Art Deco

“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.

“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!

“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.
 
 

Jacques Doucet, grandson of the founder of the House of Doucet in Paris, was a spirited champion of the new Art Deco style. Doucet was a remarkable art connoisseur and collector of eighteenth century and contemporary French arts. By the time he became active in the firm, around 1874, his encyclopedic knowledge of historic dress expressed itself in fashion references in couture garments. Although in the 1920s he was aging and his couture house merged with another lesser firm, and eventually closed, he never lost touch with foreseeing the needs of the French luxury goods market.

Doucet’s championing of the emerging Art Deco style was manifested in his support for artists working in that mode, like the bookbinder Pierre Legraine. Yet he remains better known as an exponent of the “opulent era.” In 1984, he finally received the weighty biography he deserved. As a teacher and mentor, however, he was unparalleled. Doucet also understood that France needed to rise above the devastation of the first World War. His patronage of the arts meant a great deal to struggling painters attempting to get back on their feet.

Tomorrow, a most intriguing exhibition opens at The Museum of the City of New York. Entitled “Paris/New York Design, Fashion, Culture 1925-1940,” is housed in the museum’s new pavilion gallery for temporary exhibitions. There are sure to be stunning objects on display, so plan like me to head up there very soon. I’ll just put on those armorial gladiator ankle boots and go…

Check out the new NYPL exhibition, Art Deco Design: Rhythm and Verve, on view at the Humanities and Social Sciences Library (5th Ave. and 42nd St.) until January 11, 2009.

Art Deco's Couturier Patrons, Part 1 »

The first World War was truly traumatic for France, and its great designers were among the first to attempt to rally the nation’s arts in the war’s aftermath. The luxury goods trade had all but disappeared during these years. One of these designers, Madeleine Vionnet (1876-1975), closed her couture house at the onset of the war in 1914 and went to Rome for the duration.

Upon her return, she pressed forward with the revolutionary, often avant-garde direction of her clothes-making. She had apprenticed with lingerie makers, spurring a life-long fascination with the interplay of body and fabric. She introduced the bias cut for whole garments, in which the fabric was cut diagonally across the grain to make a springy type of drape. Vionnet’s clothes were considered very moderne, and many of her clients were celebrities and theater folk. The Art Deco style owes much to her vivid interpretations of the body in motion, especial the control and manipulation of fabric for Cubist and other modernist effects.

Take a look, too, at her official website. Items like the cowl neck, halter top, and handkerchief dress owe their inspiration to this designer. Read about her in the classic study by Sophie Dalloz-Ramaux. Interestingly, Vionnet’s skill in sewing seams and making bias cuts created huge problems for copyists and pirates, always a problem for couturiers then and now.

p.s. As a break from daily tasks, I’ve been revisiting a grand site with a fine blog, www.dandyism.net. I did a blog interview with them a few years ago while “A Rakish History of Men’s Wear” was on exhibition.

Check out the new NYPL exhibition, Art Deco Design: Rhythm and Verve, on view at the Humanities and Social Sciences Library (5th Ave. and 42nd St.) until January 11, 2009.

“There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.”
-Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

What about the impact of the great modern art movements on fashions of the times? Perhaps the most influential of those movements was Cubism. Fortunately, a long-sighted costume historian addressed this topic in a small but influential exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum’s Costume Institute back in 1998. Richard Martin organized “Cubism and Fashion” to contrast the striking similarities between clothing silhouettes from 1908 to 1925 and the artistic revolutions of that period. Marshalling the formidable resources of the Costume Institute, his exhibition permits viewers to see the direct and subtle transformations in modern dress. High and low (popular) culture contributed to these changes, but the designers involved were powerfully impacted by the artistry of their times.

What is remarkable is how designers did not stay satisfied with the status quo, but were willing to take risks. Being avant-garde in those days meant finding a clientele that would be open to changes in apparel, often well before the mainstream could acknowledge that those changes were appropriately modern. My research on modernity in clothing shows that the avant-garde stance of the early twentieth century was very important in developing those freedoms we appreciate today. Brave, too, were those designers and clients who adopted other movements, such as Surrealism, and purchased garments that were wearable art.

