Currently Listening to: Haptic and Hue

A report came out several weeks ago about how the pandemic saved podcasting. It seems as if podcast growth had slowed until people with more time to listen and more people with time to record, discovered the medium.

I love the idea of the podcast, but the sad truth is that so many of the ones I’ve tried to listen to just don’t work (at least for me) for various reasons. Some times the production quality is so poor that it’s impossible to hear. One podcast I’ve followed for years has shifted focus from fashion history to modern fashion issues. And another is hard to follow because the hosts spend so much time laughing and I feel like I’ve been left out of the joke.

Maybe that’s why I’m so happy to have discovered Haptic and Hue. The podcaster is Jo Andrews, who is also a handweaver. But the topics go far beyond weaving. Jo covers textiles of all types. And I’m really impressed with the professional nature of the podcast. Jo manages to be conversational without being silly, serious without being stuffy.

You can listen on any podcasting app, or if that’s not your thing, all the episodes are on Jo’s website. There are photos that illustrate each episode, and best of all, a written transcript. That’s great because some of Jo’s guests are French and their English is sometimes hard to follow.

While Haptic and Hue has a very polished, professional feel, I don’t think that’s entirely necessary in order for a podcast to be effective. The best example is Bande à Part, which is a weekly telephone conversation between friends Rebecca Arnold and Beatrice Behlen. Rebecca teaches fashion at The Courtauld, and Beatrice is fashion curator at the Museum of London. Their conversations run the whole range of fashion and arts topics. They are always fun.

Currently Viewing and Reading – Halston

Netflix has a new bio-pic on the life of Halston, and I watched it so you don’t have to. Actually, you might want to watch it anyway, just make sure your expectations are appropriate. Let me explain.

Anyone who has ever watched a movie or program “based on” the life of a historical figure already knows that the truth is not the first matter of consideration. Probably the nuttiest example I can think of is the series of mini-films Karl Lagerfeld made on the life of Coco Chanel. These were, of course, long-play commercials meant to bolster the Chanel myth. The scenes were highly contrived.

In the same manner, I found Halston to be contrived, especially the first episode. We get a short look at Roy Halston Frowick’s miserable childhood, in which the Iowa farmboy is inspired by a handful of chicken feathers to make his mother a hat to soothe her feelings after a violent confrontation with his father. This sets the stage for inspiration after inspiration, all highly contrived, in a Forrest Gump sort of way.

Raindrops on a ruined suede coat lead to Halston’s adoption of Utlrasuede (which the scrip insinuates Halston invented. Not so). A chance encounter with a mirror post-shower leads to Halston’s signature sweptback hair style. The inspirations are never-ending. Liza Minelli even tells Halston at one point that inspiration is going to find him. And so it does, and does, and does.

One advantage that bio-pics often have over documentaries is the ability to make the subject more human and relatable. But as Ed Austin, Halston’s longtime boyfriend said, after years of being with Halston he didn’t know him. The same can be said for the viewers of this mini-series. Three hours later, and I had no sense of who Halston actually was, beyond a lot of drugs and sex and temper tantrums. I found Ewan MacGregor’s portrayal of Halston to be unsympathetic, and that’s a shame. Several years ago I attended a talk by his niece Leslie Frowick who showed him to be a caring and thoughtful uncle. One dimensional characters always look shallow.

So I did what any inquiring mind does. I reread a book, in this case the book on which the program was based, Simply Halston by Steven Gaines. Gaines had the advantage of writing his book soon after Halston’s death in 1990 so he was able to interview most of the major players in Halston’s life. He had actually met Halston, and had written a book on Studio 54.

Simply Halston is a sad story of a man who had everything he ever wanted, and yet had so little that made him happy. Heavy drug use along with unprotected sex in the time of HIV, combined with poor business decisions destroyed his talent, his ambition, his business, and ultimately, his life.

So why would anyone want to see this program? Watch it for the clothes and Elsa Peretti’s jewelry, both of which are glorious. Some of the garments in the show are vintage Halston, while others are careful reproductions. It’s a Seventies fashion fest!

