慶應義塾大学経済学部研究プロジェクト論文（2007 年度）
Haute Couture【オート・クチュール】；
高い裁縫？大胆な縫い目？立派な裁断？
~ Japan and the Transformation of Haute Couture∼
経済学部 3 年
中之薗
萌
（指導教員：Roger Batty）
2008 年 2 月 29 日
要旨
In this paper, I have striven to cover the main changes in haute couture during the
20th century, with an emphasis on the Japanese designers who arrived on the scene in
the 1970s and 1980s.
It divides into 2 parts: The first provides an overview of how
history in fashion changed in accordance to social changes and industrial revolutions
across the globe via an overview of the main designers.
The second contains an
analysis of Japanese designers and how they, of all people, were able to save haute
couture from the devastating end that seemed unavoidable.
My purpose has been to
highlight the rejuvenating effect the fresh inputs with regard to fabric, cutting, and
drapery had, especially when combined with a very different ethos both for clothes and
the wearer of clothes.
The paper show the resilience of, but also the gradual retreat
from haute couture during the 20th century, followed by the impact of such designers as
Yamamoto Yohji, Issey Miyake, and Rei Kawakubo.
Nowadays, it is said that haute couture is left for dead, and the luxury market is a
fantasy of the past.
Especially when the target for fashion broke away from traditional
roles and became something for teenagers who were concerned with ‘now’, the whole
business model was shaken.
However, with the appearance of designers with
Japanese origin, it has all changed: they changed haute couture from the ‘rendezvous
with the past’ into ‘new discoveries that questions standardized concepts of fashion and
gender’.
Their designs are often labeled as ‘radical’ and ‘unpredictable’, but what
distinguishes them from other European ‘radical’ designers is that they are also very
‘functional’ and ‘sensational’.
This is an advantage of the Japanese designers, for it is
from their cultural background that such inspirations are born, and the breakdown of
the barrier between design and commodities is a necessary means of survival in this
‘teenage’ era.
While they may not have completely saved haute couture, Japanese designers have
distinguished themselves in the fashion industry as innovators and saviors who have
changed the traditional system into something of this era.
In addition, with Tokyo
becoming one of the international fashion capitals with its enormous numbers of
business enterprises and events, the Japanese fashion industry itself is sure to grow
and become one of the leaders of the world.
Explanatory Note
Dear Readers,
With this document, I have striven to clarify the exalted position designers of
Japanese origin have gained in the world of haute couture, and what affects they have
had on.
While much research for the first chapter has been done, chapter two was less
fruitful owing to the few documents that were available for my use. Considering the
limited time that I had, a thorough research on this section proved extremely difficult.
In the end, I have to say that I could have done more concerning the latter.
However,
I have done my best by repeatedly approaching the designers themselves and many
mass media producers for research –although none was granted.
Many thanks for your understanding.
2008/02/29
Moe Nakanosono
Table of Contents
4
Introduction
Part One
The Rise and Fall of Haute Couture?
1.1.
After Worth: High Fashion, 1875-1900
11
1.2.
Fashion’s First Steps, 1900-1919
17
World War 1
1.3.
25
The Roaring ‘20s, 1920-1929
The Impact of the War
Flappers
1.4.
Depression and War: Fashion, 1930-1945
32
Cinematic Dreams
Sizing and Drapery
World War 2
1.5.
Fighting against the Tide -Fashion’s Last Gasp:
36
1945-1959
After the War
French Fashion at the Crossroads
1.6.
The Agonies of Paris Fashion: 1960-late 20th
42
century
Part Two
Three Designers’ Tales: Japan and the
World of Haute Couture
2.1.
Not ‘of ’ the Streets, but in Response to it
53
Trickle-up of Street Fashion
New Age Designers
2.2.
57
Japanese Culture, Western Life
History
‘Japanese’ or ‘designers’?
2
Japonism
2.3.
Concluding Remarks: Japan, Haute Couture,
and The Age of Consumption
2.4.
Haute Couture, Tomorrow…
Bibliography
69
72
74
3
Introduction
Since man first settled in cities, and perhaps long before that, clothing has exercised a
powerful hegemony over the idea of ‘luxury’.
One’s dress, including all the accessories
of modern fashion, from shoes to jewelry, was the chief indicator of social role for early
humanity, and marked out not simply class, but religious, and social status.
At any
time period, it is possible to guess the position any person held in society just by looking
at the clothing worn by him or her: For lo, the more luxurious a piece of clothing was,
higher was the wearer’s social status supposed to be.
Apparel may be functional
clothing –one of humanity’s basic needs-, but fashion incorporates its own prejudices of
style, individual taste, and Cultural Revolution, and the purchasing power that was
visible through fashion has gained a special place in playing out a social role. 1
Especially in Europe, this luxury was defined by whether the designs were created by
couturiers of haute couture houses or not.
Historically, fashionable dressing for aristocratic and upper-class women was created
by an intimate negotiation between the client and her dressmaker.
The investment in
design was in the cost of the luxurious textile itself most of the time, and not in its
fabrication.
The origins of the haute couture system were laid by the late 17th century
as France became the European center for richly produced and innovative luxury silk
textiles: Thus the preeminent position of France’s luxury textile served as basis and
direct link to the development of its system of haute couture.
As railroads and
steamships made European travel easier, it became increasingly common for wealthy
women to travel to Paris to shop for clothing and accessories.
French fitters and
seamstresses were commonly thought to be the best in Europe, and the prestigious
social and economic value of an identifiable couturier developed in the late 19th and
early 20th centuries.
From the mid 19th century, the Paris based couture created a unique fashion system
that validated the couturier -a fashion designer- as an artist, and established his or her
‘name’ as an international authority for the design of luxurious, original clothing.
Couturiers were no longer merely skilled artisans, but creative artists with identifiable
names printed or woven into a petersham waist tape that was sewn discreetly into the
dress of bodice. 2
1
This was the beginning of designer labels in fashion. The client was
Steele, Valerie, et al. Encyclopedia of Clothing and Fashion: Volume 2. (New York,
2005), 34.
2 Ibid., 186.
4
required to visit the couture house where a garment was made to measure to
high-quality dressmaking and tailoring standards.
Remnants of this system still
persist today, and the current definitions of haute couture, at least in France, continue
to stress the intimate nature of its designs – for the individual, as much as for society.
[See Box 1]
Box 1
Haute Couture, Today
In France, the term ‘haute couture’ is protected by law and is defined by the Chambre
de commerce et d'industrie de Paris based in Paris, France. Their rules state that only
“those companies mentioned on the list drawn up each year by a commission domiciled
at the Ministry for Industry are entitled to avail themselves” of the label ‘haute
couture’.
To earn the right to call itself a couture house and to use the term haute couture in its
advertising and any other way, members of the Chambre syndicale de la haute couture
must follow these rules:
1) Design made-to-order for private clients, with one or more fittings.
2) Have an atelier in Paris that employs at least fifteen people full-time.
3) Each season, present a collection to the Paris press, comprising at least thirty-five
runs with outfits for both daytime wear and evening wear.
Besides the luxury haute couture collections, most haute couture houses also market
prêt-à-porter collections, which typically deliver a higher return on investment than
their custom clothing.
In fact, much of the haute couture displayed at fashion shows
today is rarely sold; it is created to enhance the prestige of the house. Falling revenues
have forced few couture houses to abandon their less profitable couture division and
concentrate solely on the less prestigious prêt-à-porter.
Established in 1973, the Fédération française de la couture, du prêt-à-porter des
couturiers et des créateurs de mode derives from the Chambre syndicale de la haute
couture created in 1868. The Federation is the executive organ of each Chambre
syndicale and is run by the elected president Didier Grumbach, who continuously acts
with the authority entrusted to him by the fashion industry.
The Fédération française de la couture, du prêt-à-porter des couturiers et des
créateurs de mode is composed of:
* The Chambre syndicale de la haute couture (created in 1868). Its members are the
couture houses benefiting from the haute couture label.
5
This label is a legally
protected appellation, which only granted couture houses can use. Such houses are
listed on a decree issued yearly by a special commission of the Ministry of Industry of
France.
* The Chambre syndicale du prêt-à-porter des couturiers et des créateurs de mode
(created in 1973), which is composed of Couture Houses and Fashion Designers of
women’s ready-to-wear.
* The Chambre syndicale de la mode masculine (created in 1973), which is composed of
the Couture Houses and Fashion Designers of men’s ready-to-wear.
In addition, the Union Nationale Artisanale de la Couture et des Activités Connexes,
which is composed of couture dressmakers established in different administrative
departments of France, became a corresponding member of the Federation in 1975.
The Federation stands as a representative of companies owning huge export brands
which are well-known internationally. A further specificity of the Fédération française
de la couture, du prêt-à-porter des couturiers et des créateurs de mode is to qualify as
‘associated members’ couture houses from Japan, Italy, Belgium, etc. showing thereby
the growing internationalization of Fashion.
In furtherance of achieving status as a universal organization in protection of this
fragile industry, the federation has set the following goals:
A – To comfort Paris as world capital of creation
B - To facilitate the development of emerging brands
C – To establish synergies between the various actors of the Fashion Industry (buyers,
weavers, subcontractors, etc.) mainly by using new technologies
D – Defense of Intellectual Property Rights
E – To develop training
F – To solve collective problems, to inform and advise the Federation members
To achieve these goals, the Federation annually organizes such as the following:
1 - Setting of the fashion shows schedules
Each year in January and July, Paris hosts about 30 shows during the haute couture
and 30 men’s wear fashion shows and again in March and October over a hundred
women’s ready-to-wear fashion shows.
For this, the Federation sets the shows
schedules so avoiding time conflicts to enable both the press and the buyers to cover the
entire collections.
The schedule issued by the Federation is a strong visibility means
for the brands as it is sent to some 2,000 journalists and to French and foreign buyers
who currently attend fashion shows in Paris.
6
2 -Making of press list
Each season a list of accredited journalists and photographers is made by the
Federation for transmittal to its members only. This data base is then used by the
houses for sending the invitations to their fashion shows.
3 - Reception and Information for Journalists and Buyers
On the occasion of the ready-to-wear fashion weeks in March and October, an
International Press Center is installed by the Federation in the Hall des Fossés Charles
V at the Carrousel which supplies information to some 800 buyers, 2,000 journalists,
400 photographers and other fashion professionals.
Besides functioning as a general
reception and information sector with practical information on Paris, the Federation
together with partners organizes theme exhibitions at this center.
Today, in a world filled with mass production and commercial marketing, haute
couture has lost the brilliant kingdom it once ruled: no more are the days when haute
couture houses were swamped with bourgeois women demanding everything from
sultry tea gowns to stunning dresses for social evenings and mingling with the elites.
Rather, the term haute couture has been misused by successive ready-to-wear brands
and high street labels since the late 1980s so that its true meaning has become blurred
with that of prêt-à-porter -the French term for ready-to-wear fashion- in the public
perception.
However, the efforts and proclamations of those involved with haute couture have
been far from lost.
Luxury remains, today, a driving force across the globe.
In the year 2006, the biggest member of the French luxury goods maker Moët
Hennessy Louis Vuitton posted a sharp increase in its first-half earnings, helped by
more stable international currency markets and strong sales from its wines and spirits,
fashion and leather goods, and perfumes and cosmetic divisions.
The company
reported a first-half net profit of 817 million Euros ($1.05 billion), up 46 percent from
559 million Euros in the period last year.
Operating profit jumped to 1.26 billion Euros
($1.61 billion), up 35 percent from 935 million Euros ($1.19 billion), the company said.
LVMH, which is based in Paris, also reported a 13 percent jump in its first-half revenue
to 6.97 billion Euros ($8.92 billion), up from 6.17 billion Euros a year earlier. 3
Moreover, spending on luxury goods are said to double in the next five years owing to
the growing economy of Russia, China, and India.
