Vintage Miscellany, May 12, 2013

I’m wishing all the mothers a lovely day.  That’s my mother, holding me.  Isn’t her dress beautiful?

And now for the news…

*   The DAR Museum in Washington, DC, has an interesting-looking exhibition this summer,  Fashioning the New Woman: 1890 – 1925.  Through August 31, 2013.

*   Take a fun video tour of the Pendleton Woolen Mills.

*    Here’s an optimistic video about the textile industry in North Carolina.  This filmmaker focuses on the many success stories.

*   Hear the story of Eleanor Lambert and the beginnings of fashion week from  WNYC’s Sara Fishko.

*   Sadly,  Ottavio Missoni, the co-founder of  Missoni has died at 92.  Next week I’ll be writing about the influence the company had on 1970s fashion.

*    The Scottish cashmere industry is troubled, but the news this winter that Chanel had acquired Barrie, the maker of Chanel sweaters, was very welcome.  Here’s an interesting account of a visit to the factory.

*   As the death toll in the factory collapse in Bangladesh passes the 1000 mark, it appears that action is being taken on quite a few fronts.   Several major companies have joined in a sustainability drive headed by Otis College of Art + Design, retailers are thinking more about transparency in the line of clothing supply, and people are starting to relate this tragedy to several closer to home.  Unfortunately, there are still those who feel they have the right to cheap clothing.  I hope that more people are starting to examine their own clothing consumption, and are making changes to ensure human rights and safety for all workers.

*  Chanel has just released a short film about the beginnings of the House of Chanel.  Entitled Once Upon a Time…, it was directed by Karl Lagerfeld.  All I can say is, Karl, don’t quit the day job.

*  The latest fashion reality show stars designer Betsey Johnson.  XOX Betsey Johnson  starts today on Style TV, 8 pm edt.

*   The Georgia Museum of Art in Athens, Georgia will be showing off their major acquisition of fashion, the 6000 piece collection of Ann Bonfoey Taylor.  The exhibition opens June 1, and closes September 14, 2013.   Proof that you do not have to go to New York or London to see fashion exhibitions.

*  Of course, one can’t deny that there are always several exhibitions of interest to fashion historians at any given time in New York City.  At present, the one getting all the attention is the Met’s Punk: Chaos to Couture.   Even before the opening of the show this past week, there was a growing controversy.  Malcolm McLaran’s widow has claimed that some of the few items from the 1970s are not authentic, and Vivienne Westwood feels she had been slighted when the Met did not take the retrospective that had been put on at the V&A.

But even at the press preview on Monday, curator Andrew Bolton was an apologist for the exhibition, explaining that the exhibition was not meant to be a history of punk fashion; it was a study of the influence punk has had on fashion since the mid 1970s.  For that reason there are no garments shown that were worn by Debbie Harry or Sid Vicious or Patti Smith, and the wigs are not the expected mohawks.  By some accounts, there are only seven actual punk garments in the exhibition.

That despite the fact that the Met’s own press release stated that “Original punk garments from the mid-1970s will be juxtaposed with recent, directional fashion to illustrate how haute couture and ready-to-wear have borrowed punk’s visual symbols…”

My interest in fashion exhibitions always leans toward the historical aspect.  I guess that is why for the life of me I can’t understand why the Met, with its glorious collection of historical fashion, continues to focus on what within the past ten years or so could be seen coming down the fashion runways, and could be examined in person at Bergdorf Goodman.  In fact, there are items in the show that are from at least one current collection, Burberry.

There was an excellent article in the New Yorker back in March, in which you get a good picture of the influence that Anna Wintour has over the decisions involving the exhibition.   Not the gala, the exhibition.  There is some part of me that hates that the person who is choosing the designs we see each month in Vogue, is also helping determine what we are seeing as fashion history and culture.

I’ll withhold any opinion on the exhibition itself until I see it in August, but the reviews are not very positive.  Suzy Menkes called it “Punk without the down and dirty” (except for the CBGB men’s room) and The Daily Beast speculated the the exhibition tends to show that the Costume Institute is just a “shill for the fashion industry.”

And while not a review of the exhibition, Robin Givhan’s piece, “Even if Punk Can’t Shock, Fashion Still Can,” is a very thoughtful examination of the shocking elements that exist within the fashion industry.

Fashion Lessons

Today would have been my mother’s 82nd birthday, and so I’ve had her on my mind.   The photo above, taken when she was about 23,  is a favorite of mine.  She was a young mother, and she’s sitting on the fringe of a conversation with other women in the family.  I think she looks especially charming.