For Your Viewing Pleasure:

There’s at least another month of cold weather ahead in the Northern Hemisphere, and if you are like me, you are getting a bit (or a lot) antsy. I’m here to help with a few diversions in the form of fashion and textile themed lectures and presentations. It’s amazing how many museums, organizations, historical societies, and just interesting people have stepped up with online content during the pandemic.

I took the photo of the sampler above three years ago at MESDA – Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts. I was delighted to see an analysis of the work on the Decorative Arts Trust Youtube channel. And check out the other videos from the Decorative Arts Trust. I’m working my way through them, and all I’ve viewed so far have been excellent.

A site that was new to me is American Ancestors by the New England Historic Genealogical Society. I was alerted to a live program called Dress Codes, which is about laws that have determined how people have dressed. The presenter,  Richard Thompson Ford, has written a book on the topic and he has been a guest of several institutions and their programing. There are several other programs that sound interesting, including one on samplers and one on collecting.

Most of the videos on Kent State University Museum’s Youtube are short teasers of their past exhibitions. But there’s an indepth look at their current show, Stitched: Regional Dress Across Europe.

The National Arts Club has so much great content that it’s hard to pick one to highlight. But not to be missed is an interview with Mary Wilson of the Supremes about the group’s stage costumes. So poignant since Mary died soon after the interview.

And if you need even more, check out the Museum at FIT, the Costume Society of America, and FIDM, especially their collections conversations.

My last recommendation is a movie on Netflix, The Dig. Watch the trailer.

Feel free to add your own list of diversions.

Currently (Not) Viewing – #Girlboss

I watched part of #Girlboss on Netflix so you wouldn’t have to.  Yes, that does make me a martyr to the cause.

This thirteen episode series on Netflix is more about the vintage clothing industry than it is about old clothes.  In particular, it addresses the big changes that occurred in the vintage market starting around 2005. It is the story of one vintage seller, Sophia Amoruso, the founder of Nasty Gal Vintage, who turned her ebay store into a major e-commerce site selling trendy new ready-to-wear. The story is a mix of fiction and the truth as Amoruso wrote it in her 2015 book, #Girlboss.

I have not read #Girlboss, and I only started watching the series after reading a discussion of the series in a facebook group of vintage clothing sellers. It seemed as if Amoruso was telling her version of why she got kicked off ebay in 2007, and it did not jibe with my own remembrance of the events.

This is not the first bad review #Girlboss has received.  Many of them focus on the main character, a fictionalized version of Amoruso, and her complete depiction as a “garbage person”.  She steals, she lies, she takes advantage of her few friends. She has no redeeming qualities at all.  But in spite of her complete lack of character, I found myself not even caring. Is it because we as a society have become so used to narcissistic, despicable people who are only interested in what benefits them? Something to think about.

So I found myself skipping several episodes.  I was, after all, only in it for the vintage. So Sophia floundered around, looking for direction when she sold a few things on ebay. She quickly realized there was a buck or two to be made, so she started studying the sellers who were the most successful.

This came at a time when eBay was changing rapidly. I first started using eBay to buy vintage around 1998.  For several years I could come home from work, sit with a cup of coffee, and go through all the new vintage clothing listings in about thirty minutes.  By 2006, when this story starts, that was no longer possible.  The category had grown, sub-categories were put in place, and eBay started community chat boards, including one for vintage clothing.

Until around 2005, most vintage sellers were were experienced dealers who had been in the business for years.  Many owned brick and mortar stores. Prices were good for both buyer and seller.  And most buyers seem to have been interested just in the wearing or collecting of vintage clothing.  Then, some very smart young women realized that by selling old clothes as fashion, they could make a lot of money. Styling and tall, thin models replaced hanging mannequins and clothes spread out on the floor for photos.  Overnight the game had totally changed.

Sophia found she was very good at this game, which often involved taking thrift store finds, many of them from the late 1970s and the 1980s, and cutting them up to make them more in tune with the styles of 2006.  By this time, the cutting up of old clothing had come to the attention of other sellers, and it was being discussed freely on the Ebay Vintage Clothing discussion board. Most of the comments were critical, though there were defenders of the practice.  I was of the opinion, which I stated several times on the board, that cutting up 1970s JC Penney polyester dresses designed for someone’s grandma was not a big deal, but that from what I could tell, some of the scissors-happy sellers seemed to have no experience with clothing, and so the possibility of valuable or historically important pieces getting ruined was high.