Especially in Russia, the luxury
market has tripled in the past 5 years, and swelling at the rate of 20 percent each year,
3
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/07/business/07fobriefs-002.html?ex=1158292800&en=
7403858829438810&ei=5040&partner=MOREOVERNEWS
7
expanding disposable income at a pace faster than any other country in the European
nation.
According to the Ministry of Economy, this year, it is said to rise up to at least
7.3 percent, a definite increase from 6.7 of 2006.
Magazines such as Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar continue to thrive; moreover, the
fashion goods which they contain are as often as not found in the pages of less
up-market, but very wide-selling titles such as Glamour.
The luxury market for
fashion draws in a wide range of consumers (example –LV bags); without this
consumption, many countries’ economies would be profoundly affected (e.g. Japan,
1990s).
Any study of how haute couture has responded to the changes in the modern world
will therefore have many merits. From the point of view of social history, it is clear
that fashion has played an intimate role in the gradual liberation of women, and has
contributed to their increased power both as consumers and as producers of goods. If
women are “victims of fashion”, they have become so in the main quite willingly, and as
a means to other, socially more important goals.
From the point of view of the arts, it
is clear that over the course of the twentieth century, fashion has gradually supplanted
more static media such as painting.
Whilst in the Fine Arts that century saw a
collapse of any consensus over form and content, haute couture has endured, and the
limitations attached to the idea of clothing itself have been a firm anchor for fashion
amidst the disorder of competing artistic ideas.
Any analysis of the development of
haute couture will therefore shed light on the social relevance or otherwise of various
artistic trends.
Finally, understanding the changes in haute couture allows us to
understand many ideas classed as “modern” and “post-modern”; how we understand
“class”, “gender” and “power” can be aided by studying high fashion, its creation and its
consumption.
This paper attempts to cover the main changes in haute couture during the 20th
century, with an emphasis on the Japanese designers who arrived on the scene in the
1970s and 1980s.
It divides into 2 parts: The first provides an overview of how history
in fashion changed in accordance to social changes and industrial revolutions across the
globe via an overview of the main designers.
The second contains an analysis of
Japanese designers and how they, of all people, were able to save haute couture from the
devastating end that seemed unavoidable.
My purpose has been to highlight the
rejuvenating effect the fresh inputs with regard to fabric, cutting, and drapery had,
especially when combined with a very different ethos both for clothes and the wearer of
clothes.
To succeed, the paper needs to show the resilience of, but also the gradual
retreat from haute couture during the 20th century, followed by the impact of such
8
people as Yamamoto Yohji, Issey Miyake, and Rei Kawakubo.
Lacking direct access to any of these designers in person though efforts were made, I
have had to draw much of part two from earlier interviews and magazine articles.
Nevertheless, the picture I draw is accurate enough, and will serve to underline their
fundamental importance not just to an industry and a select group of consumers, but to
the idea of luxury itself.
9
Part One
The Rise and Fall of Haute Couture?
10
Part One
To understand the impact that Japanese designers have had on the world of haute
couture, we need to understand that world; how haute couture came into existence;
what drove it; how it responded to the many social changes of the last 100 years.
Fashion was not only an indicator of cultural change; it was influenced by many social
changes –especially in class and gender roles-, and fashion also helped in creating may
social changes itself.
From the past, we can see the advancement of technology,
changes in ideology, and how changes in consumerism have changed people’s conception
of the world, and blurred the distinction between costume and clothes.
This is a huge subject, but in the text below, the key designers, trends, and challenges
are all explained.
1.1. After Worth:
High Fashion, 1875-1900
Haute Couture can be said to be the creation of a single joint enterprise – the
collaboration of a French employee and an English tailor.
Charles Fredrick Worth was the first clothing designer ever to be called a couturier,
and his designs have been described as an endless romance of luxury and functionality.
[See Box 1]
The thing notable in Worth’s case which differed from other tailors was his
status as a “commercial designer”: it was not Empress Eugénie’s, the patron of his arts,
taste which were incorporated into his designs but his very own, and as his accessibility
to elites with enough money to afford his luxurious designs grew, he was able to create
more lavishing designs which literally dripped gold.
Also being the first man to be entering a field that had previously been dominated by
women, curiosity concerning this “man-milliner” was high in the 1850s.
Drawing
inspirations from theater and the arts, his creations drew the fashion-conscious to the
rue de la Paix, and his list of clients included grandes horizontales, actresses, and opera
stars of the day such as Cora Pearl, Elenora Duse, and Nellie Melba. 4
Not content
with just France, his fame and magic spread over seas, and Americans like Mrs. J.P.
Morgan, Vanderbilt, Palmer, McCormick, and the Stanford families were also dressed
by the House.
Also, the house dressed members of the royal families of Russia, Italy,
Spain, Portugal, and even the noblewomen of numerous German principalities.
Box 1 Worth: The Father of Haute Couture
Although the idea of haute couture has a history which might probably go back to the
Steele, Valerie, et al. Encyclopedia of Clothing and Fashion: Volume 3. (New York,
2005), 449
4
11
17th century, its ‘father’ is said to be Charles Frederick Worth.
Born in England, he
worked at a textile company and gained a thorough knowledge of fabrics and also
invested his time in visiting galleries to study historic portraits, which was a vital
knowledge.
For fashion from the 19th century to today is characterized by a tendency
towards pastiche –a form of sporadic, partial, psittacosis; carefully staged to appeal to
differing periods.
At the age of twenty he moved to Paris and worked with Gagelin and
soon became its leading salesman and opened a dressmaking department for the
company. After presenting fabulous designs in the Great Exhibition in London and the
Exposition Universelle in Paris, he opened his own firm with a business partner in
1858.
With this timely coming, Worth’s rise as a designer coincided with the
establishment of the Second Empire in France. 5
In 1852, Napoleon 3rd became the new emperor and the restoration of the royal house
made Paris the imperial capital and the setting for occasions of state.
Napoleon longed
to make Paris and France a grandiose place, and initiated changes and modernization
that revitalized the French economy and made Paris into a showpiece of Europe. 6
With Paris as its capital, the demand for luxury goods soared to heights not seen since
before the French Revolution, and when Empress Eugénie married Napoleon 3rd, her
taste set the style at court.
Taken with promoting French industries, including the
once-dying silk industry of Lyon, the empress thrived on lavish gatherings and equally
lavish dress at these events. 7 The empress soon appointed Worth the court couturier,
and having the empress’s patronage on his hand, Worth’s success was ensured.
The
thing notable in Worth’s case which differed from other tailors was his status as a
‘commercial designer’: it was not Empress Eugénie’s taste which were incorporated into
his designs but his very own, and as his accessibility to elites with enough money to
afford his luxurious designs grew, he was able to create more lavishing designs which
literally dripped gold.
Worth’s designs compromised elements of historic dress with lavish fabrics and
trimming, and were made to fit perfectly.
While making total one-of-a-kind pieces for
his most important clients, he also prepared a variety of designs to be shown at the
House of Worth, and the more common clients made their selections there and had the
garments tailor-made at his shop.
Although he was not the first to put this business
Krick, Jessa. “Charles Frederick Worth (1826–1895) and The House of Worth”. In
Timeline of Art History. (New York, 2000).
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/wrth/hd_wrth.html (October 2004)
6 Ibid.
7 Steele, Valerie, et al. Encyclopedia of Clothing and Fashion: Vokume 3. (New York,
2005), 447
5
12
model to use, his self-promotion earned him the name “father of haute couture” and by
the 1870s, his fame spread across the country with his name being mentioned
frequently in fashion magazines.
Having rich patrons all over Europe and also across America, the House of Worth
flourished into a huge business, and even after his death, his son’s gave sheen to his
name, and the house continued till the 1920s.
However, the idea that elegance and luxury -the defining image of elite femininity-,
should have been transformed away from the realm of royalty and aristocracy in the
Victorian period should not be surprising.
The Victorian Age was an age of rapid change and developments in almost every
sphere thought possible –from medical, scientific and technological knowledge to
changes in population growth and location.
It was an age that began with a confidence
and optimism leading to economic boom and prosperity eventually gave way to
uncertainty and doubt regarding Britain's place in the world. 8
It was the dawning of
the “professional age”, whether in academia, science, business, or enterprise.
Politics were an important issue to Victorians, and their belief in the perfection of
their evolved representative government and in exporting it throughout the British
Empire gave rise to political movements such as socialism, liberalism and organized
feminism. 9
Especially in women’s rights, laws concerning divorce gained a step
forward in bridging the gaps between former wife and husband, and women gained
legal rights concerning property on marriage, the right to divorce, fighting for custody of
children.
At sea, British supremacy went unchallenged and unrivaled throughout the
century.
With the development of railway systems, the lives of people living both within and
outside the cities changed drastically.
The national railway network stimulated travel
and leisure opportunities for those who could afford it, and the network also provided
means for those living in isolated communities to try their hands in cities, and people
started flowing in to cities until it was overcrowded with people.
This overpopulation
led to inventions of slums and the downfall of security and moral standards.
Nevertheless, even though this period was a very civilized period giving rise to social
problems and discriminations, rigid social structure was still evident.
Although many
from the working class rose to status of a bourgeois with the money being made,
interclass marriage was prohibited, and the aristocracy reigned supreme.
Family structure during this period was mainly patriarchal, and they encouraged
8
9
http://www.history.ac.uk/ihr/Focus/Victorians/article.html
Ibid.
13
hard work, respectability, social deference and religious conformity.
Women were freed
within limits, but still portrayed as delicate beings with need of protection, or as whores
if too aggressive.
This was expressed by Queen Victoria, who strove to be “the ideal
wife” outside politics, and while educational and employment opportunities increased,
women were still required to stay indoors.
With wars going on over plantations and
other political issues such as the Boer War though, many women and widows were
forced to become prostitutes, and with the establishment of cities, slums and Harlem
became common.
Clothing has always been an expression of social movements, but in a woman’s case,
it was even more so: fashion was an expression of social functions.
In the case of the elites that came after Worth’s time, they were decorative –changed
dresses for every occasion; about 6 times a day-; they were physically restrictive for all
women –bustles were still existent along with corsetry-; and they were restricted to
those who could afford it –the working class had little money to spend on luxurious
clothing which they had few occasions to wear, especially till the 1990s.
1870s was a period where fullness in the skirt had moved to the rear and was just
below the knees.
Tight gowns were enhanced with the cuirass bodice, and heavy
underskirt was worn to provide further fullness to the bustle.
As the years passed, the
fullness gradually moved up and full, curvy silhouette was in by the 1880s.
The
S-shaped silhouette was provided by tight corsetry, and in response to this extreme
corsetry, the Rational Dress Society was formed.
While the polonaise was popular for
outerwear, tea dresses and aesthetic dresses remained an undercurrent, going from
Pre-Raphaelite look to slightly Bohemian/Oriental look, and were worn at home even
when receiving visitors.
Even though department stores such as Le Bon Marché and Au Printemps were
beginning to spread wing by 1900s, fashion was mostly restricted on a class basis, and
only those who could afford to patron a designer received the full benefit of one-of-a-kind
haute couture clothes; most got by with having servants sew something similar or
making it themselves. Rare was the occasion when the working class could buy a
wholly new dress; most of them remade their old dresses to fit the trends of the time.
Those who had the money to afford designer-made clothing had them made for every
occasion possible: from home party gowns, day dresses, and tea gowns to evening wear
and undergarments, the rich spent their money lavishly to make dresses to impress.
For aristocrats, Worth was the chosen haute couture designer for elaborate gowns and
party wear.
