Vintage Miscellany – June 27, 2010

It’s Sunday, so I’m hoping all my readers are enjoying a lovely summer afternoon, doing the things that make this season so wonderful.  You know, hiking and swimming and picnicking…  not sitting in from of a computer, unless it is hotter than heck where you are, in which case a nice cool computer station sounds pretty good.

On Sunday morning I like to catch up with the reading I didn’t have time for in the previous week.  This week has been especially bad, as I’m enrolled in two art classes, and for some unknown reason, decided to buy a new computer.  I’ll spare you the details except that now that the files have all been transferred, and the bugs of connecting a 5 year old camera and an 8 year old scanner and problems with IE7, I’m happy to say that I’m all up and running and very happy with the new setup.  Of course, now I’m wondering why I just did not buckle down and ditch the worst-computer-I’ve-ever-used sooner.

Any way, surfing is a breeze here now, and so I’ve got lots to pass along to people who might be interested in fashion history and such…

*   First, a big thank you to Stacie at Photography Colleges.  She included The Vintage Traveler in her list of the 50 Best Blogs for the Avid Antiquer.  I’m in the clothing and jewelry category.

*   There will be an auction this Friday at Cornette de Saint Cyr in  Paris.  There are some wonderful pieces being offered including couture from Jacques Fath, Schiaparelli, Dior and St. Laurent, and it also has a very early Chanel, from the early 1920s.  I know that it is possible that none of you will make it to Paris this week, but at least take a look at the online catalog.  Thanks to Jonathan at Kickshaw Productions for the link.

*   Fall will be here before you know it, so put this one on your calendar: Starting November 19, there will be an exhibition of the work of Cristóbal Balenciaga at the Queen Sofia Spanish Institute in NYC.  Thanks to Jody at Couture Allure for the alert.

*   There has been quite a bit of talk on the fashion history sites lately about exhibitions and the use of a real body to display historic and vintage clothing in a museum setting.  Start with the article on the FIDM blog, and then follow all the links to get several different perspectives.  I tried to post on the FIDM blog, but kept getting an error message, so I gave up.  My thoughts:

In a perfect world, of course the garments would be shown as they were intended to be used – on the human body.  But since that is not the case, then museums and exhibitors should take each case individually and base exhibition decisions on the nature of the clothing (I’m assuming this is how such decisions are already being made.)

I find that I prefer as few distractions as possible, and so I like the headless form.

And I love exhibits where the garment is seen in the round, from all angles.  To me, lining mannequins in a lifeless row is what contributes to the static nature of many exhibits.

Another thing that helps see the living nature of clothing is the inclusion of period film footage.  But that is not always available.

I don’t know, but couldn’t all the wonderful technological advances that the movies are using be employed?   I’m thinking of movies like Alice in Wonderland and Avatar, where the appearance of the actors was altered digitally.  Could the clothing not be digitalized in the same way?

*   Finally, here’s the unintentionally hilarious POV from the July issue of Vogue.

Okay, now back to summer: