Paula Baxter's blog

“Fashion as we know it in the West, is not and never was a universal condition of dress. It is a European product and is not nearly as old as European Civilization.”
----Quentin Bell (1910-1996)

The Bible says that when Adam and Eve sinned, they were forced to cover their nakedness. The clothed body certainly became an essential part of the human condition. What people did with their clothing, however, was derived from diverse motivations. Geography, climate, and a growing list of social impulses triggered basic decisions about garments. The ancient Egyptians learned that fine unbleached linen wore well in their desert environment while the indigenous people of the upper North American continent relied on animal skins for necessary protection against the elements. Class distinctions sprang up in all early societies, regardless of their geographical location, further dictating who would wear what.

Since our educational system in the twentieth and twenty-first century remains largely based on Western civilization, I feel compelled to look there first. This doesn’t mean that non-Western cultures haven’t contributed greatly to clothing and adornment. With my theme of fashion as a social force in mind, I’m going to first review dress across the centuries (with an emphasis on Western dress, and some selective diversions) and what was important about the way people wore their clothes. After this review, a new path for investigation will emerge…

It’s useful to know what I always discuss with my Costume and Fashion History classes: the correct subject headings for searching Library holdings are Costume and Clothing and Dress. Fashion is a workable heading, but Fashion Design will garner fewer results than you might expect.

Ah, the new year! What lies ahead for us? 2008 produced many surprises on the economic front, a youthful, energized President-elect, and a world-weary sense that we need to learn from our mistakes. The past half-dozen years have been one long shopping frenzy, but now the coins have left our collective pockets, along with our 401[k]s. While the flames smolder and smoke from our bank statements and credit cards, it’s time to review how we got to this point. As always, fashion as a social force can be blamed in part. We were led to believe that everything was ours for the asking—or so our society seemed to promise.

Why does fashion, that ever powerful force, play so great a role in our lives? The answer isn’t as straightforward as we’d like. While there’s still much to learn from the adage everything old is new again, the stories of when, how, and why we made changes in our mode of dressing are also part of the history of humanity. Even colors play a role. In the Middle Ages, prostitutes wore red gowns and pious men swathed themselves in black. Nowadays, red is the color of allure and power, while black has acquired a multiplicity of meanings. When we look back at the reasons for these developments, they take on an even richer context when fashion as a social force is factored in.

This means that I’ll be leaving the 1920s and 1930s and taking us anywhere and everywhere for a while, with meaningful stories from the history of clothing—and fashion—as a theme for my post musings. At some points, I may seem like Don Quixote tilting at the windmills. But never fear! Like so many storytellers, I’m taking us somewhere in the end. As one American Indian author recently said when writing about Native life today, “our stories are all we have.” Well, I think that statement goes for the human condition as well…

Thanks for reading my posts on modernity and fashion,
Letting me exercise my long-running Art Deco passion.
While the exhibition’s been given an extended stay,*
To other topics I really should stray.
What subjects shall I choose to beguile your time?
And is it necessary that they all should rhyme?
For fashion is a most powerful force,
Too important to simply let it take its course.

The truth, dear readers, is a question to you—
What would you most want me to do?
In the year ahead since the Art Deco motif is spent,
On what new journeys should we be sent?
It’s been a pleasure to wander afield
To see what secrets fashion can yield.
Shall I head back into the past for wonders to plumb,
Or is the retrospective view simply too dumb?
Since past and present have a way of intertwining,
I’d better get started, and quit all this whining!

* “Art Deco Design: Rhythm and Verve” has been extended to May 22, 2009. If you haven’t seen it yet, come to the Wachenheim Gallery of the Central Building at 42nd Street, first floor. I’m starting work on an online version, coming soon in the months ahead…

"In the absence of the sacred, nothing is sacred. Everything is for sale."
-Oren Lyons (Onondaga) 1992

If I can complain about Thanksgiving as a holiday, why not Christmas? My beef is with the pervasive present-giving expectations that drive our economic ship of state. While Christmas was originally a religious holiday, a visitor arriving from another planet would be forgiven if he/she/it missed this fact entirely. The current reality is that the Victorian-tradition fir tree, laden with ornaments and lights and attendant wrapped gifts underneath, has overtaken all other symbolic meanings for the day. Have you noticed as I have over the last five years, that most reporting on the Christmas holiday period revolves around how well the stores are doing with seasonal sales? And then there was the horror this year on Black Friday when crazed shoppers pushed their way into a Long Island Wal-Mart, leaving a store clerk dead in their wake…