On the other hand, machine-made lace was no longer something for a
‘cheap’ dress, but was used on expensive designer gowns also, and machinery-made
14
clothes began to become acceptable among the working class
Soon, in the 1890s, the development of sewing machines, patterns, and ready-made
basics were available to nearly every women no matter how poor, and the effort put into
her wardrobe became minimal: it was a time for the ‘modern girl’.
In the book Modern Daughter written by Alexander Black in 1899, one ‘spunky young
gym girl’ declared that, “I think that the most important inventions of the century are
the bicycle and the shirtwaist...each has had an important influence on the physical and
economic situation of women.
I have no doubt the bicycle will get full credit, but if no
historian mentions the shirtwaist the shirtwaist will proclaim its own triumph”.
In
the 1890s things changed drastically, and while corsetry still remained, the
extravagance of the previous decade was shed and fashion became more functional.
While the A-line skirts with leg o’mutton sleeves were popular, wears for women during
sports was gradually appearing.
Along with the changes in lines, hemlines rose to the
ankles, and shirtwaist was worn in the working class.
It was a time of carefully planned, expertly executed female emancipation.
It was a time when new invention –the bicycle- brought women out into the
world and gave them independence.
The raving feminist clad in
outrageous costume was now out-classed by a new generation of dainty,
fashionable, and clever women who campaigned for and eventually won
women’s suffrage. 10
There was also a social change among the positions of the elite.
Before, the status of elite was something decided by birth and inheritance; rare was
the case when a ‘money made’ elite was accepted by the social bourgeois class.
However, with evolutions and rapid changes occurring in almost every industry thought
possible, soon there were numerous social climbers who –albeit the ‘class’ backgroundhad enough financial backup to enter the world of aristocrats.
More often than not,
these social climbers had more wealth than the original elites who had nothing more
than status and a longing for the past; for these innovators knew when and where to
make the money, and they did not hesitate to make daring decisions –based on the fact
that they had no ‘class’ to lose.
The media was another avid supporter of fashion in this era, and fashion magazines
became increasingly popular during this period.
With railroads being laid across the
country and printing machines becoming a major industry, fashion magazines were
issued as a luxury item available to most woman in any class, and was also the treasure
Harris, Kristina. Victorian & Edwardian Fashions for Women 1840-1919.
(Pennsylvania, 2002), 102.
10
15
house on the secret of trendy designs –for most included patterns for the dresses that
were currently coming into fashion.
Around the start of the twentieth century fashion
magazines began to include photographs and became even more influential than in the
past.
In cities throughout the world these magazines were greatly sought-after and
had a profound effect on public taste. Talented illustrators drew exquisite fashion
plates for these publications, which covered the most recent developments in fashion
and beauty.
This, when mixed with a woman’s average sewing skills, made it possible
for fashionable items to be available for those who could not afford haute couture
clothes, and helped spread fashion trends more easily.
16
1.2. Fashion’s First Steps: 1900-1914
Despite the serenity of the early Edwardian Period, many changes had fundamentally
altered European society during from 1900 to 1914.
In fashion, the early Edwardian Period (1900-1914) was about Gibson Girls with their
serene self-confidence that could surmount any problem.
The envy of all who knew her,
the Gibson Girl remained aloof of her surroundings but not to the extent of haughtiness.
She was at once remote but yet accessible. 11
This creation by Charles Dana Gibson
helped embrace the S curve silhouette –called the pouter pigeon in some cornersshaped by the new ‘health corsets’, and designers borrowed from men’s clothing styles
such as the suit, shirt, hard collar and tie, to create fashions appropriate for women
entering professions formerly occupied by men.
The curvy clothing line of this period
resounded with the curves of Art Nouveau style also, and jewelry created of dazzling
enamels and gold filigree became standard adornments for ladies of this period.
The Edwardian Period before the war was a time of scientific progress and elegance,
full of innovations and wonder, moreover, it was a cataclysmic time for the arts. The
arts underwent a radical transformation during the decades before World War I, and
new artistic forms associated with cultural modernity emerged during this period.
Impressionism, -which had been considered the artistic avant-garde in the 1860s, but
gained widespread acceptance during the 19th century-, was took over by expressionism
at the beginning of the 20th century.
The thick brushstrokes used during
impressionism to express the intense vibrancy of colors became more powerful and
savage as artists started to distort reality to express intense emotions. While there is
argument whether ‘expressionism’ was an art style movement like impressionism, the
term itself was coined by Czech art historian Antonín Matějček in 1910 as the opposite
of impressionism: “An Expressionist wishes, above all, to express himself....[An
Expressionist rejects] immediate perception and builds on more complex psychic
structures....Impressions and mental images that pass through mental peoples soul as
through a filter which rids them of all substantial accretions to produce their clear
essence [...and] are assimilated and condense into more general forms, into types, which
he transcribes through simple short-hand formulae and symbols.” 12
In the realm of design and architecture, Art Nouveau -characterized by its
highly-stylized, flowing, curvilinear designs and its use of hyperbolas and parabolas-
http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/gibson.htm
Antonín Matějček cited in Gordon, Donald E. Expressionism: Art and Ideas.
Haven , 1987), 175.
11
12
17
(New
become prominent and dominated design throughout much of Europe.
Art Nouveau
was not only a style of inspirational art, but also was broad based enough to encompass
a whole lifestyle.
It made use of many technological innovations of the late 19th
century, especially the broad use of exposed iron and large, irregularly shaped pieces of
glass in architecture. By the start of the World War 1 however, the highly stylized
nature of Art Nouveau design –which, itself was expensive to produce- began to be
dropped in favor of more streamlined, rectilinear modernism that was cheaper and
thought to be more faithful to the rough, plain, industrial aesthetic that was soon to
become Art Deco. 13
The first motion pictures were developed during this period, and the era also ushered
in the first mass-produced automobiles such as Henry Ford's Model T.
With
unprecedented accomplishment such as those by the Wright Brothers who made human
flight a possibility and forever changing the world in 1903, this period could be
described as the dawning of the age of material novelties, heard in the clatter of the
telegraph, the jingle of the telephone and the cacophony of the first mass-produced
typewriters, experienced in the eerie feeling of ascent on the first elevator rides, the
dazzling aura of electric light, and the new, democratic mobility of the bicycle. 14 The
symbolic glamour of this period can be found in the Titanic, with its gorgeous
compartments and tragic ending in 1912.
With interests in socialism rising, attention
being given to the working class, and rapid industrialization increasing economic
opportunities, there was an environment prepared for people to become more liberal
and expressive.
Naturally, it was not only men who were the players during this critical period:
women definitely took a hand in hopes of change.
Suffrage movements have been
occurring since the early19th century, but the movements during this time of universal
suffrage was notable because it was so violent, especially in England. It is important
to note that the woman’s suffrage movement was one which was primarily run by
middle class women, particularly the unmarried ones, who -frustrated by their social
and economic situation- sought an outlet in which to start change and rebel against the
society.
Their struggles for change within society were enough to spearhead a
movement that would encompass mass groups of women fighting for suffrage, and the
more radical groups even took direct acts such as chaining themselves to railings,
setting fire to the contents of mailboxes, smashing windows and on occasions setting off
bombs.
13
14
However, while this movement came to a halt with the start of World War 1
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_Nouveau
http://www.erasofelegance.com/history/edwardianscience.html
18
and the women being sent to work in munitions factories, it nether less increased
female participation in society as equals with men.
In a more cultural aspect, women became very much involved in sports also, and in
1900, the first women athlete participated in the modern Olympic Games in Paris.
Although they were able to participate in only 3 sports, it was a definite step-up for
actively involved women whishing for change. In the amateur field, women athletes
existed in force, and women tried everything from ice hockey to archery.
Although
Physical Education instructors strongly oppose competition among women, fearing it
will make them less feminine, practical clothing for sports began to be adopted, and
tailored suits became an essential part of any woman’s wardrobe.
However, conspicuous waste and consumption still defined the fashions of the decade,
and the outfits of the couturiers of the time were incredibly extravagant, elaborate,
ornate, and painstakingly made.
Although haute couture embraced the visible
changes in the society, the designers began to realize that functionality would be
pursued in the future, and that overly-elaborate design would not last. Fashion was no
longer a plaything in the hands of the designer; the control was soon going to shift to the
consumers.
Right before the war, fashion transitioned from the S curve to stream-lined designs as
woman began participating in athletics, and sportswear also became popular.
Women’s fashion became increasingly lighter in both construction and material,
epitomized by the “lingerie dress” –a feather-light, flimsy piece in white cotton with
insets of lace and netting.
Designers such as Madeleine Vionnet produced dresses that
relied on skills of tailoring for beauty instead of in adornments or material, and Paul
Poiret, affected by the performance of Scheherazade in Paris in 1910 by Ballet Russes
and its idea of exotic theater, gave push to Orientalism with his Harlem pants and fluid
lines.[See Box 1] Marketing for fashion also changed during this period, and with
photography becoming more common, Longchamp races were perfect places for models
wearing the latest trend by haute couture designers.
The beauty of lines and material
added to the simple elegance of the dresses during this era, resulting in it being called
as “la Belle époque”, meaning “the beautiful epoch” in French.
Box 1 Paul Poiret: The Liberty Maker
It was in the name of Liberty that I advocated against the corset and in favor of the
brassiere. 15—Paul Poiret
Poiret never claimed that he invented the brassiere.
He simply introduced designs
Pedersen, Stephanie. Bra -A Thousand Years of Style, Support and Seduction. (Devon,
2004), 34.
15
19
that made it impossible for the corset to be worn; thus changing ground-held
conceptions that only by wearing the corset could fashionable dresses be worn
‘stylishly’. Also, it was Poiret’s remarkable innovations in the cut and construction of
clothing -made all the more remarkable by the fact that he could not sew- that secured
his legacy. Working the fabric directly onto the body, Poiret helped pioneer a radical
approach to dressmaking that relied more on the skills of drapery than tailoring. He
was not a dressmaker or tailor –he was a designer.
1. Rich and Radical: the Poiret Way
Poiret was famous for designing luxurious oriental gowns and Art Deco dresses.
He
also introduced the suspender belt and flesh-colored stockings –a pair of innovations
destined to endure well beyond Poiret’s own time, but more significant than that were
the reliance on the modern bra.
His streamlined dresses of the Nouvelle Vague
collection were empire-line and straight from the waist down, making the corset
unnecessary.
They were later developed into the simple I line dresses that were so
popular among the Flappers in the 1920s.
He was also a designer for famous stars
such as Ida Rubinstein, Isadora Duncan, Eleanore Duse and Sarah Bernhardt.
Also
among his clients was Countess Greffulhe, who wore his scandalous ‘sheaths’ to her
daughter’s wedding, thus insuring his future fame.
He never spent enormous sums on advertising but gave ravishing parties where
models wore his newest deigns and strutted about, inviting a few hundred distinguished
guests and providing them with an unforgettable night.
A famous party of his was
‘The Thousand and Second night’ party in 1911, which was an Oriental extravaganza
attended by all of Paris.
Yvonne Deslanders’ description gives a glimpse on the
extravagance –and the fantasist side- of Poiret’s world: “Persian orchestras sheltered in
copses; there were parrots in trees studded with a thousand twinkling lights, pink ibis,
multicolored cushions…the sultan –Poiret himself. 16
This kind of party was also
revolutionary in the field of advertising, which is called ‘strategizing public relations’
nowadays.
There are many inspiration sources for Poiret’s designs; across sea and also across
different fields.
In 1909, Orientalism was in, and with the first season of Ballet Russes
on stage in Paris, Poiret was inspired to produce designs which would have significant
impact on future designers.