Amazingly, there is quite a bit in #Girlboss about this criticism.  In one episode, another seller, one of the “protectors of vintage” traveled to Sophia’s apartment to shame her for the practice of destroying old clothes. By the end of the episode, Sophia and the other seller seemed to have bonded, and the other woman gives Sophia a treasured dress,which turns up on Nasty Gal Vintage, chopped up beyond recognition.

I’m pretty sure that never happened, and was just written for the Netflix series. I think this episode is a metaphor for the online criticism Sophia was getting for her slash and trash selling tactics. But it does continue with the on-going “feud” between Sophia and her eBay haters. Probably the most imaginative thing in the entire series is the episode shown above, showing the Vintage Fashion Forum as people in a dark space, talking around a circle as though they were speaking through their computers, bashing NastyGal for cutting up the vintage. Occasionally NastyGal shows up, along with her friend, who is acting as a white knight.

The portrayal of the other vintage sellers is pretty funny, and I’m thinking that is probably how the young and smug Sophia really viewed the people on the forum. Or rather, how she wanted them to be. All are seriously up-tight, dowdy, and socially inept.

But they get their revenge by getting Sophia kicked off eBay for having external links to her MySpace (2006!) page in her item listings. From what I’ve read, this is also what Amoruso tells in her book, but although this was against the rules, I really do not think it was enough to get a person kicked off the site, especially one who was making so much money for eBay.

The was another, and much more serious discussion about NastyGal and some of the other newer sellers – that of shill bidding.  Before Ebay tightened up its rules and procedures, one could have any number of bidding ids.  And bids were shown by bidder on the sales page.  Some people on the Ebay Vintage board were actively following all the auctions of those suspected of bidding on their own auctions.

I do not have personal knowledge of why she was kicked off, but there were lots of complaints, and people were investigating the alleged shilling and reporting it to ebay. But while she bragged about the petty shoplifting in her book and in the program, shilling is a serious matter, which may be why she glossed over that part of the story. She did deny that she ever shilled on eBay in a 2014 interview.

It looked as if Amoruso had the last laugh though.  She went on to start NastyGal.com and she made a fortune. In 2014 Forbes estimated her personal worth as $280 million. But it wasn’t to last.  In 2015 the company began to implode, and at the end of 2016, Nasty Gal filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The company was purchased at a discount, and Amoruso was out.  She’s now started a new company, Girlboss, which, according to the site is “connecting smart women through content, community, and experiences.”

Photos copyright Netflix.

Currently Viewing: The First Monday in May

Theatrical one-sheet for THE FIRST MONDAY IN MAY, a Magnolia Pictures release. Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.

Something that always strikes me as ironic about fashion movies is that we are always advised that fashion is art, while at the same time we are reminded that fashion is commerce.   Not that the two cannot peacefully co-exist, as we are also told in The First Monday in May.  That’s just the first of many fashion truisms that the viewer is exposed to in this 2016 documentary on the annual Met Gala which is a fund-raiser for the Costume Institute.

I had not been anxious to watch this one, as my interest in galas and celebrities is so low, but throw in the Costume Institute and the availability of the film on Netflix and I decided it was worth a try.  As it turns out, I’ve watched it twice, not because it is so good, but because of what it reveals about the relationship between Vogue and Vogue editor Anna Wintour, and the Costume Institute and curator Andrew Bolton.

First of all, I’m glad that Wintour has been so effective at raising money for the Costume Institute.  In 2015 alone, $12.5 million was raised.  It’s obvious that she is an excellent manager, and her brusqueness seems to me to be a characteristic of a person who just wants to get things done.  In the film there was a not so sly segue from Anna May Wong as the Dragon Lady, to Wintour.  Can’t we just get past the fact that here is a woman who has a lot to do and who can’t spend her time pussyfooting around feelings?

Apparently not, and it seems a bit odd seeing how The First Monday in May was co-produced by the director of special events at Vogue, Sylvana Ward Durrett.  It seems very unlikely that a woman who worked so closely with Wintour would portray her in any light other than the one Wintour wanted.  In fact, knowing of Durrett’s involvement in the film puts a whole other light on it.  She also is a major player in the movie, as the planner of the gala.