The Library provides historical context for Christmas Past and Christmas Present, in its Digital Gallery holdings and related texts. The economic imperatives of Christmas unwrapped: consumerism, Christ, and culture are available for perusal, along with more conventional stories about the making of the modern Christmas. CATNYP has more than 353 entries for Christmas and its four related, narrower subject terms: Christmas service; Epiphany season; Jesus Christ Nativity; and Santa Claus. Nowadays, Santa Claus trumps everything else in the big media picture. Bring on those gifts, Santa, and boy they’d better be good value—reflecting all those deep cuts in prices consumers have been promised.

If you want to dust off your nostalgia, try looking at something like Sharing Christmas. Maybe the problem lies in the fact that our society tries too hard to push the concept that everything old can be new again when it comes to holiday celebrations. Haven’t we all seen the myriad newsstand magazines that revive the “make your home festive” articles? C’mon, who really has time for that? But out they come every year. And don’t get me started about the secular “holiday season versus Christmas” name-calling controversy. I think I’ll go put on my coat and walk up to Rockefeller Center to see the tree. After all, that poor 72-foot-tall fir is not to blame for what humans choose to mess up.

p.s. And, yes, I will feel much better after I see it, lights and all. Why, it might make me want to go shopping. Hmm… Saks is right across the street…

“Nobody told me there’d be days like these,
Strange days indeed,
Most peculiar, Mama!”
---- John Lennon Nobody Told Me (1984)

Can we find any lessons about the 1930s, a time of global economic depression that ended in a world war, to inform us about our own painfully reminiscent current situation? First of all, despite the woes of that earlier period, people were just as grounded in thinking about fashion as we are now. Many people point to the escapism of the big Hollywood movies of the 30s and their celebration of unending glamour. Even Coco Chanel led the way in the early years of the 30s by popularizing less expensive cotton as a fashion fabric, and slashing the prices on her own designs. Rayon and nylon came into their own in this decade.

While women seemed to be draped in more fabric than ever, short sleeves and backless dresses became commonplace. The luxury of fur was another popular preference at this time, undoubtedly helped by Hollywood’s movie stars. Subdued colors also became an established feature, something that seems appropriate for a decade described by one art historian as “the age of anxiety.” Secondly, the exaggerations of the 20s were gone now – flat-chested boyishness replaced by real bosoms and padded shoulders. Curves were back in fashion. And the retail clothing industry made great strides in providing consumers with vital accessories—fashionable odds and ends that helped make an outfit look different and last longer (just like this September’s Vogue issue suggested). If you want a good visual survey of this decade’s accomplishments, look no further than Maria Costantino’s picture book, Fashions of a Decade: the 1930s.

I predict that later next year, perhaps by the time of the fall fashion shows, fashion design will do some sort of “acting out” or turn to reactive innovations. Right now, the industry is playing it safe with basics and classics. The influence for a little change may not come from Hollywood films as it did in the 30s—except maybe from indie flicks—but from some other popular culture impetus. You heard it here first!

   
What did the modern woman gain from the development of feminine clothing in the Art Deco era? Two looks surface in particular. If the 1920s were the age of elegance with couture-inspired dress silhouettes, then the1930s brought a new pragmatism to fashion. Social conditions dictated that women exercise their personal power in both private and public spheres. The freedoms granted to women in those decades were still limited, however, despite the machinations of a Wallis Simpson or a Marlene Dietrich.
   

   
 
 The trappings of feminine power are most evident in the two extremes shown in the illustrations in this post. Those of us in future generations should be grateful that these looks evolved as they did. Contemporary fashion magazines and photo shoots most often go for the elegant couture look, but the sensible suit that took form in the 30s enabled women to get ahead in public venues, whether they were workplaces, colleges, or urban streets. The skirt suit would be naturally augmented by the trouser suit, making the widest variety of dress options for women by the 1970s.

No consideration of the effects of Art Deco style would be complete without a look at Jeanne Lanvin (1867-1946). She started out marrying and having a daughter, and then as a single mother, took to millinery and dressmaking to make her mark. She opened her couture house by selling mother and daughter outfits. Her “robes de style” developed in the 1910s, a waisted, full-skirted dress with panniers (a basket-like structure popular in the 18th century) on each hip. By the 1920s, she chose to devise chemise-style silhouettes typical of the flapper era.