Wide hats and frock coats gave way to turbans and caftans, and colors
became brighter and more eye-catching…the clothes in his new collection,
Deslandres, Yvonne and Dorothee Lalanne. Poiret: Paul Poiret 1987-1944. (New York,
1987)
16
20
which was the talk of the town, were borrowed from all over the world:
geisha kimonos, trousers as worn by Egyptian dancing girls, Ukrainian
peasant costumes, silks and perfumes from Arabia, and Greek costumes as
revived by Isadora Duncan...Most of the trends that later exerted a
permanent influence on today’s great designers can be traced back to
Poiret’s fabulous bazaar. 17
However, the elite world, elite occasions and fun for which Poiret designed placed
minimal, if any, emphasis on functionality.
Poiret himself seemed to have understood
this, but little did he know that the lacks of functionality in his designs were going to be
the end of him.
While Poiret made innovations, he had no intentions of creating the
image of a young, sporting, dynamic woman; even though the idea of beauty between
1910 and 1913 was a mixture of mature authority and a slightly exotic eclecticism, the
comportment, behavior and stately grace of the elegant lady remained unchanged in his
designs. 18
A perfect example of this is the hobble skirt, which freed the waist but
restricted the ankles so much that the wearer could take only tiny steps at a time. Of
this invention which he referred to once as “Yes, I freed the bust but I shackled the legs”
was said to have come from the Japanese geisha girls who walked in tiny steps because
of the restricting kimonos. 19
Another of his famous designs was short-hood ‘lampshade’ tunics, in which the wire
was inserted in the tunics to make the hemline stand out all around the body.
Besides
these signature designs, Poiret also promoted the girdle; thus resulting in the exposure
of the curves of the legs which guaranteed both the continued use of stockings and the
emphasis on the hips which characterized the next 30 years.
This innovation made the
slender silhouette possible and fashionable -a revolutionary step up for the 1920s
silhouette to come.
Inspired by the Vienna Secession –now generally called Art Noveau- in exploring the
possibilities of art outside the confines of academic tradition and history, Poiret also
dabbled in every branch of the decorative arts besides fashion and accessories.
He created something with is called lifestyle marketing in today’s economy, setting up
a school for working-class girls with talent called Martine –after his second daughter-,
and produced furniture, glassware, and carpeting.
He was also the first designer who
realized the advantages of marketing his own fragrance, and launched a line of
fragrances called the Les Parfums de Rousine –named after his eldest daughter-, and
17
18
19
Baudot, Francois. Poiret. Assouline. (New York, 2006), 8.
Gandolfi, Fiora. Skirts and More Skirts. Zanfi Editori. (1989), 44.
Yaeger, Lynn. The Atlantic “The King is Dead”. (September 2007), 120.
21
bottled them with his usual flair of glamour and style; subsequent scents were
presented in bottles made of Murano blown glass or topped with tricolored cockades or
ivory stoppers, with names like ‘Bosquet d’Apollon’, ‘Le fruit defendu’, ‘Aladin’ and so
on. 20
Each bottle was linked to a particular gown of his collection, and was a work of
art made by glasswork factory in partnership with his house.
For its promotion, he
hired writer, typographers and model-makers to design the publicity materials for each
Rosine perfumes –another revolution in advertising-and by the time the accessory and
cosmetic business took off, Poiret signed his first licensing agreements.
In 1924, Poiret produced the first weekly magazine which contained patterns with
descriptions, bearing the catchphrase “Elegance is no longer a question of money”.
A
subscriber received his flesh-colored stockings, and there were magazine-sponsored
competitions with the winner receiving a designer dress by Poiret. In 1933, he was
persuaded by the proprietor of Au Printemps to present a collection every season inside
the shops, and to sell the clothes at a ‘factory’ price.
While this experiment did not last
long, it laid way for the prêt-a-porter shows as we know them today, which did not
become common until the 1950s. He was also the first to try export-models –a means
of licensed reproduction-, and only firms agreeing to sell his models could use the Poiret
label.
Paying royalties for each model reproduced is common nowadays, it was
revolutionary at this time, and made much success especially in America.
However, his short-lived success story came to an end with the start of the World War
1, where he closed shop to join the army.
After the war, he reopened up business, but
was never able to achieve the pre-war stardom again; for most of his clients had left him
to follow designers such as Lanvin and Chanel.
Detesting Chanel’s look –he called
them “undernourished telegraph boys dressed in black jersey”-, he continued making
fancy frocks and matching divans, wishing as a megalomaniac that all the young
women he adored to be dressed like fine ladies. 21
However, Chanel had the last word:
on meeting a black-dressed Chanel in the street of Paris, he asked for whom she was in
mourning, and she replied “For you, dear Monsieur!” Unable to change his lavish
spending habits and losing his house to creditors, he lived in poverty after his wife and
muse, Danise left him and died in 1944 at the age of 64.
In a slightly different circle -before art and fashion fused together to start a never
ending, dramatic relationship-, art was experiencing a revolution as shocking as that of
Ballet Russes. Movements like fauvism, cubism and futurism welded by Picasso et al
created a shock in a prior quiet world, and from there snatched of old customs and
20
21
Yaeger, Lynn. The Atlantic “The King is Dead”. (September 2007), 122.
Ibid., 123.
22
traditions, we were to fall into the abyss of modern art and contemporary art.
Modern
art refers to the new approach to art which placed emphasis on representing emotions,
themes, and various abstractions, and artists experimented with new ways of seeing,
with fresh ideas about the nature of materials and functions of art, often moving further
toward abstraction.
This movement later led to the Art Nouveau, and the child of
fashion and art was soon to be born.
World War 1
The World War 1 was a memory of never ending pain and suffering. However, it was
also the one thing that helped break the lock-hold aristocrats had over the society since
the Napoleon War, and promoted significant improvements in technology.
Prior to the World War 1, women were considered to be workers for domestic chores,
and mainly were employed in textile and clothing trades. Only a few had a tertiary
education, and less had votes and was little involved in politics.
However, the World
War hinged on industrial production for winning in the battlefield, and women were
called in to fill the shortage of labor from rural work to office jobs.
This taking on of
roles outside their traditional gender expectations gave them a sense of freedom, and it
changed the concept of ‘work’ for women forever.
During the World War 1, increase in demands for technically advanced weapons led to
step ups in ways of communication and transportation.
The need for spying out enemy
movements led to air balloons that flew long distances and the invention parachutes.
Mobiles as a way of quick transportation became faster, smarter, and mass production
was essential.
Fixed-wing aircrafts became self-powered by the end of the war, and in
the 1930s jet engines were developed and faster, long distance form of air transportation
became possible.
Also, wireless communication developed much as a way of informing
troop movements to both sides, and radios became a convenient way of gaining
information on-time.
Another notable fact during the war was the munitions. Before there was World War
1, women had work that was less strenuous and more feminine; like weeding, planting,
and weaving.
However, owing to the lack of manpower during the war, women were
-for the first time in history- put up to managing machines and building weapons.
Their wages were raised in accordance with their labor, and women found themselves
earning more than double the amount they used to earn from more domestic works.
This had a significant effect of following periods in the way women were positioned in
the society, for it changed everything from clothing to roles inside and outside the house.
Not only did they have to keep the home fires burning, they also took on voluntary and
23
paid employment that was diverse in scope and showed that women were highly capable
in diverse fields of endeavor. 22
This expanded the view of the women’s role in the
society, and changed the outlook of what women could do and their place in the
workforce.
Being employed in a place where skirts were unfit –and even dangerous- during work,
changes in dress during World War 1 were dictated more by necessity than fashion.
As
more and more women were forced in hard labor, they demanded clothes that were
better suited to their new activities; these derived from the shirtwaists and tailored
suits.
Social events were postponed in favor of more pressing engagements, and the
need to mourn the increasing numbers of dead, visits to the wounded, and the general
gravity of the time made darker colors and simpler cuts common.
Soon, women
dropped the cumbersome underskirts from their tunic-and-skirt ensembles, simplifying
dress and shortening skirts in one step.
By 1915, the Gazette du Bon Ton was showing
full skirts with hemlines above the ankle.
These ‘war crinoline’ –called so by the
fashion press- was promoted as a patriotic and practical style. In the lower class,
trousers started to replace even these war crinolines, and ‘rational dressing’ became the
norm.
However, haute couture still breathed in the corner as a luxury fantasy that was
wished for by some, and survived through the World War 1.
22
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_roles_in_the_World_Wars
24
1.3. The Roaring ‘20s, 1920-1929
The 1920s was the decade in which fashion entered the modern era.
It was in this
decade that women -as a whole- first liberated themselves from constricting fashions
from the patriarchal era, and began to wear more comfortable clothes such as short
skirts or pants. The fashion trends in the 1920s can be divided into 2 distinct periods:
The early 1920s were relatively conservative in nature and changed slowly as many
–especially the elder women- were reluctant to adopt the androgynous styles, while
some daring women adapted clothes from the male wardrobe and chose to dress like
boys.
From 1925 onwards however, the bust-less, waist-less, flapper look were
passionately embraced by the public and would continue characterize fashion until late
in 1930.
The Impact of the War
In the world outside Europe, World War 1 is considered less significant than World
War 2, but the opposite stands true for Europe –and in an extent, Russia. For Europe,
World War 1 meant the end of the Europe domination of the world. The war had made
the once subject kingdoms belligerent, and Europe dominance had the beginnings of the
American empire standing in the shadows behind it.
After the war had ended with the Versailles Treaty and peace had been sworn, the
Roaring ‘20s came. With the end of war, a new kind of thought and in a way, a
desperateness to change their lives and not look back was born in the minds of the
people.
People used money luxuriantly to buy what they were not able to afford before,
and to feel certain stability from dressing up in an ideal dream, full of elegance and
leisure.
For this was a time of woe and despair, with the memories of the war still
fresh in the mind of the people, and it was with a feeling of the need for change that the
fashion industry grew.
Between 1919 and 1929, Europe and America experienced a heady decade of social
revolution, which was only brought to a halt with the Wall Street Crash of 1929.
It was
during this time that the culture of ‘1920s’ was born and flourished: 1920s were
certainly an age of awakening and exploitation. This was not only limited to fashions:
art started to merge on the catwalks, and music changed from the traditional classics to
something more impromptu such as swing jazz and ragtime. Dances also changed from
the rigid polka to Charleston, and even in the dances, we could see the women becoming
independent from men. Before Charleston became popular, Breakaway was said to be
its predecessor.
However, even though Breakaway was a dance which partners did
25
adlib solo steps according to the beat, it was still a dance done by twos. Charleston –on
the other hand- was a dance that could be done solo if one preferred it so, and it was said
to be danced mainly by flappers who were even said to have gotten their name from
dancing because of the way they would flap their arms and walk like birds while doing
the Charleston. 23
Also owing to the experience of munitions during the war, women awakened to
working like a man and began to play a more active part in life, adopting many
traditionally male roles and habits. 24 With the amount of wages earned during the
munitions, and want for luxurious things that became available to those with money to
pay -instead of being available only for the aristocrats -, they spent money by the load.
Jewelry gained a new status as a way of showing off class, and with mass produced
clothing in the market, women spent more money on buying multiple clothes for every
occasion.
Besides working, they also drove cars, piloted airplanes, smoked cigars,
dated, and drank heavily in public. This was seen in especially those who were called
the “Lost Generation” or the “Generation of 1914”.
The Flappers
Being a young generation who were disillusioned by the large number of casualties of
World War 1, many women they were cynical and disdainful about the Victorian notions
of morality and propriety of their elders and ambivalent about Victorian gender ideals.
Moreover, they were a generation that experienced the change in concept of time by the
technological advancement accomplished during this era. 25
With the invention of such
things as the telephone, wireless telegraph, cinema, bicycle and automobile, the concept
of speed and time became faster than before, and people experienced vitality from the
new feeling, also at the same time losing the luxurious way to spend time as in the eras
before the war.