If everything old is truly new again, this means we need to keep our eye on today’s avant-garde clothing designs for a hint to the future…

p.s. Want some good current exhibitions on fashion? Go over to The Museum at FIT and view “Arbiters of Style: Women at the Forefront of Fashion,” and the special exhibition “Gothic: Dark Glamour.” I’d love some reactions to the latter.

“Art Deco Design: Rhythm and Verve” is duly installed and opens this Friday, the 12th. It is always thrilling to see something that has been mentally visualized turn into physical reality. That’s one of the pleasures of being a curator. There are the hours of planning on paper, of restless paging through plate books, consulting reference tools, and then making decisions that can all too easily evaporate over time. Above all else, there is the necessity of distilling the exhibition’s premise into several clear, presentable ideas.

I remember when I started this blog that I promised how I’d take readers through some of the ideas taking shape for the exhibition. Dealing with Art Deco quickly made me realize how our own perceptions of modernity really began in the 1920s and 1930s. Then there were the ways in which the French conceived of Art Deco as a style, and how other countries, particularly the United States, made their own contributions to the style.

At long last, I’m no longer standing in my own inner world. When the exhibition opens, you, too, can gaze at the colorful images that parade within the Wachenheim Gallery, and hum along with the bouncy music of those decades. Please visit and get a feeling for what happened to modern design in that not-so-long-ago era.

And do not imagine that I’m not mindful of what a sad anniversary this day is. September 11, 2001 didn’t receive the emotional resolution that Pearl Harbor created, when the nation immediately girded itself for war. My teenaged father, like so many others, lied about his birth date in order to enlist, and spent four years in the South Pacific. Our war on terror has taken a different form altogether. Sometimes, in the morning, when I’m stopped on the corner at Fifth Avenue, waiting for the light to change so I can cross and go to the Library, I’ll screw my eyes shut and look south, opening them in the hopes of getting a glimpse of the Twin Towers. Inevitably, even after seven years, what I see when I open my eyes is the terrible yellow dust of that week, and a void that can never be filled…

The New York Public Library usually offers curatorial and subject-related lectures about its exhibitions. “Art Deco Design: Rhythm and Verve” has a series of three talks on offer. All of these will be held in the Main Library’s South Court Classrooms from 12:30 – 1:30 p.m. on the following days:

Art Deco Design: Rhythm and Verve – September 16 and October 23

Art Deco New York – September 23 and October 30 (I’m doing this with colleague Vinny Rutigliano of Art & Architecture; he teaches the popular class on Researching A New York City Building)

Fashions of the Art Deco Era – October 7 and November 6

And this fall’s Researching Costume and Fashion History classes will be held from 12:30-1:30 p.m. in the South Court Classrooms on September 26 and October 31 (Halloween!).

I believe sincerely in the principle of educational entertainment, so come attend one or more of these events. We’ll have a good time!

And what about New York Fashion Week so far? Well, I’m glad that the designers were listening to us media critics. There is a welcome range of diversity in the women models this year. I did notice, however, that the trend toward bone thin male models is still in full throttle. Of course, the men’s wear on show has slim lines and appears more tight-fitting, same as last year. Colors look good, but nothing has wowed me yet. I’m thinking hemlines look shorter than I expected for a recessionary time, but let’s see what actually hits the stores in the next month or two. Check it out for yourself, and we’ll compare notes next week.

As we get into the twentieth century, events reveal themselves that show just how important a role blacks begin to play in popular culture and the arts. Josephine Baker and American jazz musicians wowed 1920s Paris, and Europeans enthusiastically swayed to the beat from across the Atlantic. From zoot suits to hip hop, we owe black musicians, entertainers, and artists a debt for their contributions to contemporary cool.

Fortunately, scholarship since the 1980s has been at work to rectify the omissions of the first major publications on Art Deco. Just as we’ve learned how African tribal art animated the works of the early Modernist painters and sculptors, so do we now get more information on the people who helped make it the Jazz Age. In 2006, the one-hundredth anniversary of her birth, an exhibition, Josephine Baker: image and icon, paid homage to her legendary career.