It was Mama who first got me interested in fashion history.  It wasn’t because she was an exceptionally fashionable woman.  It was because she loved to share stories of her youth, and my favorites were those where she talked about how American teenagers in the 1940s dressed.

The teenager was a product of the 1930s and 1940s.  Across the country small local schools were combining to form the modern departmentalized high school.  For the first time in many places, there were large numbers of 13 through 18 year olds attending school and socializing together.  This naturally gave rise to a teen culture, and the name “teenager” was given to this new idea of teens as being not children, but not quite adults.  Films like the Andy Hardy series, and books like Nancy Drew and The Hardy Boys added to the idea, and the first fashion magazine for teen girls, Seventeen, began publication in 1944.

Mama often talked about being a “bobby-soxer”.  The girls would roll their jeans up to about mid shin, and pair them with folded down bobby socks and either loafers or saddle oxfords.  That’s her in her bobby-soxer garb, in 1945 at age fourteen.

She also talked about how the girls at her school liked to wear their cardigans buttoned up the back.  They thought it made them more mature looking and attractive, especially when worn with a little string of pearls and a straight skirt.

In her honor, I’m declaring this week to be “Share your Fashion Memories” week.  Feel free to share your memories in the comments, or find a kid who loves to hear about the past and inspire a budding fashion historian.

Looking at Christian Lacroix

The news last week that Christian Lacroix would be designing a fifteen piece collection for the designer-less house of Schiaparelli was met with guarded optimism by many fashion lovers.  For others, it seems a sacrilege to try and reinvent the name of a long-dead designer.

The practice of keeping a fashion business alive after the death of the namesake designer is not new.  A good example is Lanvin.  When Jeanne Lanvin died in 1946, her daughter kept the business going, and in 1950 hired Antonio del Castillo to be the designer.  He was replaced by Jules-Francois Crahay in 1962.  After he left in 1984, there was a revolving door on the designer’s office at Lanvin until 2002 when Elber Alvaz took over and made the label what it is today.  Alvaz’s work is usually highly praised, but it rarely has anything to do with the work of Jeanne Lanvin.

When Coco Chanel died in 1971, the House of Chanel was in trouble.  It was not until Karl Lagerfeld became the designer in 1983 that Chanel regained its place at the top of the fashion heap.  Unlike what happened at Lanvin, Lagerfeld is continually recycling and reusing the shapes, fabrics and motifs that were associated with Coco Chanel.   A modern Chanel suit really does not need those CC logo buttons as the product is usually so recognisable as “Chanel.”

I think that a complete resurrection of a label is a bit trickier.  This is not the first time the Schiaparelli name has been reinvented.  In 1977 there was a failed attempt to reopen the house, and there were a few licenses for lingerie and perfumes during that time.

After hearing the news, I got out an old favorite book, Christian Lacroix: The Diary of a Collection.  The book is actually a scrapbook that Lacroix kept while working on his Spring/Summer 1994 couture collection.  It is a wonderful look into how he developed his ideas, starting with a Directoire era print that was hanging in the lobby of his studio.  From there he began to see colors and shapes repeated in 1940s photos and garments, and he brought into the mix his own experience of how in the 1970s there was a nostalgia for the 1940s.  So it is quite fair, but highly simplified,  to say the collection was 1790s meets 1940s meets 1970s.

Lacroix assembled photos of what gave him an initial inspiration, along with fabric and lace swatches, and his sketches.  For many of the garments in the collection, there are Polaroids of the piece as it is developed on the model.  And at the end of the book there are runway pictures showing the finished products.

This photo of a Provencal bonnet with its insertion lace and pin-tucks and pleats inspired the dress sketched below it.

There’s the original sketch in the center of this page, with a more developed one to the left.  You can see the dress in progress on the left, and at the bottom are photos of some of the materials used.

And this is the dress as it appeared on the runway.  Would you have guessed that the inspiration was a bonnet?

Another starting place was the photo of an old Spanish man.  Lacroix was attracted to the mix of pattern, and to the right you can see the fabrics he chose that gave the feel of the photo.  The Polaroid shows one use of the fabric.

Lacroix’s sketch of the jacket includes the entire look, including thoughts about hair and shoes.

For the finished look he managed to use all the fabrics he had chosen.

