert Geller and Rag & Bone, had fun shrinking and layering existing casual gear. Tim Hamilton, once again, demonstrates how he’s someone to watch on a regular basis. Clayton Kirking, our chief, thinks I should have titled this post as “Skinny Boys and Dandies: No Cod Pieces at Bryant Park.” Hmm, I’ll have to think about it, especially after Guy Trebay’s rant in the Times…

All in all, I’d take the insouciance of the Spring 2008 men’s wear lines anytime over the ambiguities and mixed metaphors of the women’s wear designs. Isn’t it interesting that, while women still get the lion’s share of runway time, the men’s collections usually come off seeming so much more put together? Men just still seem to do better when things fashion-related occur, or at least they know how to make the fashion stakes more agreeable.

Regency spinster Jane Austen understood the advantages the opposite sex has dealing with popular culture issues. In Persuasion, she writes: “If there is anything disagreeable going on men are always sure to get out of it.”

Hosiery and shoes are another two foundations for contemporary feminine dress, and this year’s runway models sport tinted hose and high heels that made a winning combination in the 1920s. A decade earlier, Paul Poiret introduced women to flesh-colored hosiery, considered daring in that time. Nowadays, black-tinted hose possesses the cachet of being more dressy and alluring. A book called Socks and Stockings offers a pictorial history of hosiery, with some fascinating asides. A number of Fashion Week’s best runway outfits were completed with the same kind of stockings and heels that can be found in the illustration below.

What revelations did New York Fashion Week make? The fashion industry laid hints in advance. The September 2007 issue of Vogue foresaw some trends: Caroline Herrera’s English country girl clothes, FutureFashion’s tribute to “green” wear, with outfits made from soy, hemp, and bamboo (even Donatella Versace made a contribution), and nods to sensible 20s through 60s retro looks. As usual, however, I try and fail to find a discernable pattern to the women’s wear presentations. What interests me most, however, is what will translate into realistic street wear: what designs will appear in the stores for our consumption. Judge for yourself, look at nytimes.com/fashionweek.