This influential woman soon created a fashion empire, and her brand, The House of Lanvin, is Paris’s oldest continuing couture business. Lanvin gave her approval to the avant-garde revamping of France’s post-World War I art industry, encouraging the eclectic design that developed at this time. This eclecticism appeared in her own designs, particularly in surface details and ornament that could range from Aztec embroidery to Breton folk art. Lanvin created “dinner pyjamas” that allowed her clients to wear trousers for casual dress. You can read about the development of Lanvin blue in one of two biographies of the couturier’s life in the Art Department;one of the books also chronicles her house’s later development, and the work of such creative successors as Claude Montana.

A fashion leader of the Art Deco era was Edward, Prince of Wales (1894-1972), the son of King George V. A handsome, eligible bachelor, he was a major figure in the London social scene. His penchant for golfing, cocktails, and setting the latest fashion trend meant that eyes were always trained on his doings. Like many other Princes of Wales, he had a long tenure in that role. This gave him plenty of time to make subtle, but critical,
dress alterations. He disliked the heavy Victorian and Edwardian clothing regulations that governed his father and grandfather, choosing instead more comfortable shirts and trousers that permitted greater freedom of movement.

Edward introduced the midnight blue evening suit in the 1920s, understanding instinctively that blue looked better than black for tailoring details when one was being photographed by the press. By the early 1930s, he wore unlined, unstructured jackets, abandoned trouser braces for belts, and had his trousers made with cuffs. He also championed the transition from button to zipper flies. All in all, his fashion leadership presaged the greater social changes of the urban man.

His tenure as King of England lasted barely a year, when he abdicated in December 1936 to marry the woman he loved: American divorcee Wallis Simpson (view a video clip). The hullaballoo over his romance with Simpson sounds odd to our modern ears, so jaded as we are with moral lapses from even those highly placed. Whether you read the official biography of his life, or examine the complexities and contradictions of what he became as Duke of Windsor (he and his wife hobnobbed with Hitler, among other questionable figures), you’d have to agree that his effect on masculine fashion was a positive one.

“Carelessness in dressing is moral suicide.”
---Honore de Balzac (1799-1850)

“Carelessness in workplace dressing is economic suicide.”
---Paula A. Baxter, 2008

The most significant social trend with implications for fashion in the Art Deco era, however, was the steady increase of women in the workplace. I remember my grandmother telling me how she was one of the first women to work in the 1930s in her upstate New York hometown, taking a secretarial job at Elmira College. She often recounted (with more than a little personal glee) how she was the object of envy and amazement. I also recall her saying one time that dressing properly for the job was a bit of a challenge. She wasn’t a natural seamstress (like her granddaughter), so she made a bus trip or two down to the Big City.

Fortunately, the growing retail clothing industry was hard at work in the 20s and 30s, building demand for readymade garments. The economic reality, however, for a vast number of women was that they needed to make their own clothes. Sewing patterns came into their own in this era, as the illustration above for Butterick shows. And these patterns and their ads in magazines are physical evidence of the recognition that women were taking jobs and needed to dress accordingly. The idea of clothing selection motives has come in for some recent study. Remember the subject heading Fashion—Psychological aspects when doing research. Women in that era were also drawing their own conclusions about the sociology of their dress.

p.s. When I get back from D.C., I need to head over to The Museum at FIT for their exhibition which is just opening, entitled “Seduction.” Sounds good!

Well, Santa pulled into Herald Square at the conclusion of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. This is the popular culture signal for the traditional Christmas shopping season to begin. What will it be like this year, with all the media worries about shoppers keeping their wallets firmly closed?

In the meantime, one of the best developments in the academic study of clothing and dress is the consideration given to the “culture of fashion.” One study, with the same title, addresses changes in clothing through the distinguishing social factors of the time period. The author sees the early twentieth century as a critical period for the transformation of everyday clothing. I’ve often wondered, however, why men chose to solidify the unity of their appearance through suits, while women did nothing equivalent? But, then, maybe I have the whole thing wrong. The 20s and 30s were responsible for a particular “look” to develop. Dresses and skirts did modify to occupy certain basic shapes. Pants came into the picture a little later. The Culture of Fashion makes one point that helps me see things a little more clearly: if you look past the decade approach to style changes, there is a growing democratization in women’s dress between 1920 and 1990.

