Design

I’m slipping off and attending an exciting celebration on Thursday, so my next post will come on Friday. The National Museum of the American Indian in lower Manhattan will be holding an awards event, A Single Thread: Celebrating Native American Design and Style. Five native artists will be honored for their accomplishments, and most of them work in textiles and adornment. I know three of the artists personally, so this will be a fine time to let them know how much their contributions to the arts are appreciated.

Joe Baker, from the Delaware Nation, is one of those natives who has achieved astounding success in the fine arts, with his paintings receiving significant awards. Joyce Growing Thunder Fogarty (Assiniboine/Sioux) is a model for future generations of Plains artists working with beading and dressmaking. Dorothy Grant (Haida) has established her own brand as a purveyor of stylish clothing rendered with Northwest Coast designs. I bought a jacket, embellished with a totemic raven figure, from her in Vancouver years ago that I literally wore to pieces. Veronica Poblano is one of Zuni Pueblo’s most talented jewelers—a huge compliment since Zuni is known for having a large pool of talented lapidary workers and silversmiths. And Denise Wallace’s (Chugach-Aleut) exquisite jewelry-making incorporates the finest of ivory and fossilized bone work, while paying tribute to her cultural heritage.

The influence of ethnic design on clothing has grown greatly since the last quarter of the twentieth century. But I’m still surprised and irritated that Native American design doesn’t get more acknowledgement than it does. Does anyone have any ideas why this is so?

“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…

A lot of the stories in The Fashion Conspiracy describe the means whereby the various designers and companies establish their brand. Product branding is extremely important these days, as more and more consumers—especially young ones—pledge allegiance to specific brands. Sneakers are a famous example. Linking fashion and beauty products with famous faces is another time-honored device. If you want to get a good idea of the business process involved in all this, the SIBL Library has a great work: Packaging design: successful product branding from concept to shelf. While researching brands as a subject, I discovered to my surprise that this topic has not been greatly written about. I wonder why?

There is also something online that proves to be great fun. The Origins of Brands Blog makes a lot of connections with the same wryness that Nicholas Coleridge displayed in The Fashion Conspiracy. I’m bemused myself over my predilection for national brands. For example, I remain loyal to English perfume (Penhaligan) and French purses (Longchamps), and always, always wear only authentic American Indian-made jewelry.

Do any of you who might be reading this post have these kinds of loyalties? And do you think they’re an inherited or acquired trait?

Our visual world is made up of many bits and pieces. It is the fragments merging together to make up a whole that really make a difference in what we see. Taken alone, these individual parts tend to go unnoticed by most people. For example in architecture, it is the color of the stone, the decoration, the lettering on the sign above the door or the carved letters on a gravestone that help define the structure and create a feeling.

Lettering is a small part of the ornamentation of an architectural structure. It is generally the colossus of the structure itself that grabs the eye first, but if you look carefully and take in the entirety of a structure, a visual reward is there waiting and it is often in the letters of the words that adorn it.

Words are as much a part of our visual landscape as the buildings, streets and trees or the people we see every day. A vibrant visual world indeed. Many of us are inured to the most vulgar visual sights, as well as the sublime. Some of us don’t even notice the first spring flowers or the glowering flashing lights of a neon sign, advertising a dingy car service business. We may take a second glance but we easily move on, letting our eyes wonder aimlessly, registering nothing. But really there is much to admire in the letters of the words that plaster our visual landscape. It is the design of the letters that make words noticeable. Most us recognize what we like in structures all over the city without really even knowing why. Buildings are adorned with incised or raised letters above entryways, signs are brightly lit and splashes of paint in cryptic words jump off building walls on dimly lit streets. These visual displays are designed as a feast for our eyes and it is impressive and purposeful.

On Sept 2. at 6:30 PM, on the 6th floor, Mid-Manhattan will host a FREE slide lecture program From Gravestones to Graffiti: 250 Years of Lettering in New York, with guest speaker Paul Shaw. Paul Shaw is a designer and design historian. His specialty is lettering, whether written, drawn, carved or typographic. He teaches at Parsons School of Design and at the School of Visual Arts. He is also the author of Looking for Letters in New York: A Tale of Surprise and Dismay. Paul Shaw is the recipient of many prestigious grants and lectures widely. Mr. Shaw is an expert on the subject of letters and can speak eloquently on the design, complexity and craftsmanship of letters that are everywhere from subway signs, to grave markers, to graffiti. Please join us for a wonderful evening.

Books on letter design and graffiti can be found at the library in both the circulating and non-circulating catalogs. Also at the Picture Collection at the Mid-Manhattan Library, there are an abundance of images on letters/alphabets/graffiti that can be viewed.