Instead of spending time indoors, people went outside to do sports
during the day, and went to jazz bars and clubs to dance and drink at night. This was
especially true for the young women who flaunted their disdain for what was called
‘descent behavior’ by their elders: These women were called the flappers.
One thing to note in the fashion of 1920s is the extreme exposure of skin.
As it once
happened after the French Revolution with the disuse of corsets, another breakthrough
came after the war.
With the gradual abandonment of the corset, waistlines
disappeared and clothes became loose, draped things which gave freedom of movement
23
24
25
http://www.streetswing.com/histmain/z3chrlst.htm
Lussier, Suzanne. Art Deco Fashion. (2003), 13.
http://mehallowk.bravehost.com/lostgeneration.html
26
and also a strong sense of feminine during the early 1920s.
Belts went out of fashion
and sashes were in to mark the waist in a soft and fluid way.
Clothes acquired a
streamlined design -said to be inspired by the changes occurring in concept of time
which was influenced by the introduction of automobiles and other innovations that
gave a feeling of speed- that did not accentuate the body line in any way, as can be
imagined from a text in the October issue of AGB in 1921; in which it is mentioned that
straight lines will be maintained…slenderness…grace…youthfulness…present style
conceals but is reveals. 26
Also, there was the adoption of jersey -formerly a material
used for men’s underwear- as a ‘new’ material and the dandy fashion made by Chanel
which had a significant influence on the idea of women’s clothes itself.
This was not to say that the traditional clothing for women went out of the window,
but rather that clothing became something that was changed by the occasion: During
the 1920s, sportswear –such as golf and tennis- for women was developed, and bathing
suits became more tight-fitting as clothes became something that was worn for the
occasion and not for the sex symbol.
However, whenever the need for formality arose,
women continued to wear the trappings of traditional feminine which was adjusted
slightly to be both new and traditional at the same time.
The couturière Gabriel Coco Chanel was a major figure in fashion during this period
as much for her magnetic personality as for her chic and progressive designs.
Chanel
helped popularize the bob hairstyle, the little black dress, the use of jersey knit for
women’s clothing, and elevated the status of both costume jewelry and knitwear from its
former ‘inferior, homey’ position to that of luxury. [See Box 1]
By personally expressing
her lifestyle and styling, she gained much popularity among the young women of the
1920s, and found one of the most famous houses in the world today.
Box 1
Gabriel Coco Chanel: The “New” Woman
Tobacco in mouth; costume pearls around the neck; a simple black dress...
Gabriel Coco Chanel was a person with more fans than she could count, friends by the
dozen, perfect style, and an image of ‘the woman’.
Her achievements are known
worldwide and even today her house and style lives on in such intimacy with our lives
that, it is often forgotten who was the innovator of it all.
From the all-too-famous
Little Black Dresses to her first perfume “No. 5”, what she gave to our everyday lives
was something more than a piece of fabric sewn together: it was a statement of freedom,
life, and what it means to be a woman.
Ginsburg, Madeleine. Paris Fashions: The Art Deco Style of the 1920s. (New York,
1989), 51.
26
27
1. What it means to be “Chanel”
Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel was born in France on August 19th, 1883.
Her family was
poor so after her mother passed away at the age of 6, her father soon disappeared and
left Chanel and her 4 sisters as orphans.
She spent 7 years in a Catholic monastery,
and during this time she learned the trade of a seamstress.
During her 20s she spent
time singing in bars -gaining her nickname, Coco meaning ‘Little Pet’-, and enjoyed
affairs with many wealthy men.
In 1913, she opened her first shop in Paris with the financial help of her lover, Arthur
‘Boy’ Capel and introduced simple, chic hats as an alternative to the ostrich-boa-draped
hats which were popular among the wealthy women of those times.
Soon there were
demands for clothing as well, and she introduced her clothing line which became an
instant hit among the Parisians.
She often wore clothing her man friends lent her, and
this inspired her to produce men’s clothing for women.
By the 1920s her fashion house had expanded significantly, and she was making
many revolutionary movements; such as using jersey –formerly a fabric for male
undergarments- for clothes and dresses, and introduced short skirts and gave a casual
feeling to a world which was previously dominated by rigid gender roles and tradition.
Her own best model and publicist, she often wore loose sailor-type trousers, flouting the
rules of sartorial etiquette that generally restricted women from wearing trousers to the
beach or within the home as evening pajamas. 27
As she once mentioned, “People
laughed at the way I dressed, but that was the secret of my success: I didn’t look like
anyone.” 28
She was also charming and witty, and attracted many of the talented, powerful men
of the time; such as Picasso, Dali, the Duke of Westminster, Stravinsky, and so on.
She
had lovers, patrons, and many admirers of her talents, and they had significant effect
on her fashion.
Her affair with a Nazi officer during the World War 2 raised some
eyebrows and led to a short exile by the society, but her lifestyle best explains her
fashion: she was a perfectionist with a clear, un-wavering gaze, and she did what she
wanted to do; not what she had to do.
Until death, she continued making clothes that were much like her; mannish, chic,
stylish, and simple. Besides the Little Black Dress, she also introduced the cardigan
jacket -the ‘Chanel suit’ as it became later-, costume jewelry that did not use jewels but
rather pearls, and No 5, which was the first artificial perfume to be made.
Steele, Valerie. Encyclopedia of Clothing and Fashion: Volume 1. (New York, 2005),
250
28 http://www.chanel.com/nav/html/direct_page.php?page=inside&zone_lang=USAEN
27
28
After the World War, fashion was no more about a ‘costume’ to play whatever roles the
wearer wishes to present to the world.
It was about, durable clothes which were not
ostentatious but stylish and gave a feeling of hidden luxury at the same time.
To this
end, Chanel’s designs were more than enough: they were of designs that were functional
and something that was made to endure rather than something flippant to be displayed.
Her uncluttered styles, with their boxy lines and shortened skirts, allowed women to
leave their corsets behind and freed them for the practical activities made necessary by
the war.
The use of cheap jersey and thoughts of ‘Fordism’ gave speed to mass
production and copying, but unlike other designers of her time, Chanel delighted in
having people copy her styles: “Anything good ought to be copied and worn by many”,
she wrote. 29
The Little Black Dress was especially alluding to its almost universal
popularity as a fashion basic. In fact, the concept of the dress suitable for day and
evening did become both a staple for Chanel throughout subsequent seasons and a
classic piece of twentieth-century women's wear.
Another prominent French designer of the 1920s was Jeanne Lanvin. [See Box 2]
Jeanne Lanvin, who began her career in fashion as a milliner, made such beautiful
outfits for her young daughter Marguerite that people started to ask for copies, and
Lanvin was soon making dresses for their mothers. The Lanvin style embraced the
look of the time, with its skillful use of complex trimmings, dazzling embroideries, and
beaded decorations in light, clear, floral colors that eventually became a Lanvin
trademark.
She was also one of the first designers to present a whole lifestyle concept,
and produced many different products including sportswear, furs, lingerie, men’s
fashion, and interior designs by 1925.
Her global approach to fashion foreshadowed
the schemes that all the large contemporary fashion houses would later adopt in their
efforts to diversify.
Box 2
Jeanne Lanvin: The Real Couturière
Nowadays, the industry for children’s clothing are very much a competitive area with
many designers vying with each other, but the founder of clothing for children –and the
rest of the family- was Jeanne Lanvin.
Being a skilled milliner and having the
resources on her hand, she first started making clothes for her only child Marguerite,
but soon rich ladies wanted those beautiful designs for their own children, and the
House of Lanvin was born.
From Haute couture to men's fashion, home decoration,
and perfumes, her creations were a total coordination in traditional elegance and style,
unrivaled by any other designer during her period.
29
Koda, Harold and Andrew Bolton, et al.Chanel. (2005)
29
1. Total Coordination: the Lanvin Empire
Born on New Year’s Day in 1867, Lanvin was the eldest of 11 children. At age 16, she
was an apprentice milliner at Madame Félix in Paris; then trained at dressmaker
Talbot and at the age of 22, set up as a milliner at rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, now
the center of Parisian fashion.
However, the dresses Lanvin made for her daughter
was so beautiful that they began to attract the attention of a number of wealthy people,
who requested copies for their own children. Soon, Lanvin was making dresses for
their mothers also, and some of the most famous names in Europe were included in the
clientele of her new boutique. In 1909, Lavin joined the Union of Haute Couture, which
marked her formal status as a couturière.
While Lanvin’s name appears in the fashion
yearbook from about 1901 onwards, it was in the 1920s that she reached the peak of her
popularity and success.
During the 1920s, Lavin opened shops devoted to home decor, menswear, furs and
lingerie, but her most significant expansion was the creation of Lanvin Parfums in
1924.
She introduced her signature fragrance ‘Arpège’ in 1927, which was said to have
been inspired by the sound of her daughter's practicing her scales on the piano.
Her role in the fashion industry is also one which shall not be forgotten.
One signature design of hers was Robe De Style, presented with thoughts that,
“Modern clothes need some sort of romantic quality…couturiers should be careful not to
get too prosaic and practical”. 30
This was a specialty of hers which gave her the name
as a true ‘couturière’, for true ‘haute couture’ meant designing for specific occasions for
limited number of consumers.
Giving a passing nod to stream-lined designs by Chanel
and mass production, she continued to make all her clothing by within her house, even
for the embroidery she did not hire outside workers, unlike many other designers of her
period.
Even though she never settled on a signature design to express her house, all her
designs have echoes of the girl-turning-into-a-women theme and dims the distinction
between the rigid feminity of a grown woman and the fleeting grace of a girl.
Her only
child and muse, Marguerite, was said to be more than just Lanvin’s, but a vivid
presence to everyone around her: “her elegance caused a sensation in the salons; her
pure voice was perfect for performing Poulenc songs at…gatherings patronized by the
cream of Paris…more than fulfilled the extraordinarily modest fashion designer’s
private dreams”. 31
Ginsburg, Madeleine. Paris Fashions: The Art Deco Style of the 1920s. (New York,
1989), 13.
31 Barille, Elisabeth. Lanvin. (New York, 2006), 6.
30
30
While compared to Chanel –a competitive designer during her time- Lanvin’s designs
were more close fitting, unaffected by the Art Deco movement around her, and
delightfully dated.
The romanticness made debutantes choose her dresses for their
first social appearance, and attracted many actresses and writers of the time such as
Yvonne Printemps, Mary Pickford, and Anna de Noailles.
The following article printed
in Vogue in 1945 best explains her stance, while this being an understated explanation
on her interpretation of her own designs, its modern declaration is something startling.
Lanvin was defending nothing less than the right of the designer to do the expected or
the unexpected things, to be consistent or not, light-hearted or serious – to be herself.
For many years now, those who have seen my collections have always been
eager to define a Lanvin style. I know it is often discussed, nevertheless I
have never limited myself to a particular kind of clothing and have never
sought to emphasize a specific style On the contrary, I make great efforts
every season to capture a certain mood, and use my own interpretation of
events around me to put my fleeting concept into tangible form. 32
With the Roaring Twenties swirling all over the world, functionality was demanded
for clothes to function as clothes, and the hemlines rose till the ankles were more than
exposed. With the spread of theater and cinema added to this, increased exposure of
skin became a possibility, and fashion designing threw off all restrictions and reached a
golden age.
Lanvin herself was very much involved in this change, and in 1923 she
designed costumes for 17 shows and constructed a full-sized stage set in her atelier just
for the fittings.
Regrettably, the Wall Street Crash of 1929 ended the brief, sparkling dream, and
afterwards stocks and the economy went down again until the start of World War 2.
However, one might be inclined to phrase it as a ‘false dawn’, since it was limited to only
those with enough power or money.
