Like Mother Like Daughter: Jeanne Lanvin and Gazette du Bon Ton from 1920-1925

Jeanne Lanvin was a prolific French couturier who enjoyed several decades of success during the twentieth century. First training as a milliner during the late 19th century and subsequently opening her own business in 1889, Lanvin eventually joined the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture in 1909. She ran a highly successful fashion house for many years, …

Classicism and Couture: Greek Art and Design Meets Chanel

‘I’m suggesting going back to move forward. To create the future, you have to pay attention to the past.’ – Karl Lagerfeld ‘There is some irony in a designer who famously dislikes nostalgia creating a collection inspired by an era from about 2,500 years ago.’[1] We start this blog post with two opposing perspectives of …

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 …

Sculpting Fashion: Madame Grès – A Biography

Germaine Émilie Krebs was born in 1903. As a young French woman, who aspired to become a sculptor, Krebs was unaware that her career was destined to be within the world of fashion, later becoming the master couturier Madame Grès. An extreme hard-worker, who kept her private life secret and away from the cameras, Grès …

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 …

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 …

The Architects at Work: Issey Miyake, Rei Kawakubo, and Yohji Yamamoto

At times many have asked why fashion continues to be a respectable and relevant choice of career or study. Sceptics have complained that fashion has merely serves to decorate, creating a world of conspicuous consumption and image-orientated offspring. To give one reason of the hundreds that exist in order to destroy these beliefs, is that much …

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, …