More upcoming programs at Mid-Manhattan.

An article on Paul Shaw by New York Times' Streetscapes columnist Christopher Gray.

(left photo: Thomas, Ingrid. The Shell: A World of Decoration and Ornament. New York: Thames and Hudson, 2007, 170. right photo: Boyer, Marie-France. "The Princess' Folly." World of Interiors 28, no. 3 (Mar. 2008), 170-177.)

I recently had the opportunity to visit the Rambouillet estate, a 14th century castle located outside of Paris. The castle, which has been the official French presidential summer residence since the 19th century, is certainly beautiful, but the most fantastic building on the grounds is the tiny cottage in the English landscape garden. This little cottage was one of those follies so popular in the 18th century and had been built in 1779 for the princess of Lamballe (As a friend of Marie Antoinette, the princess lost her head during the French Revolution. Revolutionaries put the head of the princess on a stake, did her hair, and waved it in the jail cell window of Marie Antoinette to taunt her.)

Back to the cottage. Fairy tales were extremely popular in the 18th century, and those fashionable aristocrats loved to create their own. So in princess of Lamballe’s little rustic thatched-roof cottage, the surprise was a fantasy of shells, which encrusted the walls of entire room. The cottage was called the Chaumièr aux Coquillages, and as you can see in the top right photograph, there is even a polished mother-of pearl overmantel “mirror” framed by two ionic columns. The World of Interiors magazine did an in-depth feature on the little shell cottage with lovely photographs by Alexandre Bailhache.

Ingrid Thomas’ “The Shell: A World of Decoration and Ornament” elaborates on the use of the shell in decoration. She contextualizes the princess of Lamballe’s shell cottage with the fashion for grottoes, which began in the 16th century. The book is filled with photographs from an illustrated glossary of shells to shell jewelry and shells in art. It is definitely worth a look, but if you can’t make it to the Library to peruse this book, there are some lovely shell illustrations on the Digital Gallery. I’ve posted some of my favorites below. They would make lovely John Derian-style paperweights. Perhaps a hostess gift for that trip to the seashore?

In the recent New York Times feature, Shopping With…, designer Kelly Wearstler visited the Los Angeles bookstore, Potterton Books and revealed books that have inspired her. Many of Kelly’s inspiration books are in the collection of The New York Public Library including the article's pièce de résistance “A Speciman Book of Pattern Papers.” Although Kelly paid $3200 for the book, you can look at it for free at the Library. (Just keep in mind that you’ll have to look at it on site, but bring your camera—you can take as many pictures as you want.) If you can’t make it to the Library, there are some beautiful patterns on the Digital Gallery, including my new favorite, to the right. For while rare books may be expensive, inspiration is always free.

Here are some of the other books mentioned in the article:
(Unless otherwise noted, the books are at the Humanities Library)

"The Bathroom: A New Interior"
"Goodbye Picasso"
"The Hermès Shop Windows"
"Horst: Interiors" (at the Mid-Manhattan Library)
"The Shell: Five Hundred Million Years of Inspired Design" (at the Science Industry and Business Library)
"Ettore Sottsass : a critical biography"

One of Calvin Tompkins' Bachelors has shuffled off stage left. As the New York Times obituary makes clear, Rauschenberg's impact on the Visual and Performing Arts is pretty much incalculable.

I can't remember when I didn't know of Rauschenberg's work, having probably been exposed to a few pieces in my teens on a weekend getaway to the Art Institute of Chicago, but one of my favorite experiences that encompasses Rauschenberg and his cadre of New York pals was seeing the Merce Cunningham Dance Company perform at Lincoln Center in 1999. There in one place--literally and figuratively--were Marcel Duchamp, John Cage, David Tudor, Merce Cunningham, Jasper Johns, Morton Feldman, Bob Rauschenberg and, as something of a weird bonus Mikhail Baryshnikov, Gavin Bryars and Jim O'Rourke.

The Library for Performing Arts actually has a DVD of one night that I attended in addition to other videos and printed material relating to Rauschenberg's work with the MCDC as well as his experiments in Performance Art. In addition, the Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs has a plethora of material outlining Rauschenberg's entire career.

Goodbye 20th century!

Programming is great. Not only do I get to select the programs I present, I am then rewarded 10 fold by attending interesting and entertaining programs and I get paid for it! What could be better? About a year ago I happened to be reading Christopher Gray’s Streetscapes column in the Real Estate Section of the Sunday New York Times. It is the first column I read in the Sunday paper. Generally the focus of the Streetscapes column is a building. However on Sunday, April 29, 2007 Christopher Gray did something quite different. On that day the Streetscapes column was devoted to a man, Paul Shaw. Mr. Shaw is a designer and design historian, specializing in architectural lettering.