32
Barille, Elisabeth. Lanvin. (New York, 2006), 12.
31
1.4. Depression and War: Fashion, 1930-1945
In the world of fashion, the 1930s can be described as the schizophrenic decade.
On one hand, it is marked by the great creations of Hollywood designers like Adrian,
and Edith Head; on the other, it was a period of conservatism prompted by widespread
poverty.
Moreover, fresh challenges to the dominance of Haute Couture came not only
from American cinema, but from more readily-available sized clothing, and from the
sudden emergence of outdoor pursuits for women, especially those involving fitness and
health.
The 1930s were years of abrupt change to radical, conservative styles as countries
struggled to find solutions to the Great Depression.
After the stock market crash in
1929, the decade started off unsteadily, and it got worse by 1933.
The liberalism of the
1920s was rejected as a decade of “sin”, and religious revival and the rise of
conservatism occurred.
In Europe, Fascism, Nazism, and Stalinism dominated the
society, adopting totalitarian war-oriented economic policies such as the nationalization
of many institutes of economic importance, and it was only with the start of World War
2 in 1939 that stocks and economic height would reach its former form.
Fashion
mirrored these ideological conflicts: the fashion world no longer looked exclusively to
Paris; further, what was fashionable now revealed more than just skin: it often revealed
political and class convictions.
Cinematic Dreams
The 1890s leg-o-mutton sleeves designed by Walter Plunkett for Irene Dunne in
1931’s Cimarron helped to launch the broad-shouldered look, and Adrian’s little velvet
hat worn tipped over one eye by Greta Garbo in Romance became the ‘Empress Eugenie
hat’, which was universally copied in a wide price range, and influenced how women
wore their hats for the rest of the decade.
Adrian’s puff-sleeved gown for Joan
Crawford in Letty Lynton was copied by Macy’s in 1932 and sold over 500,000 copies
nationwide. 33
The most influential film of all was 1939’s Gone with the Wind:
Plunkett’s “barbecue dress” for Vivien Leigh as Scarlett O’Hara was the most widely
copied dress after the Duchess of Windsor’s wedding costume, and Vogue credited the
“Scarlett O’Hara” look for bringing full skirts worn over crinolines back into wedding
fashion after a decade of sleek, figure-hugging styles. 34
Movie costumes were covered
Leese, Elizabeth: Costume Design in the Movies. (New York, 1991), 18.
LaValley, Satch: “Hollywood and Seventh Avenue: The Impact of Historical Films on
Fashion”, in Hollywood and History: Costume Design in Film. (Los Angeles, 1987)
33
34
32
not only in film fan magazines, but in influential fashion magazines such as Women's
Wear Daily, Harper's Bazaar, and Vogue as well. And it was not a one-sided trade off:
Paris designers such as Schiaparelli and Lucien Lelong acknowledged the impact of film
costumes on their work: “We, the couturiers, can no longer live without the cinema
anymore than the cinema can live without us. We corroborate each others’ instinct”. 35
Moreover, the impact cinema had on fashion was more than about clothes being
copied by the mass-market and the revival of traditional patterns; it also led to the
independence of youth from the patriarchal structure that fashion had.
In the film
They Won't Forget(1937), Lana Turner made the first ‘Sweater girl’ -an informal look
for young women relying on large breasts pushed up and out by brassieres- which
continued to be influential into the 1950s, and was arguably the first major style of
youth fashion.
Sizing and Drapery
Also, the development of standard sizing contributed to the growing mass production
of clothing.
Although it was mainly in men’s clothing, the Civil War in America was a pivotal
event in the historical development of ready-made clothing.
At the beginning of the
war, most uniforms were custom-made in workers’ homes under government contract.
However, as the war continued, manufacturers started to build factories that could
quickly and efficiently meet the growing demands of the military.
Thus mass
production of uniforms necessitated the development of standard sizes. Measurements
taken of the soldiers revealed that certain sets of measurements tended to recur with
predictable regularity, and after the war, these military measurements were used to
create the first commercial sizing scales for men.
The development in women’s standard sizing and ready-made clothing was slower.
Women’s outfits continued to be custom-made well into the 1920s, and during that
decade, factors like the development of industrial production techniques, the rise of the
advertising industry, the growth of an urban professional class, and the development of
national markets accessed through chain stores and mail order catalogs contributed to
the success of the women’s ready-made apparel industry.
Instead of seeing the
purchase of mass-produced clothing as a loss of individuality, women accepted them as
convenient, affordable, and up-to-date fashion items that could be replaced easily as
styles changed.
LaValley, Satch: “Hollywood and Seventh Avenue: The Impact of Historical Films on
Fashion”, in Hollywood and History: Costume Design in Film. (Los Angeles, 1987)
35
33
However, the new ready-made clothing often fit poorly. Since each manufacturer
created its own unique sizing system based on inaccurate body data, clothing of widely
different dimensions were frequently labeled the same size by different manufacturers.
This situation resulted in additional costs for alterations and large volumes of returned
merchandise.
This, in turn, increased costs for the consumer of ready-to-wear clothing.
With mass consumerism rising during this period, haute couture seemed to be chased
up against the wall, but superb tailoring skills remained its survival technique.
While period costumes of Adrian, Plunkett, Travis Banton, Howard Greer, and
Madeline Vionnet inspired retail clothing and accessories which were influential on
what women wore until war-time restrictions on fabric stopped the flow of lavish
costumes from Hollywood, haute couture met its best years of revolutionary tailoring
technique since Worth.
Bias cutting, promoted especially by Vionnet, accentuated
body lines, curves, draped softly, and echoed the fluidity of motion.
She also fought for
copyright laws in fashion and employed what were considered revolutionary labor
practices at the time - paid holidays and maternity leave, day-care, a dining hall, a
resident doctor and dentist.
Thanks to her urbane, sensual, and architectural
approach to clothing, stars such as Marlene Dietrich, Katharine Hepburn, and Greta
Garbo were top on her lists of clients, and Vionnet's vision of the female form
revolutionized modern clothing.
World War Two
During the World War 2, women were once again back working in factories, and this
time also in the front line as nurses and working in the military itself.
Industries
depended solely on the women with the shortage of manpower continuing from the
aftermath of World War 1, and women were put to jobs building ships, aircraft, vehicles,
and weaponry.
Women also worked in factories, munitions plants and farms, drove
trucks, provided logistic support for soldiers and entered professional areas of work that
were previously limited to men.
Since wartime austerity led to restrictions on the number of clothes that people could
buy and the amount of fabric that clothing manufacturers could use, popular magazines
and pattern companies advised women on how to remake men’s suits into smart outfits,
since the men were in uniform and the cloth would otherwise sit unused.
Although
women working on war service adopted trousers as a practical necessity, most women
wore skirts near knee-length, with simply-cut blouses or shirts and square-shouldered
jackets.
In 1940, the nylon stocking was introduced in America to huge success, but
later withdrawn as all supplies were needed for military uses. When nylon stockings
34
reappeared in the shops after the war, there were “nylon riots” as customers fought over
the first deliveries.
In Britain, clothing was brutally rationed, with a system of “points”, and the Board of
Trade issued regulations for “Utility Clothes” in 1941, and in America the War
Production Board issued its regulation in 1942, specifying restrictions for every item of
women’s clothing.
With such restrictions, easily laddered stockings were a particular
concern in Britain; women were forced to either paint them on or to join the WRNS, who
continued to issue them in a cunning aid to recruitment.
Houses all over Paris like
Vionnet and Chanel closed up or transferred to America owing to the loss of consumers
and social pressure during the occupation of Paris in 1940, and fashion was relatively
undercurrent until military rations were dropped.
35
1.5. Fighting Against the Tide -Fashion’s Last Gasp: 1945-1959
The 1950s was the last time women around the world continued to submit to the
trends of Parisian haute couture. Elegance was still desirable, but so too was youth, chic
appeal, and group identity. Whilst a few wealthier women still sought out designers in
Paris, many more, less wealthy –and now the majority of the market– dressed
themselves by reference to age group, music, and television. Mass media began to
seriously erode the dominance of the old fashion system.
After the War
While the feeling of liberation was strong socially, a wave of conservatism swept the
world of fashion, and both men and women retreated back to their traditional gender
roles with the lifting of clothing restriction.
In 1947, Sears issued their biggest
catalogue in years, and featured clothing that was full of soft curves, fullness and flare:
“The new look is a long look.
Skirts are longer.
used lavishly”, said the catalogue
copy. 36
Waistlines are longer.
Fabrics are
After years of masculinity, things were
beginning to change, and fashion started reveling in femininity.
As the Harper’s
Bazaar commented, “Softer, rounder runs the…line.
You have a waist.
You have a bosom.
You have hips.
You have round, natural shoulders”. 37
However, in America, the home-coming soldiers put their GI bills to use and went to
colleges for further education and also used it to buy clothing that was more relaxed
than their tightly tailored uniforms.
Broad-shouldered drape suits were in, and cuffs
returned to trousers and the post-war styles sported generous pleats and patch pockets.
Denims also received a new boost by an outburst of cowboy films and western-style
ranch clothing, and beachwear increasingly became more exposing for both men and
women.
The baby boom provided a sense of economic optimism and lent to the spread
of consumerism, many women lost their jobs to the returning soldiers, but few took the
restricted role of 1930s’ housewife.
With more home electronics available to help with
the house work, a husband’s wife time was spent both in and out of the house, and
advertisers knew this: With drive-ins and franchises opening up everywhere, the ways
of living became faster and cheaper and more mechanic than ever.
The 1950s saw the birth of the teenager and with it, rock ’n’ roll fashion dominating
the fashion industry.
In England, the Edwardian-period-inspired Teddy Boy look
became a major subculture and rapidly spread across the UK; soon becoming strongly
36
37
Cawthorne, Nigel. The New Look: The Dior Revolution. (New Jersey, 1996), 101.
Ibid., 100.
36
associated with the American Rock and Roll music of the period. With the income
increasing among young people during the post-war period, the Teddy Boys made it
acceptable for young people to care about what one looked like all the time and dress
purely for show, instead of just having one's work or school clothes or Sunday best. 38
They were also the first youth group in England to differentiate themselves as
‘teenagers’, thus helping to create a youth market. With the universal hit of Elvis
Presley –the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll- in 1957, the Teddy Boy look remained throughout the
period as a strong phenomenon.
‘Teenagers’ was a market that was just dying to be
tapped, and the cheap drive-in theaters and movies made exclusively for teenagers lent
speed to their growing subculture.
Besides the Teddy Boy look, the Beatnik culture
was also in vogue, and leather, Levi’s, and Converse sneakers helped create the look.
Also with the famous circle and poodle skirts, ponytails, saddle shoes, penny loafers,
and colored sneakers were popular with teenaged bobby-soxers.
Sandals, ballet
slippers, and other casual footwear became increasingly fashionable as pool parties and
other casual outdoor activities became popular.
Although televisions have become popular and cheap drive-in theaters were
everywhere, cinemas also reached the golden age during this period, and movies from
around the world gathered to create a universal sensation. From Japan, movies by
Akira Kurosawa gained notice –especially Rashomon, which is considered to be one of
the greatest films of all times-, and European directors such as Federico Fellini gained
appraisal; later winning the first competitive foreign language film Oscar with La
Strada. Hollywood also experienced a breakthrough with many classics, from Ben Hur
to North by Northwest, and into the realm of comedy such as Some Like It Hot, which
starred Marilyn Monroe.
The designers of Hollywood created a particular type of
glamour for the stars of American film, and outfits worn by the likes of Marilyn Monroe,
Lauren Bacall, or Grace Kelly were widely copied.