The Library is home to the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers. Every year, a new group comes in with fascinating projects, and work extensively with the Research Library’s collections. This year, we were privileged to have well-known art critic and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Mark Stevens as a fellow. Mark, who has written about Willem De Kooning, is working on a biography of the famous twentieth century English painter Francis Bacon.

During my research into the Art Deco years, I ran across the fact that Bacon was a furniture and rug designer from 1929 to 1933, and had been influenced by travel to Berlin (1926) and Paris (1927). He lived and breathed the artistic atmosphere of that fascinating era, only to break off his design work and turn to figurative oil painting fulltime. Knowing that Mark has been working away downstairs, I couldn’t resist the opportunity to question him about Bacon’s early years. The next several posts, on April 29 and May 1, brief interviews with Mark Stevens, will recount what I learned from him.

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.

The archetype of the brash young Flapper woman hovers around our consciousnesses. Some of us remember a delightfully out-of-place Julie Andrews in the fluffy film, Thoroughly Modern Millie. Our post-1970s feminism doesn’t allow us to take in the indignation that the flapper of the 1920s provoked. She smoked cigarettes, drank whisky, drove cars, and most unnerving of all – wore short skirts! Yet even that last fact was less shocking than it sounds. 1920s hemlines went up and down, staying mostly around the mid calf. They reached their highest point in 1926, and that was just below the knee.

A boyish figure worked best for the flapper style. Bobbed hair, dropped waistlines that rested on the hips, strapped and chunky heels, a string of pearls – you were in full mode. The Art Deco makers of figurines took up this body type with a vengeance. Many a slim Diana and Atalanta, straining for the race, can be found poised in ceramic and bronze. My grandfather Louis, who worked for the Thomas Edison Company, had one of these lithe figurines on his living room cocktail table, She wore a grass skirt and a string of pearls that failed to successfully cover her petite bosom. I didn’t realize until I was much older that the model for this outré (to a little girl) design was Josephine Baker.

F. Scott Fitzgerald provides the best portrait of the woman behind the flapper. His short stories, Flappers and Philosophers, tell us much about the sensitivities of men and women in the 1920s and 30s.

As a decorative style, Art Deco has its masculine and feminine elements. Yet the style doesn't so much embrace womanly attributes as shows off women as subject matter. The 1920s were a decade that allowed women to enjoy a new kind of physical and social freedom after the rigors of the first world war. Even the colors used for Art Deco design have a new freedom in their tints.

Part of the visual appeal of Art Deco design at this time is in the use of pochoir, or color stencil printing. Have a look in the Library's Digital Gallery at the illustrations of Jean Saude, done for his book, Traite d'enluminure d'art au pochoir. Women were entering a period when their gender could reap the benefits of modernity. Consider the fact that two of the most fascinating women of 1920s pop culture were Josephine Baker and Clara Bow!

Over the next five months, I will be working on the storyline (case labels and object labels) for the Art Deco Design: Rhythm and Verve exhibition here at the 42nd Street Library's Wachenheim Gallery. The exhibition will run from September 8, 2008, through January 9, 2009. While the items on display are not numerous, 40 images from the Art Division's collection, one fine book binding from the Spencer Collection, and an original cartoon from Prints,they are highly expressive of the energy that permeates Art Deco as a decorative style. In pursuing the premise that Art Deco is a visually moving aspect of Modernism, I've begun to make connections with dress and other design of the period. Significant innovations in men's and women's clothing, undergarments, shoes and related adornment occured during the 1920s and 1930s.

Using images from the Library's collections, I'll start tracking some of the ideas and inspirations for fashion change that happened in those fast-moving decades. I think it will be eye-opening for many...
The design by Madeleine Vionnet below is typical. She was one of Art Deco's first patrons, along with other haute couture designers.

Speaking of eye-opening, I was searching AOL this weekend and discovered another piece of evidence that everything old is new again. If you look for the term Padded Butt Boxer Brief online, available also on eBAY, you'll find a male enhancement corsetry item that was originally used back in the 18th and 19th century by men who wanted to fill their skintight breeches better.