The haute couture element can also be factored in. In The Golden Age of Style, changing silhouettes, hemlines, and decorative details are still subordinate to the growing uniformity of the feminine look. Sometimes, it takes a very basic picture book, aimed at young adults, to bring us back to reality. Fashions of a Decade: the 1920s, worth a trek down to SIBL, balances a portrait of the decade that shows how technological trends, increased manufacturing, and even fads (like those “talkies” introduced in 1927), influenced daily dress. Another recent reference book, Historical Dictionary of the Fashion Industry, can also be found at SIBL.

p.s. I’m posting early this week since I’m going to a conference in Washington D.C. The title of this event is “Images of the American Indian, 1600-2000.” More about this in the new year…

While trawling through the Digital Gallery’s large section on Thanksgiving, I found this great color postcard that was printed around 1908 or 1908. First of all, I love the word pun. For many years, I used to work out at my local gym in a tee shirt that read “Don’t Worry, Be Hopi” that I’d bought from an Indian arts shop on Second Mesa.

November is Native American Heritage Month. So we should take a moment to recall all the important contributions that our indigenous peoples have made to our society. And if you have forgotten any of them, there’s Jack Weatherford’s classic Indian Givers to remind you of their great number. Frankly, Thanksgiving and Columbus Day are not Native Americans’ favorite holidays. The story of the Pilgrims and their friendly Indian hosts sitting down for a happy meal has been roundly debunked. Yet Native cultures regularly employ their own versions of thanks giving around harvests and other gatherings.

Inevitably, our popular culture has established an “ideal” for this holiday. The image of the grateful family, with a full complement of multi-generational members, gathered around a table loaded with traditional fixings (all that starch, all those calories) often represents an unattainable or unrealistic portrait of American life. Nowadays, the most we really hear about the holiday is a media report on all the bad traffic to expect. Or how some celebrity took time to serve food at a soup kitchen. One book published in the same year as this postcard shows how the holiday became established the way we know it. And a more recent publication brings us up to date with Thanksgiving: an American holiday, an American history.

The Hopis in the postcard would be bemused by all this. They live in a beautiful and harsh environment where they’ve mastered a form of dry irrigation that allows them to grow crops. They’d always be grateful for the bounty their hard labor produced. Perhaps it’s the Native concept of “thanksgiving” we should celebrate, and not the artificial construct of gobbling down a huge, enforced meal...

Where am I going with this recent riff on women attaining modernity in dress? I’d like to know what other women think about the long road to dress reform. The issue of fashion is ours to discuss, and there are still some ambiguities in where we are heading. Feminine pleasure in dresses is still strong, and rightfully so. Women deserve all the clothing options they desire. What matters, however, is that their choices are healthy ones. I make no secret of my disdain for stiletto heels. It doesn’t matter how “sexy” a woman looks in them—they still can seriously maim the foot and harm one’s posture.

What does emerge from investigation of the 20s and 30s is how women enjoyed the freedoms they now possessed: to wear shorter skirts, shed a corset, bob their hair, and don a realistic swimsuit. The pursuit of women’s rights in Europe and America played a key role in shaping dress reform. A solid academic study, Reforming women’s fashion, 1850-1920: politics, health and art, gives supporting evidence for these social changes.

What do scholars say about current dress reform? Fashion designers now employ novel ways of using corsets. Liberating ourselves from imposed fashions, like the constricting corsets and girdles of earlier decades means we can reinvestigate those items as new fashion statements. Irony has become part of our fashion birthright, I guess.

p.s. Hail to Ralph Lauren for bankrolling the conservation and restoration of the original flag that hung over Fort McHenry in 1812 and prompted the creation of our national anthem, "The Star-Spangled Banner." He did this to the tune of $13 million!

And then there was the idealization of woman at the hands of the artist. Women had some discretion over their choice of dress in earlier centuries, following fashion when they could. But masculine expectations would intervene from time to time, especially when artists got involved. Fashion as art became a means of turning a woman into yet another decorative object, as seen with the Pre-Raphaelites and the men of the Aesthetic Movement.

The perspective of scholarship allows one a look at the larger social context. Radu Stern’s Against fashion: clothing as art, 1850-1930, illuminates the couturier’s artistic impulse in dressmaking as a means of following the changing modern world. Voluptuous femininity was a comforting ideal until the Art Deco age. Perhaps the early modern couturiers understood that artful dressing—independent of the male artist, or in spite of him—could allow the woman in be in control. By the end of the twentieth century, fashion as art permitted women to grasp that control. Just look at the images in Artwear: fashion and anti-fashion to see the progress that was eventually made.