A scene from THE FIRST MONDAY IN MAY, a Magnolia Pictures release. Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.

But what I found to be most interesting was how much input Wintour had on the exhibition itself.  In the photo above, (taken from the press kit on The First Monday in May website) you see Wintour looking over the projected exhibition.  Months before the opening, Bolton is seen showing Wintour a montage of photos of the clothing that was to be included in the show.  She is shown giving approval (or not) at every step of the process.

As Wintour herself explained it, “Andrew is a real visionary and our job is to help him execute his creative genius.”   She did not make clear exactly who she meant went using the pronoun “our.”

I’ve always suspected that Wintour has a lot of influence in the Costume Institute shows.  It’s always been a bit puzzling as why, when the Institute has one of the best collections of historical clothing in the world, that so many of the more recent shows rely on clothing from the 21st century, much of which is borrowed from the design houses.  Putting so much focus on recent clothing would certainly help boost the current fashion industry, something that is also the mission of Vogue.

The exhibition in 2015 was China Through the Looking Glass, about how designers have used the historical view of China as an influence.  Heavily represented were Alexander McQueen, John Galliano for Dior, Karl Lagerfeld for Chanel, and John Paul Gaultier.  Less represented were historical artifacts from the Met’s own collection, though I did see a 1920s Lanvin and a group of Poiret dresses, a 1920s embroidered shawl, and two dresses from the 1950s.  I’m sure there were more (I did not see this show in person) but considering there were around 150 garments in the show, the few I spotted are definitely in the minority.

It just seems like so much of the permanent holdings of the Costume Institute never sees the light of day.  Considering how Chinese culture has been an influence on Western fashion for centuries, I feel quite certain in saying that this exhibition could have pulled almost entirely from the Met’s own collection.  But then without all the current designer’s work being represented in the exhibition, how could one get them to the gala, and especially how could they get them to pay for one of the sponsor tables?

It all seems so cozy, with the designers and their muses touring the exhibition, looking for their own work.

The film shows the large banquet, where designers, sponsors and celebrities seem to just fall into place.  That’s because the seating was not just carefully arranged, but agonized over.  For weeks the seating chart was arranged and rearranged.  To me, this was the most cringe-inducing part of the entire movie, with Durrett explaining to Wintour, “These are people I’m hoping will just go away,” and Wintour referring to seating “…somebody better here…”  In the end, actress Chloe Sevigny was a big loser, being seated at a “bad table.”  The look on her face when she realized she had been exiled to Siberia was made even sadder when she said, “I’m going to be all by my lonesome just like in high school.”

While so much of the movie is about the planning of the gala, quite a bit of time is also devoted to Andrew Bolton and his process of working through the plan of the exhibition.  This might have been interesting if not for the constant hand wringing over whether “others” at the museum considered fashion to be art.  By others, I guessing Bolton was primarily referring to the curator of East Asian art, who was supposedly in a collaboration with the Costume Institute for this exhibition.  This curator repeatedly voiced his concerns about how the objects in his department were going to be used, and each conversation seemingly ended with Bolton yet again whining about how fashion was so misunderstood in the Met.

It occurred to me that it might not be a good idea to go on so on camera about colleagues not respecting you, especially with words like, “Some people have a very 19th century idea of what art is.”  And even at the very end, when the installation was complete and was looking over the top marvelous, the Asian art curator congratulated Bolton, but Andrew very ungraciously dismissed the other curator and turned to his partner for a hug.

Frankly, I’m sick to death of the “Is fashion art?” question.  As long as people are lining the halls of the museum to see fashion, who cares.

I could actually go on longer with this, as I’ve not even touched on how questions of appropriation and culture were handled, but I’m over my word limit.  I suggest you watch The First Monday in May, not as a lover of fashion history, but with the goal of looking for the great bits.  I loved seeing inside the fashion conservation department.  There is an interesting interview with John Galliano.  But best of all is when the late Bill Cunningham congratulates Bolton, but makes the faux pas of bringing up the ghost of Diana Vreeland.  You just can’t make this stuff up.

