Boué Soeurs: Calling for Research Help!

Last year whilst researching the dress of debutantes, I encountered a designer which I previously had little knowledge of. The name was Boué Soeurs, and the dress I uncovered was the garment pictured below: Above Images: C.I.68.48a–e. Boué Soeurs presentation ensemble. c1928. Silk, metallic threads; silk; feathers, cellulose nitrate. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. When I …

The Vulgar: Fashion Redefined

‘Vulgarity exposes the scandal of good taste.' - Adam Phillips Exhibition poster for The Vulgar: Fashion Redefined Exhibition. Image Credit: The Barbican. It's quite unusual to find the works of Madame Gres, Karl Lagerfeld, Alexander McQueen, and Christian Dior, amongst many other cherished designers in an exhibition titled The Vulgar: Fashion Redefined. The Barbican Art Gallery has installed a …

Big, Small, Short and Long: A Brief History of Fashionable Silhouettes

'Fashion consists only in extremes [...] frivolity and death.' 'Does fashion die [...] because it can no longer keep up the tempo?' Walter Benjamin - The Arcades Project The fashion system relies on a never-ending cycle of newness, spectacle, emulation and death. This is how fashion works - without the invention of new, or the recycling …

Charles James: The Art of Fashion

I have asked the question many times before, particularly in regards to the work of Japanese designers. I also think of designers that have placed the structure and composition of garments in the forefront of their design visions, Madeleine Vionnet, Madame Grès ect. But the one designer who stands out, a man who was experimental and innovative, determined to …

Fashion and Film: A Biography of MGM Designer Gilbert Adrian

Films provide escapism for those who watch them. Viewers are transported to a world of glamour, stardom, excitement and fantasy. During the ‘Golden Era’ of film, a time commonly associated with the 1930’s, cinema became an enormous industry in America. With the arrival of the talkies (sound films) during the late 1920’s, by 1930, 80 …

Princesses, Parties and Debutantes: Sir Norman Hartnell – British Couturier

'I despise simplicity. It is the negation of all that is beautiful,' - Norman Hartnell (Source V&A Museum, Norman Hartnell biography). A presentation at court to the royal family was a rite of passage for most upper-class girls during the 1920-30’s. A long lasting tradition of the British establishment, the trip to Buckingham Palace was …

Cutting the Bias: Madeleine Vionnet

“When a woman smiles, then her dress should smile too” - Madeleine Vionnet. After the drop-waist, raised hem, sequin dresses of the 1920's appeared, fashion dictated that by 1930, the look would disappear. As one trend is born another must die. A big misrepresentation of history, is that all women during the 1920's had a cloche hat, …

Elsa Schiaparelli: The Art of Fashion

Elsa Schiaparelli, photographed by Cecil Beaton, c1930: Image Credit: The Red List. The wonderful and eccentric Elsa Schiaparelli was one of the most predominant and successful fashion designers of the 1930's. Her name is no longer recognised within common culture, but throughout the field of fashion history, she is often regarded as an iconoclastic adventurer, who blurred …

A Biography of Lucile: London, Lace, and Lingerie

During the Belle Epoque era, a young, feisty entrepreneur emerged. Her name was Lucile; and her mission was to create couture for a new kind of a woman. A British designer, Lucile was arguably the first female to receive international recognition for her sartorial creations. C.I.47.57.1. Lucile dance dress. c1914. Silk, fur and metallic thread. …