The subject of the article was completely new to me and I found it fascinating, exciting even. In the article Christopher Gray went on a walking tour with Paul Shaw whose focus was on letters: letters on buildings, in the subway and on monuments, letters which appear everywhere in the city. After reading the article I had experienced a visual revelation, allowing me to see beyond my pedestrian eyes. I found myself looking anew at buildings, monuments and signs that before I would glance over.

I knew Paul Shaw would present a wonderful program and decided to invite him to come speak at the library. I contacted Christopher Gray and inquired about Mr. Shaw. Christopher confirmed my thoughts about Paul Shaw and happily provided me with contact information. After receiving Mr. Shaw’s email address I wrote a lengthy email to him, introducing myself and what I do, followed by a polite request for him to come speak at the library. My wishes were granted with a response of “yes, I’d be happy to speak at the library!”

Months went by and then came the creation of the promotional materials for the program. There was further correspondence between Paul and I about content and title of the program. Initially there was some confusion between Paul and I about what the title should be for the program. Paul’s title was, how should I say, not the most exciting it should be to attract an audience. Paul’s title seemed geared to a specific audience, with perhaps more expertise in the field of typographic design, definitely not appropriate for a general audience. We went back and forth on this discussion for a few more emails till Paul understood what I had been politely trying to tell him. We want people to come to the program, not avoid it. “Oh” he said. “You want something more jazzy sounding.” “Yep, exactly!” I said. The next title fell right into the perfect range of jazzy/sexy. Then came the wrangling with the look of the flyer. Naturally Paul wanted to see everything and I was happy to oblige. He is a designer and I was told by my supervisors to expect it. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it can be problematic. We create an effective, nice looking flyer, with an already established template. It was initially created with lots of input from present and former employees. Hence we produce a solid looking flyer. Many of our patrons have told me how handsome the flyers look and I take this as a good sign. Paul made some comments and some changes and I tried to appease his requests. Finally we came to an agreement on an appropriate flyer that he could be happy with. Phew!

The night of the event we got our biggest crowd ever, 135 attended. And Paul Shaw did not disappoint. If ever there was a blockbuster program, this was it! Paul worked hard on his presentation, you could tell. He had us on the edge of our seats. He presented a program in three parts: letters in the subways, letters on apartment buildings and finally letters on department stores (Paul Shaw counts Lord & Taylor as a former client). Interesting stories, as well as a bit of design theory and history melded into a fascinating and visually exhilarating experience. It's all in a letter, I just never knew how much. Paul Shaw will be coming back in the fall to do another program. I hope you can attend!

Generally in the same subject area, I have included a review of Helvetica, Gary Hustwit’s 2007 documentary that uses the legendary typeface to weave a broader story about typography, graphic design and visual culture in the last half-century.

Francis Bacon had a studio showroom in South Kensington that was reproduced in a 1930 issue of The Studio. He was one of three designers profiled for “The 1930 Look in British Decoration,” and his interior is sparsely geometric and modern, not the lavish French Art Deco style, but much more Breuer and Bauhaus. I asked Mark Stevens for some clarification about the motives behind Bacon’s visual leanings.

PAB: Does it make sense to you that he artistically gravitated toward the more austere modernistic aspect of the period?

MS: I think his desire was to find what was most radical or “advanced” in the period. A pared-down style probably seemed more challenging than more lush style did. Pared-down furniture was also probably easier – and less expensive – to make.

PAB: What about those white rubber curtains?

MS: Texture and touch was important to him from the first. Later, he would become a master of the flesh, with a truly tactile sense of the body. He often wore a leather jacket.

PAB: Certainly the early 1930s were a time of economic struggle in Britain, and by 1932-3, Bacon was moving away from design and into painting. Do you think that once he became acclaimed as a painter, he found his old work in the decorative arts to be an embarrassment?

MS: English society was not particularly interested in advanced continental design, and Bacon’s business was probably not very successful. Most of his customers were friends. For example, the Australian novelist Patrick White bought a desk. But I think Bacon, in his twenties, simply became more and more interested in painting as he grew older. He was already painting as a teenager in the late 1920s.

PAB: In interview after interview when he was older, Bacon consistently belittled his youthful experience as a designer. Why did he do this?

MS: Many artists like to imagine that they spring fully-formed into the world. They do not enjoy acknowledging that they were ever confused or uncertain.

PAB: The 1920s was the age when modernity shone with such new promise. Do you think this affected Bacon, even though his time as a designer was short?