On the day-to-day level, we enjoy purchasing artfully-made clothing, garments that proclaim fashion as art, to make our own personal statements. I notice that holiday markets and major crafts fairs usually have booths with such garments. Yet we don’t really see this kind of clothing worn all the time by individuals, however. Is that because it would be just a little too much? What do you think?

“In olden days, a glimpse of stocking,
Was considered something quite shocking….”

Here’s evidence that sex was used to sell fashions back as early as 1915. In spending so much research time on the clothing of the Art Deco era, I did take notice of what was transpiring in the preceding decades. Voluminous garments were cut to suggest a very feminine shape. The Victorian and Edwardian fashion aesthetic favored the full figured, voluptuous woman, yet while her body was draped in layers of cloth, that innate eroticism was muted.
Yet ready to blaze forth at the right command of the canny couturier or dressmaker. The best study on the psychological aspect of women’s dress to date is still Valerie Steele’s Fashion and eroticism: ideals of feminine beauty from the Victorian era to the Jazz Age. To better understand the weight of historical repression that the modern woman had to shed, look in CATNYP under the subject heading Sex Symbolism.

Is it any wonder that today’s women prize their individual dress rights? After acquiring metal knees, I decided to make pants my preferred fashion choice. Thank heavens that the right to wear pants had ceased to be an issue long ago.

These hosiery ads take a slightly different approach. Here, the modish subject is still involved with a mischievous small animal, but now she is engaged in braving the elements. What does this say about the product being advertised? Yes, their stockings are reliable; they’ll hold up in the most difficult of conditions! Selling intimate apparel in early twentieth century America required practical social imperatives. In a time when stockings had to be moved from luxury to necessary goods, consumers needed to be convinced. 1921 is still a long way from the time of Victoria’s Secret.

But the story of women’s liberation could never have happened without the development of undergarments, including stockings, which allowed the wearer more physical freedom. The 1920s woman is the start of the march towards the feminine cigarette slogan coined in the 1970s: “you’ve come a long way, baby.” Fashion as a social force is the subject of an excellent study, An intimate affair: women, lingerie, and sexuality. And the turn away from the McCallum Company’s type of fashion merchandising to newer imperatives is best documented in Fashion brands: branding style from Armani to Zara.

My colleague Susan Waide put me onto the illustrations you see here and in my next post. They’re all advertising illustrations by M.C. Woodbury, executed between 1920 and 1922, for the McCallum Hosiery Company in Northhampton, Massachusetts. I love them for their period feel, and for what they say about fashion advertising in the U.S. at that time.

We’ve grown so used to lingerie ads that are filled with sexual angst, or at least that’s what I remember from fashion magazines since I was young, and still see today. What strikes me about these two ads is the sweetness portrayed in the imagery. A modish, obviously style-conscious young woman is featured, while one of her stockings is in peril from a precocious bird or kitten. A boudoir setting is implied, but the overall effect is one of whimsy. Such illustrations say a lot about the marketing outlook of advertising and manufacturing companies.

In this case, there’s a charm and an innocence that will eventually get lost in the process of product selling. The advertising staff for McCallum are counting on the feminine delight in a luxury such as a silk stocking. Their slogan appears as a caption, “You just know she wears them.” And so the process begins of linking desire with need.  read more »

It’s Election Day, and history will be made by this evening, once the West Coast has cast its last ballots. American Presidential elections are significant events, with repercussions into almost every aspect of our lives. There were few fashion points to be made with this one, two men slugging it out in suits. But the awesome factor is that one of the candidates is a black man. At one point, it looked like there might have been a woman presidential candidate, but when that collapsed, suddenly the other party came up with a female vice-presidential choice! Regardless of how you feel about these candidates, at least the ticket isn’t all white men as in the past.

No matter what, history will be made today: we either break the color barrier, or the age barrier, along with a glass ceiling. Whatever the outcome of this day, a message has been sent. More people can have dreams, who once figured there were no possibilities for them because of who they were. The old American adage, “you, too, can grow up to become president,” just might fit everyone in this country. Back in the 1960s, there were concerns over a Catholic president, and then one was elected. Later, questions arose if a divorced man could be fit for the office—and then one was elected.

What’s next? Will I live to see a black woman become President?