Without even trying to keep track of
all the Paris styles, costume designers focused on their own version of classicism, which
was meant to be timeless, flattering, and photogenic. 39
Using luxurious materials such
as sequins, chiffon, and fur, the clothes were simply cut –often including some
memorable detail such as a low-cut back to a dress.
By the end of the decade,
mass-manufactured, off-the-peg clothing had become much more popular, thus granting
the general public unprecedented access to fashionable styles.
French Fashion at the Crossroads
38
39
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teddy_Boy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1950s
37
When the French fashion houses reopened after World War 2, Dior introduced the
“New Look” silhouette in 1947. [See Box 1]
The collection contained dresses with tiny
waists, emphasized busts, and full skirts swelling out beneath small bodices, in a
manner similar to the style of the Belle Epoque. The extravagant use of fabric and the
feminine elegance of the designs appealed greatly to a post-war clientele and ensured
Dior’s rise to fame.
Hemlines dropped to mid-calf, reflecting the easement of wartime
fabric restrictions, and giving a feminine look that had not been possible during times of
war.
Other than A-line full skirts, the tight ‘pencil’ skirt was also in. This was the
prevailing fashion for the next ten years, until hemlines began to rise and a more
futuristic balloon silhouette began to appear in 1958.
Box 1
Christian Dior: The Restricting Liberator
“Poor things”, said Carmel Snow, after the show, “they will have to come back”.
Christian Dior’s first collection Corolla, went largely unnoticed owing to the fact that
the French newspapers were on strike at the time and most of the American buyers had
already left with their squandering from collections by designers like Balmain, Piaget,
and Balenciaga.
However, what Carmel Snow and other viewers of the collection saw
was something new and old at the same time –and something of great opulence.
In the
midst of the austerity and hardship that most people in Europe were suffering, here was
a Frenchman who was using over 25 yards of fabric to make a skirt. Although it
almost seemed unpatriotic and scandalous at such times, this extravagance also
reminded people that the suffering was over, and peace had come at last.
1. Shy and Vivid
Born into a wealthy family in1905, Christian Dior was the second of five children and
grew up in the seaside resort of Granville, Normandy.
Dior longed to become an
architect and toyed with the idea of going to art school but, at his father’s insistence, he
enrolled at the prestigious Ecole des Sciences Politiques in Paris to take a degree in
politics which, or so his parents hoped, would prepare him for a diplomatic career.
However, he spent his days mixing in artistic circles and writing music, even producing
a ballet which was performed in the 1940s.
After graduating and serving for national
service, he borrowed money from his father to open an art gallery named Galerie
Jacques Bonjean. It exhibited some of the most avant-garde paintings of the time,
including works by Pablo Picasso, Jean Cocteau, and Georges Braque. This also was a
centre for Dior’s increasingly fast and bohemian life: “It was a question of running as
fast as possible…to enjoy the unique privilege of being at one with the century in
committing the follies of youth…we were “available” then as people are “otherwise
38
engaged” today.
I took advantage of this watchword to explore the whole of Paris, a
Paris that was new and inventive, cosmopolitan and intelligent, and prodigal of all that
was genuinely new”. 40
However, a chain of tragedy struck this carefree youth beginning with the death of his
brother and mother in 1931, and the Great Depression causing the collapse of his
family’s firm in the year after.
He was forced to sell his gallery, and over the next
couple of years scraped a living by helping out at Pierre Colle’s gallery and with help
from his friends.
After receiving instruction in fashion drawings from Jean Ozenne
and Max Kenna, Dior started to sell his sketches to haute couture houses, and
encouraged by Michael de Brunhoff –editor of Vogue- and interior designer George
Geffroy, he designed for Agnes, Schiaparelli, Balenciaga, Nina Ricci, Patou, Paquin, and
Worth from 1935 to 1938. Later on, he worked for Robert Piguet and Christian Berard.
When World War 2 started, he was called up to serve as a private first class, but after
the surrender of France, he spent his time with his father and sisters in a farm in
Provence. He enjoyed farming, but unable to forget his world of fashion, he returned to
Paris in 1941 to work at Lucian Lelong’s design studio. Dior spent the rest of the War
dressing the wives of Nazi officers and French collaborators.
2. Flower Women
France emerged from World War 2 in ruins.
Half a million buildings were destroyed.
Clothes, coal and food were in short supply. Yet there were ample opportunities for
new business ventures and fashion was no exception.
Dior was invited by a childhood
friend from Granville to revive Philippe et Gaston, a struggling clothing company owned
by Marcel Boussac, the “King of Cotton” with an empire of racing stables, newspapers
and textile mills.
Boussac met Dior and listened to his theory that the public was ready for a new style
after the War.
Dior’s description of a luxurious new look with a sumptuous silhouette
and billowing skirts had an obvious appeal to a man who owed his wealth to selling
large quantities of fabric.
Boussac agreed to patron Dior’s dream, and also installed
one of his business managers Jacques Rouëtas as director general to supervise with the
business end of the house.
February 1947.
The first Christian Dior couture show was scheduled for 12
Since clothes were still scarce and women wore the sharp-shouldered
suits with knee-length skirts that they had cobbled together as makeshift wartime
versions of Elsa Schiaparelli’s slinky 1930s silhouette, the Paris couture trade was in a
precarious state.
40
What it needed was excitement and Christian Dior delivered it in a
Cawthorene, Nigel. The New Look: The Dior Revolution. (New Jersy, 1996), 129.
39
collection of luxurious clothes with soft shoulders, wispy waists and full flowing skirts
intended for what he called ‘flower women’: “We were emerging from the period of war,
of uniforms, of women-soldiers built like boxers…I drew women-flowers, soft shoulders,
fine waists like liana and wide skirts like corolla”. 41
The New Look was absolutely appropriate for the post-war era. Indeed, by the time he
introduced his second collection, every haute couture house in Paris was presenting its
own ‘New Look’, and his couture house was swamped with orders.
The American
couture clients came back in force for the autumn 1947 collections and Dior was invited
to stage a private presentation of that season’s show for the British royal family in
London. However, his biggest clients were from America: They ranged from Hollywood
stars to New York socialites and department store buyers who bought the exclusive
rights to individual designs to be made up by their own seamstresses.
His ‘New Look’
was a huge commercial success that by 1947, it accounted for 75 percent of the fashion
export from France.
Behind the scenes Jacques Rouët built up the Dior business. The old Paris couture
houses were small operations making bespoke clothes for private clients. Some
couturiers had diversified into other products, notably Chanel and Jean Patou into
perfume, and Elsa Schiaparelli into hosiery. Being no fool, Rouët realized that the
future lay in diversifying further afield into more products and international markets.
Eager to capitalize on the publicity generated by the New Look, he opened a fur
subsidiary and a ready-to-wear boutique on New York’s Fifth Avenue as well as
launching a Dior perfume, named ‘Miss Dior’ with the American market in mind.
Dior’s approach to design was equally pragmatic.
Resisting the temptation to
experiment, he adhered to his luxurious look with the structured silhouette of padding,
starch and corsets, which was so flattering to his middle-aged clients.
He even
adhered to the same commercial formula for each collection: one third new, one third
adaptations of familiar styles and one third proven classics.
However, though his core
line was a conservative one, his clothing were nether less revolutionary, as so phrased in
Harper’s Bazaar: “Dior affects mild surprise at the furor that has greeted his designs,
for he considers them…to be simple and conservative.
But to the fashion world, his
long, billowing skirts, high small waists, and narrow shoulders, are both revolutionary
and immensely chic”. 42
In giving back the ‘natural, womanly shapes’ to the fashion
world, ironically it was constructed artificially to bring out the curves, and excessive
padding and clinching was brought back again.
41
42
Cawthorene, Nigel. The New Look: The Dior Revolution. (New Jersy, 1996), 109.
Ibid., 111.
40
Throughout the 1950s Christian Dior was the biggest and best-run haute couture
house in Paris.
The closest rivals were Pierre Balmain, Cristobál Balenciaga, and
-later on- Coco Chanel. Yet none of them had the same support structure as Dior who
-besides a professional business manager and PR- had the ‘three muses’ who worked
with him on the collections: Raymonde Zehnmacker who ran the studio; Marguerite
Carré, head of the workrooms; and Mitza Bricard, the glamorous hat designer and chief
stylist.
It was they whom he would ask to cut down the colossal amount of sketches he
drew was his collections and narrow the themes that were to be existent in his
collection.
The house was run along rigidly hierarchical lines.
Each of the sales assistants had
their own clients with whom they were expected to nurture friendly relationships.
The
ateliers were staffed by seamstresses, many of whom had worked there since leaving
school.
The models came from the same privileged backgrounds as the clients and
were hired in different shapes and sizes to show how the clothes would look on different
women.
As the most prestigious Paris couture house, Dior attracted the most talented
assistants.
When Christian Dior died in 1957 at the age of 52, the French newspaper Le Monde
hailed him as a man who was “identified with good taste, the art of living and refined
culture that epitomizes Paris to the outside world”.
Dior was correct in assuming that people wanted something new after years of war,
brutality and hardship.
His new look was reminiscent of the Belle Epoque ideal of long
skirts, tiny waists and beautiful fabrics that his mother had worn in the early 1900s.
Such a traditional concept of femininity also suited the political agenda.
Women had
been mobilized during the war to work on farms and in factories while the men were
away fighting.
In peacetime those women were expected to return to passive roles as
housewives and mothers, leaving their jobs free for the returning soldiers.
The
official paradigm of post-war womanhood was a capable, caring housewife who created a
happy home for her husband and children.
Dior’s “flower women” fitted the
matriarchal air perfectly.
Nor was he alone.
Besides Christian Dior, couturieres like Cristobal Balenciaga, Hubert de Givenchy
gained the spotlight, and Gabriel Coco Chanel again led the scene with her famous little
braided suit with gold chains, shiny costume jewelry, silk blouses in colors that matched
the suit linings, sleek tweeds, monogrammed buttons, quilted bags on chains, and
evening dresses and furs that were marvels of simplicity which was copied by women all
over the world.
41
1.6. The Agonies of Paris Fashion: 1960-late 20th century
“There seemed to be no one standing outside the bubble, and observing just how odd
and shallow and egocentric and even rather horrible it was”. 43 —Christopher Booker
It was a youth-oriented phenomenon that emphasized the new and modern: It was a
period of optimism and hedonism: It was a cultural revolution.
The Sixties are often referred to as a social revolution global in scale, and was a time
of immense change in all areas of public and private life.
In the field of science and
technology, the rivalry between the Soviet Union and America in the space race led to
many innovations and developments.
The space race heated up when Soviet orbited
the Earth and President Kennedy announced Project Apollo in 1961: The Soviets and
Americans were then involved in a race to put a man on the Moon before the decade was
over.
In the end, America won the race when it placed the first men on the Moon in
July 1969, during the Vietnam War.
In a closer field, rebellion against the conservative norms of the time occurred among
the younger generation, as well as them disassociating themselves from mainstream
liberalism. The main group from the movement was called hippies. They created a
counter-culture that eventually turned into a social revolution throughout much of the
western world.
It began in America as a reaction against the conservative social norms of the 1950s,
the political conservatism and social repression of the Cold War period, and the
government’s extensive military intervention in Vietnam.
They created a new
liberated stance for society, including the Sexual Revolution, questioning authority and
government, and demanding more freedoms and rights for women, gays, and minorities.
The sub-culture spread the use of cannabis and other recreational drugs, particularly
new semi-synthetic drugs such as LSD.
The rejection and a reformation by hippies
concerning traditional Christian notions on spirituality, led to the introduction of
Eastern and ethnic religious thinking to western values and concepts concerning one’s
religious and spiritual development.
A mass movement began rising in opposition to the Vietnam War, ending in the
massive Moratorium protests in 1969, and also the movement of resistance to
conscription for the war also occurred during this period.