Currently Viewing: Dior and I

Photo copyright Dogwolf

Dior and I was a documentary film released earlier this year, but which followed the first two months of  designer Raf Simons’ tenure as artistic director at the House of Dior in 2012.  This was after the embarrassing dismissal of John Galliano for conduct unbecoming a couturier the previous year, and the fashion world was anxious to see if Simons could restore order to the prestigious house.

Simons was an interesting choice to head Dior.  He is Belgian, and barely spoke French, at the time at least.  He had been designer at Jil Sander,  a company that was about as far in the other direction from the extravagant designs of Galliano as one could get.  He had never worked in couture, and at the time he was hired there were only eight weeks before the next couture show.

Intertwined with the story of how Simons worked at Dior was the ghost of Christian Dior, the man.  The film used quite a bit of archival material to show the heritage that Simons was expected to draw from in his work for the company.   And the words of Christian Dior, drawn from his 1957 book,  Christian Dior and I, added depth to the story.   I especially liked the scenes that showed Simons and assistants studying old sketchbooks and materials from when Dior was actually headed by Christian Dior.

It is interesting how the book came into play in the film, and especially since Simons announced that he had tried to read the book but gave it up after fifteen pages.  He found the approach that Christian Dior had used, in talking about himself and the firm Christian Dior as two separate entities, to be odd.

Some critics dismissed Dior and I as just a ninety minute commercial for Dior, and it does paint a very pretty picture.  It also gives a very good look into the workings of a couture house.  Most interesting is how Simons worked as creative director, as the modern designer really is more of a director than he is a hands-on designer.  It became obvious very quickly that Simons was responsible for a lot more than just designing pretty dresses.

Much has been written lately about the extreme stresses put upon the creative directors of major design firms, and from watching Dior and I one does get a sample of how demanding the job is.  The point is made more significant due to the recent resignation of Simons from Dior.  Among the reasons he gave for leaving his position was that he needed more balance in his life.  There really is more to life than work, evidently.

Dior and I is currently available on Netflix.

Currently Viewing: Iris

Carl and Iris Apfel in IRIS, a Magnolia Pictures release. Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.

Iris, a film about Iris Apfel by Albert Mayeles, was recently added to Netflix, so of course I added it to my viewing queue.  I really wasn’t too anxious to see it, as I’d lumped her into the category along with other eccentric dressers who have attracted the attention of photographer Ari Seth Cohen of Advanced Style.  I was not prepared to find that Iris is the real deal, a woman who dresses to please herself, and not to be featured on a blog.

And while she is known for her extravagant outfits, and especially her vast jewelry collection, Iris is surprisingly down-to-earth.  She dresses in what she likes, whether that be a shirt embroidered with the figure of Mickey Mouse, or a designer item from Bergdorf Goodman.  The overwhelming lesson from Iris is that one needs to be true to his or her self.

Iris has a lot of clothes.  There are racks and boxes all over her apartment, and she kept her mother’s apartment because she needed the storage space.  We see her on several shopping treasure hunts, but the film also shows her in a meeting in one of her clothing storage areas, going through boxes she is donating to the Peabody Essex Museum.   Iris formed a relationship with the Peabody Essex after a show featuring her wardrobe traveled there.  She decided to will her collection to the museum, but she has already gone ahead and started the process of handing over many of her treasures.

The Peabody Essex might seem like an odd choice to receive Iris’s collection, especially since it was the Metropolitan’s Costume Institute that originally developed the exhibition of her clothes.  The movie explains that Iris realized that her wardrobe would fill in a big gap in the costume collection of the Peabody Essex, so she saw the opportunity to make a difference at that museum.  I think she did a wise thing by choosing a smaller museum.  At the Met her stuff would have been swallowed up in their vast holdings.

The film is especially poignant because since it was made, both Albert Mayeles and Iris’s husband Carl have died.  Carl and Iris’s relationship is an important part of the story, as they worked and traveled the world together for many years, and they were very close.  At one point they are talking about decorating the White House and Carl happens to mention that they “had a problem with Jackie.”  Iris punches him on the arm and scolds, “Stop!”

Iris is full of her wisdom, and she has some real insights into aging and how to handle it.  Seriously, you don’t have to love fashion to love this film.