I think it will be quite interesting to see how Lacroix reinterprets the work of Elsa Schiaparelli.  As you can see from the examples, his work will not be a literal translation of  Schiaparelli’s garments.  He told the New York Times that he was interested in the contrasts evident in Schiaparelli: “High and low, sophistication and naïveté, black and color, austerity contrasting with a fantasy, the luxury of high society and a sense of the people’s choice.”

I’m intrigued.

All photos from Christian Lacroix: The Diary of a Collection, Patrick Mauries, Simon & Schuster, 1996

…And Now It’s Time to Say Goodbye…

I grew up on Annette Funicello.  Even though I was only four years old when The Mickey Mouse Club was cancelled, it continued to be rerun every weekday afternoon as an after school half hour program.  My older brother and I rushed home from the bus stop so as not to miss a minute of the fun.

I’ve told this before, but my love of traveling can be traced back to a serial on the show that had Annette traveling to Hawaii on a ship.  I was enchanted by her stateroom and the small onboard swimming pool and the shuffleboard.  And I’ve wanted to travel ever since.

By the time we were watching The Mickey Mouse Club, Annette had grown up and was starring in the Beach Party movies.   I saw them all, and never one time wondered why Annette was so young on TV but so grown up in the movies.

In the early 60s, Annette was the girl other girls wanted to be, and the girl boys wanted to date.  She was, it now seems, the last of her particular type of role model: the old fashioned sweet and kind girl next door.  By 1966 she was replaced in our hearts by Twiggy and Cher.

It’s easy to look at Annette with nostalgia, and it would be easy to dismiss her as just a symbol of all that seemed to be good about the 1950s, when in reality things for women simply were not all that rosy.  But despite the expectations placed on her, Annette lived her life on her own terms.  She may have promised Walt Disney that she would not show her bellybutton in those beach movies, but there is photographic evidence that she didn’t quite comply.  What a rebel!

Photograph copyright Disney

1940s Graff Bathing Suit

I bought this bathing suit some years ago.  According to the seller it was once the property of actress June Allyson, but she had no concrete proof of that provenance, and despite looking at hundreds of photos of Allyson, I’ve never spotted it on her.  But no matter.  I’d have bought the suit regardless.

In the late 1930s swimsuit makers were finally addressing the problems associated with using wool as the fiber of swimsuits.  Men’s swimwear had long been made of wool knit, and in the late 1910s women began wearing knit suits as well.  There were lots of problems with these wool knit suits.  They fit when dry, but sagged and stretched when wet.  They were scratchy.  And they were prone to embarrassing holes.

In the mid 1930s the fit issues were addressed when Lastex was added to the wool.  Lastex is a specially produced yarn that has an elastic core.  It held the shape of the wool, even when wet.  Lastex was soon used with other fibers, and a rayon blend that looked like satin became popular for swimwear.

At the same time, manufacturers began to turn to woven cotton as a swimsuit material.  It was not as flexible as knit fabrics, but not everyone who puts on a bathing suit is wanting to swim.  Sometimes a wearer just wanted to look attractive at the beach or around the pool.

Yes, I’d say this suit was more for sunning than for swimming.  It is lined in a white cotton knit which would hug the body when in the water, and provide the necessary coverage under the pleated shorts.   It buttons up the back, and the straps can be tied, as I’ve shown, or they can be crossed and snapped at the waist.

Graff was one of the lesser known Hollywood sportswear brands.  They continued in business through the 1970s .  How about that cacti motif?

As pretty and colorful as this bathing suit is, it also holds interest as a record of the easy acceptance of racial and cultural stereotypes.  Spend any time looking at magazines, movies, or even textiles from the 1940s and you will see how prevalent all types of stereotyping were.

I think sometimes we look at the past with rose-colored glasses, that we romanticize the past, thinking it was really a simpler time.  And perhaps in some ways it was, but perhaps not so much so if you were of a racial minority or were a woman.

While it is still easy today to find examples of ads and media that perpetuate all kinds of stereotypes ( former VP Dick Cheney cracking hillbilly jokes, the objectification of women in music videos, the Chief Wahoo mascot) at least there are conversations that are addressing these issues.   In the 1940s, a famous actress could have worn this and not an eye would have been batted.  Today, I post photos of it, and know I can’t just ignore the images without talking about them.  I hope this shows some progress in human understanding.

Playing the Gossip Game

I bet you have seen the photo above.  Last week it was the viral image du jour for about four days after being posted on Facebook on a page called Women’s Rights News.   The “conversation” of name-calling and childishness that seems to make up most social media discussions ensued, with “real women” yelling “YES”, and thin women yelling, “And ain’t I a woman,” and nutritionists calmly asserting that fat mannequins would lead to acceptance of fat in our society.