MS: I doubt Bacon was ever very optimistic about the promise of modernity or that he took seriously the utopian aspirations of modernist design. But he remained interested until the end of his life in creating an environment that represents more than just a fashionable interior and, instead, embodies a powerful worldview. Today he is celebrated for establishing what may be the most chaotic and messy space ever inhabited by a sane artist. In fact, after his death, the artist’s studio – litter and all -- was placed on public view in Dublin. I’m sure that Bacon, who had an appealing sense of humor, occasionally smiled at the contrast between his mature working space and the clean, honed clarity of his youth.

Bacon (1909-1992) is known for being a self-taught “force” in modern figurative painting. His subjects often provoke unease in viewers for their gritty, fleshy looks at the human figure laid bare psychologically. Therefore, I was greatly intrigued when I learned that Bacon could be counted among those fine artists (like Raoul Dufy) who had early stints as designers during the Art Deco years.

I turned to Cullman Center scholar Mark Stevens, who is currently at work, with Annalyn Swan, on a definitive Bacon biography, to give me some insight into what effect those years might have had on Bacon.

PAB: Bacon spent most of 1927 in Paris, where he was exposed to the height of Art Deco artistic energy. When he returned to London, he started up as a furniture and rug designer. Do you think his experiences in Paris led to this development?

MS: Before Bacon went to Paris, he spent time in radical Berlin. There he would have seen the most advanced furniture and rug design, and he also came to know elegant and raffish people interested in whatever was new. In Paris, he discovered Picasso.

PAB: One of my reference books up at the Art Desk says that Bacon considered his furniture designs to be “extremely bad copies of Le Corbusier.” Other books, however, state that his furniture and rug designs were actually quite good.

MS: I wouldn’t call them either extremely bad or extremely good. Remember, he was barely twenty years old. He had no formal schooling in art or design. When considered in that light, his work is remarkably precocious. Historically, however, it just amounts to an interesting example of period design. His pieces have flair, but are not especially original.

PAB: Bacon himself called his designs unoriginal and heavily influenced by contemporary French design. However, doesn’t his work seem to reflect a variety of influences from the period, including English and German modern trends?

MS: I’m not an expert in the design of that period – yet! -- but, yes, he seems to draw upon a variety of sources. Creating a pastiche is what most young artists do.

PAB: Did his early work with interiors help him with his later paintings?

MS: In his paintings, Bacon often sets his figures in an abstract geometric space that may well recall his immersion in the edgy designs of the twenties and thirties. The furniture in some paintings is also reminiscent of his early designs.

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.

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!

I was so intrigued by the Christian Louboutin exhibition at F.I.T., it led to me rummaging around our catalogue in pursuit of further information. One thing I discovered was an authoritative scholarly work on the shoe industry in Europe, with focus on fashion rivals France and England. Giorgio Riello’s A foot in the past: consumers, producers and footwear in the long eighteenth century offers significant information about the textile and production history of shoes and boots.

In the process of locating this book, however, I began to see how shoe history researchers could become easily confused with their findings. The problem lies in our Library of Congress Subject Headings. The obvious term to use is shoes. Yet there is another term that was adopted at a later date: footwear. To do a thorough search, it helps to search both terms. The tricky part is in the age difference between the terms; shoes will yield more citations because it’s older and been around longer, yet newer, and often more up-to-date works on the subject will only show up under the heading footwear.

Now, for the even more tricky fact! When one searches shoe industry and footwear industry, more citations show up under the newer footwear industry heading. Again, this is undoubtedly because so much more has been researched and written about this subject, as with all costume history, over the last ten years or so.

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…

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!!!!”

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.

I’m going on hiatus for a week. My destination is Phoenix, Arizona, now fully recovered from its Superbowl hospitality. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Heard Museum Indian Market and Guild Fair, always held on the first weekend in March. An important venue for the sale of American Indian art, like the famous Santa Fe Indian Market, this event draws general enthusiasts, tourists, and dedicated collectors like me. 650 of the best Indian artists in North America gather to sell an array of delectable arts and crafts.

American Indian art draws much appreciation and canny speculation. One of its joys is that you can find quality arts in a wide spectrum of price ranges, from extremely high end to surprisingly affordable. Indian art is also a good collectible investment. I have bracelets and inlay jewelry I bought nearly fifteen years ago that have quadrupled in market value. Pre-1950 Navajo and Pueblo bracelets are almost impossible to find in the antique marketplace, so today’s artists are making their own tributes to their elders’ work. I’m on the hunt for at least two of these contemporary creations, especially since prices are rising fast as demand grows. I’ll let you know later next week how my quest turns out…

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.

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.