I grew up in a kinder and gentler world (and I’m not that old) where I remember roaming the streets of the various towns I lived in wearing my Halloween costume and ringing the doorbells of strangers for my “Trick or Treat.” I’ve got a particularly warm and fuzzy memory of being a fifth grader when we lived in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and being dropped off in a posh neighborhood so I could collect great swag from the nice houses there.

Boy, those days are gone! No sane parent would expose their child to the mercies of strangers in these times, and as a result, Halloween has turned into a series of safe, bland events where parties are given and candy collecting is tightly monitored. Instead, over the course of the last decade or so, Halloween has become a holiday that caters to adults more than kids. I think deprivation may lay behind this trend; at heart, we all want to be young again and go get goodies that make our teeth rot and give us sugar shock.

The Library is the place to learn about the historical and contemporary trends to the holiday. Whether it’s tracking the All Soul’s aspect of Halloween, or discerning a postmodern influence, publications abound from the encyclopedic to the pictorial. You can read about the origins of Greenwich Village’s famed event, or treat yourself to an academic survey of the holiday’s development over the centuries.

But, most of all, I want to know if others feel the nostalgia I do, and if they think that there’s something behind the adult-ification of Halloween? Since the old-time American door-to-door Trick or Treat ritual has been replaced by less satisfactory options, are holiday celebrations really that relevant? Or are we merely readjusting to a changing world, and jettisoning something that was never really that germane to our culture?

“I like fashion to go down into the street, but I can’t accept that it should originate there.”
-Gabrielle (Coco) Chanel (1883-1971)

The Chanel brand is one of the most famous of all couturier names. Reams have been written about why Coco Chanel’s designs are so classic and immortal. There’s more to this story, however, than simple tribute to an amazing talent. The truth is that Chanel herself achieved a larger-than-life standing exactly because of her life. The person behind the label captivated the public’s imagination, as seen in the recent Showtime dramatization of her life with, of all people, Shirley MacLaine, depicting the designer.

After a youth spent in an orphanage, the young Chanel worked as a dressmaker and then a café singer, where she got the nickname “Coco.” She became the mistress of a wealthy man who bred racehorses and ran with a fashionable set; he set Coco up with a millinery business. Another lover, who raced motorcycles, bankrolled her first dressmaking business in 1910. She was a success by 1912. Chanel bobbed her hair before it was the vogue and was rather shockingly known for speaking her mind. In 1919, when her designs suddenly took off world-wide, she reported “I woke up famous.” Her couture house blossomed, producing everything from masculine-styled casual togs, to the jersey suit, and her vaunted little black dress. She was also known as a tough boss who worked her seamstresses hard. She closed her business for the duration of World War II, scandalizing Paris by going off with her German officer lover. In later years, she never lost her saltiness.

She’s one of the most written about designers in our Library’s collection, with over 37 entries in CATNYP. Looking at the literature on her, I see that the most interesting works capitalize on her notoriety. A French author says it all in his book’s lengthy title: Chanel: her life, her world, and the woman behind the legend she herself created. To balance such titles out, there is the worthy exhibition on her couture mounted by the Metropolitan Museum’s Costume Institute in 2005. And her life has been the fodder for more than nonfiction. Our Performing Arts Library holds a typescript of Coco: a musical play. An almost 400 page novel was published in 1990, and given the current state of the industry, more are sure to follow.

In “A Rakish History of Men’s Wear” I tackled the issue of music as a key factor in the development of street fashion. Twentieth century casual sportswear took many cues from hip hop. If you walk the short round through “Art Deco Design: Rhythm and Verve,” you’ll find you don’t want to escape from the twelve-minute tape loop of music in the gallery.
Therein lies a genuine clue. The toe-tapping quality of 1920s syncopation filtered right into the realm of fashion. Jazz babies, flappers—their garments go with the beat of George Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Milton Ager, and Jimmy Johnson. There’s an irrepressible quality to the various dances of the period, whether the Black Bottom, Texas Tommy, or the Charleston. Even the musicals that many of these songs were derived from have expressive titles: “Girl Crazy,” “Runnin’ Wild,” and Lady, Be Good!” If you want an honest background to the role of popular music, here is one choice among many. One of the most revisionist studies available is a British history, From blues to rock.

Imagine my delight when I discovered a blog with ambitions as big as the music of the times. Octavine Illustration: Celebrating Art Deco, Travel, Music, Illustration, Handmade Craft & Calligraphy aspires to recreate images and ideas from the Art Deco style. Cara Buchalter deserves kudos for creating a living, active dreamspace.