Other than to say that I think mannequins should be 5’1″ , be a size 8 and be 58 years old just like me, I can’t add a lot to that conversation.   It has died down now anyway, but I’m sure it will resurface at a later date with the same old, same old.

When I was a kid there was a game we played at school called “Gossip”.  It took about 5 or 6 kids to play.  The first kid thought up a sentence and whispered it in the ear of the second kid who whispered what she heard in the ear of the third kid, and so on until it reached the end of the group, and the last kid said the sentence out loud.  By the time the sentence got to the last kid it was, of course, nothing like the original sentence, and we always laughed as though we’d not know that the end result would be so twisted.

And that brings me to what passes for news reporting today.

By the end of last week, whenever that photo popped up in my internet reading, I just skipped over that article or blog, thinking I’d read it all, but when it appeared on Worn Through on Thursday  I decided to read.   Arianna Funk presented a side of this photo that I had not noticed, and that is the origin of the photo.

When the person at Women’s Rights News posted the photo, she or he only said that it was from a store in Sweden.  After the photo picked up steam, it was reported by some news site that read “Sweden” and saw “H&M”.   It was then widely reported that the photo was recently taken in an H&M store, but then H&M denied that the mannequins were theirs.  Finally, four days later, a reader informed the Huffington Post that the photo was from another Swedish store, Åhléns.

So every news agency updated the story, but by then everyone had lost interest and had moved on the the next hot topic.   But no one had reported who actually took the photo, and when.  At this point I’ve got to stop and wonder why none of the reporting groups bothered to do an image search?  Google can magically read a photo and detect its presence on other sites.  I’m guessing that by the time anyone thought to search for it, the photo was so splattered across the web that the original source was deeply buried on page 537 of the search results.

But eventually ownership was claimed, by Swedish blogger  Rebecka Silvekroon who had taken the photo and posted it on her blog in 2010.  That’s right, this “news” item was originally posted two and a half years ago.  Silvekroon is now trying to reclaim her lost fifteen minutes of fame by making a website devoted to the issue of body size in mannequins.  I wish her well, because I really think the person who took the photo from Silvekroon’s site without a mention of her was not only stealing, but has also deprived internet readers of the entire story.

In our facebook/pinterest/tumblr culture, images become separated from their original context, thus losing much of their meaning.  In this case, the point could be made that larger mannequins have been used in Sweden for at least two and a half years, and it does not seem to have made Swedish women any fatter.  Or the question could have been asked, why are the mannequins accepted in Sweden  and not here in the US where women are heavier, on the average, than are Swedish women.  But instead of bringing up some fresh issues that are valid, we were inundated with the same skinny vs. fat debate.

Not that the debate is not valid, but why do we insist on the same old single-faceted arguments?

All this has taught me a lesson.  Had Silvekroon watermarked her photo, it would have been impossible to ignore that the image came from her site.  I’ve resisted watermarking my photos, first because I fear it would be distracting, and secondly because I don’t take my photos very seriously.  I’m not a photographer, and I know that the quality of what I present here is not going to win a prize of any sort.  But, the photos are mine, and it does irritate to see one of them on another site with no mention of The Vintage Traveler.

So after years of resisting, I’m seriously thinking about watermarking all my original photos.   Do any of you use a watermark program?  I’m looking for ideas.

Photo copyright Rebecka Silvekroon

When Spam Is Not

 

No, I’m not adding food as a topic here.   I’m going to say a few words about blog comment spam.

I’m not really bothered by spam because WordPress has a nice and efficient spam catcher.  It isolates all the fishy comments into a folder which the blogger can either ignore, or can open and read whenever a good laugh is needed.

The problem is that sometimes it flags legitimate posts as spam.  I try to check my spam folder at least once a week to see if any good comments were exiled there.

Whenever someone new to the blog posts a comment on The Vintage Traveler, I always check out that person’s site or blog if he or she leaves a link.   I also like to leave a comment or two.  Recently I’ve tried to leave comments on three or four different wordpress blogs, and for some reason I’ve been thought to be a spammer, and my comments simply vanish.  Not really; they are in that blog’s spam folder.

So please, if you have a wordpress blog, you need to be checking that spam folder.  You can approve the honest comments, and delete the spam.   Once a comment by a poster is approved, then the program lets that person continue to post.