The antiwar movement was
initially based on the older 1950s’ peace movement heavily influenced by the American
Communist Party, but by the mid-1960s it became a broad-based mass movement
43
Booker, Christopher. The Seventies. (London, 1980)
42
centered on the universities and churches. Stimulated by this movement were large
numbers of student-age youths, beginning with the Free Speech Movement at the
University of California, Berkeley in 1964, peaking in the riots at the 1968 Democratic
National Convention in Chicago and reaching a climax with the shootings at Kent State
University in 1970, which some claimed as proof that “police brutality” was rampant.
The Sixties has become synonymous with all the new, exciting, radical, subversive, and
somewhat dangerous events and trends of the period, which continued to develop in the
1970s, 1980s and beyond.
The youth-generated movement did not stop there; the rebels and dropouts of the
Haight –Ashbury community of San Francisco generated one of the most influential of
history’s dress reform movements. 44
Until the 1960s, Paris was considered to be the center of fashion throughout the world.
However, between 1960 and 1969 a radical shake-up occurred in the fundamental
structure of fashion: From the 1960s onward, there never would be just one single,
prevailing trend or fashion; a great plethora of possibilities, indivisibly linked to all the
various influences in other areas of people’s lives branched out to form one personal
style. Young people, with a power and culture that were all their own, were a force to
be reckoned with and had a powerful impact on the fashion industry.
For the first time
in history, there was an independent youth fashion that was not based on the
conventions of an older age group. In the past, failure to follow fashion merely suggested
class distinctions, but in the Sixties, it became just as much a statement of personal
freedom.
The hippies generated an ecological consciousness of fashion by their recycling of
vintage clothes as well as their reuse of old fabrics and hangings, out of which they cut
new garments.
They drew attention to the way that all clothes costume the wearer
into roles -some so integrated into the society that they were no longer recognized as
constructed characterization.
The fashion of the hippies was as much threat as
influence to the establishment of fashion: The hippie’s open-ended pluralism threw
down the gauntlet to the seasonable revisions proffered to women by the mainstream
fashion industry. 45
The reuse of vintage garments established a continuity between
past and present –a rejoinder to the forced amnesia of customers told that each year
marked a “tabula rasa” of consumption.
However, the most influential dye that the hippies cast to the mainstream industry
was its tactic message that the time had come to abolish the fashion designer.
44
45
It
Steele, Valerie, et al. The Encyclopedia of Fashion: Volume 2. (New York, 2005), 218.
Ibid., 219.
43
resonated as well with the burgeoning women’s liberation movement: women would no
longer be told what to wear by a designer, who was usually male. 46
With every
question of identity in Western civilization of the 1960s being debated, fashion exploded
into the realm of costume and fantasy.
“Today, nothing is out, because everything is in”,
wrote Marshall McLuhan in Harper’s Bazaar, “Every costume from every era is now
available to everyone”. 47
Many of the radical changes in fashion developed in the streets of London, with such
gifted designers as Mary Quant and Barbara Hulanicki, the founder of the legendary
boutique Biba.
Paris also had its share of new and revolutionary designers, including
Pierre Cardin, André Courrèges, Yves Saint Laurent, and Emanuel Ungaro. [See Box 1]
The main outlets for these new young fashion designers were small boutiques, selling
outfits that were not exactly one-of-a-kind, but were made in small quantities in a
limited range of sizes and colors.
and mood.
However, not all designers took well to the new style
In 1965, Coco Chanel mounted a rearguard action against the exposure of
the knee and Balenciaga resolutely continued to produce feminine and conservative
designs.
Box 1
Yves Saint Laurent: the Groundbreaker
Founded in 1961 by designer Yves Saint Lauren and his partner Piere Berge, the
haute couture house Yves Saint Lauren has not only been one of the influential
designers in fashion design, but also was a groundbreaker in fashion marketing.
Yves Saint Laurent followed up on the steps Paul Poiret took and in 1966, introduced
its first concept of luxury women’s prêt-à-porter in a collection called ‘Rive Gauche’,
which was followed in 1969 by men’s ready-to-wear line.
This line was soon spread
throughout the world and represented the first step in making luxury labels accessible
to a wider public.
1. The Father of Prêt-a-porter
The son of an insurance company manager, Yves Saint-Laurent was born on the 1st of
August 1936 in Oran, Algeria.
After submitting his sketches to Dior and getting
welcomed with open arms, he left home at the age of 18 to work for Christian Dior.
As timid as Dior himself, the young Saint Laurent flourished in the feminine
atmosphere of the couture house and contributed thirty outfits for the autumn 1957
collection, and following his mentor’s death in 1957, Yves took his mantle at the
remarkable young age of 21.
46
47
A year after his reign, he introduced the trapeze dress
Steele, Valerie, et al. The Encyclopedia of Fashion: Volume 2. (New York, 2005), 219.
McLuhan, Marshall. Harper’s Bazaar. (New York, April 1968), 164.
44
which anticipated the A-line dresses of the 1960s but retained the understructure of the
1950s. 48
Shortly after his success, he was conscripted to serve in the French army during the
Algerian War of Independence. However, after 20 days Yves was institutionalized in a
French mental hospital, where he underwent psychiatric treatment for a nervous
breakdown.
During this time he lost his work at Christian Dior, and when Pierre
Berge was assigned the duty to pass the news on to Yves, the birth of a new haute
couture house occurred.
With Pierre as a financial supporter, Yves started his own
house in 1961 and introduced his own collection in the spring of 1962.
On opening a
new couture house, Pierre Berge commented that, “Dior was the model we wished to
rival and surpass…nothing will ever replace that first collection on January 29th
1962…The day Yves won his first battle…from that moment onwards I understood that
this proud young general of all of twenty-five was going to lead us from victory to
victory”. 49
However, Yves understood that haute couture would mark time if it was not
contemporary, and –learning from Chanel-, he appropriated signs and symbols from the
world around him, transformed them and integrated them into the creative process. 50
During 1981 and 1982, the house popularized fashion trends such as the beatnik look,
safari jackets for men and women, tight pants and tall, thigh-high boots, including the
creation of arguably the most famous classic tuxedo suit for women in 1966: the ‘Le
Smoking’ suit. He also started mainstreaming the idea of wearing silhouettes from the
1920s, ‘30s and ‘40s. Knowing that haute couture meant nothing if it was a revival of
the same themes in a closed world far from reality, Yves concentrated on inspirations
from the street and his feelings, mixed together with the intuition to glamorize for a
unique style which for decades has been synonymous of the most refined and modern
elegance, with some items taken from the male wardrobe, such as the blazer, the
tuxedo, the pant suit, the leather jacket.
He was also the first designer to use black models in his runway shows.
Among his
muses were Loulou de La Falaise, Betty Catroux, Talitha Pol-Getty, and Catherine
Deneuve, the iconic French actress.
The London socialite millionaire Diane
Boulting-Casserley Vandelli was the ambassador to the couturier during the late 1970s
48
Richard, Martin and Harold Koda. Waist Not: The Migration of the Waist 1800-1960.
(New York, 1994), 12.
49
Berge, Pierre. Fashion Memoir:Yves Saint Laurent. (New York, 1997), 6.
50
Ibid., 8.
45
and early ‘80s, making the brand ever more popular amongst the European elite class.
Like Chanel, Saint Laurent ‘created’. He was the first in the 1960s to understand that
haute couture could take its inspiration from the street, not limiting itself to be a closed
world without any relation with everyday life.
His first collection for Christian Dior in
1958 after his mentor’s death was a big sensation: He introduced a gritty and irreverent
new look, which was un-politically correct for the formality of the period.
From it, it
was more than possible to sense the originality of this young designer, who, during his
entire career, has been a constant innovator; a modernizer of the female image.
During his career, Saint Laurent was arguably the industry's greatest designer.
Over the years, he received countless accolades: in 1985, he was made a Chevalier of the
Legion of Honor by President François Mitterand; in 1995, he was promoted to the rank
of Officer of the Legion of Honor, finally becoming a Commandeer six years later. His
status as a national icon was cemented when, at the final of the 1998 World Cup, near
Paris, 300 models presented a retrospective of YSL creations, to celebrate the designer's
forty years in fashion, in front of 80,000 football fans and more than 170 international
sports channels.
Decades before Giorgio Armani came with his glamorized women wearing pieces
taken from the men’s wardrobe, Yves’ devouring passion for art enabled him to create
clothes inspired by artists such as Picasso, Matisse, and Mondrian in a time when
coupling art with fashion was a novelty.
Also much in advance of others, he was the
first to enrich his collections with ethnic and folk elements coming from Africa, Spain,
Morocco, Russia and China.
His enduring love for the theatre and for literature, have
also been transposed into his clothes.
However, in 2002, dogged by years of poor health, drug abuse, depression, alcoholism,
criticisms of YSL designs and with disgust for consumerism, Saint-Laurent closed the
illustrious couture house of YSL. Paying tribute to his mentors, including Christian
Dior, Balenciaga, Schiaparelli and Chanel, he revealed that his decision was based on
disgust with an industry that had become ruled more by commercial gain than art.
“I
have nothing in common with this new world of fashion, which has been reduced to
mere window-dressing,” he said.
“Elegance and beauty have been banished”. 51
Although the house itself is gone, the ready-to-wear of this brand still survives through
its parent company Gucci, which acquired Yves Saint Laurent in 1999. The brand has
renewed the exceptional legacy of its founder while bringing a contemporary approach
51
http://www.fragrancex.com/products/_bid_Yves--Saint--Laurent-am-cid_perfume-am-lid
_Y__brand_history.html
46
to its collections, which combine elegance, top-quality fabrics, refined and discreet but
in recognizable details.
Today Yves Saint Laurent’s collections include women’s and men’s ready-to-wear,
shoes, handbags, small leather goods, jewelry, scarves, ties and eyewear.
They are
designed for both modern women who “have a keen sense of freedom and follow their
instincts with assurance, captivating others with their elegance, as well as men who
prefer a nonconformist look and assert the different facets of their personality in a
modern and sensitive way”. 52
The basic shape and style of the time was simple, neat, clean cut, and young.
Synthetic fabrics, which took dyes easily and well, were widely-used, giving rise to
colors that were both clear and bright, very much mirroring the mood of the period.
Hats suffered a great decline and by the end of the decade they were relegated to special
occasions only.
Lower kitten heels were a pretty substitute to stilettos, and pointed
toes gave way to chisel shaped toes in 1961 and to an almond toe in 1963.
Flat boots
also became popular with very short dresses in 1965 and eventually they rose up the leg
and reached the knee.
In this era, culottes were in style and the bikini finally came into fashion in 1963.
The hippie and psychedelic movements late in the decade also had a strong influence on
clothing styles, including bell-bottom jeans, tie-dye and batik fabrics, as well as paisley
prints.
In popular fashion, the glam rock style of clothing -worn by such rock
performers as David Bowie- was very influential, particularly in England.
The
designer Elio Fiorucci had a very similar look also. His boutique in Milan sold such
things as brightly colored rubber boots, plastic daisy sandals, fake fur, and Pop
Art-inspired jackets.
In the early 1960s there were influential ‘partnerships’ of celebrities and high-fashion
designers, most famously Audrey Hepburn with Givenchy, and Jackie Kennedy with
Oleg Cassini.
Also, many “supermodels” had a very profound effect on fashion, most
notably Twiggy, the plain-London-girl-turned-Cinderella, who typified the new, young,
tomboy style of the 1960s.
At one point she was on 12 covers simultaneously; as a
model, she was used by both traditional ‘glossies’ and new, youth-oriented publications.
By permanently changing magazine culture with her ‘all hits’, the idea of instant fame
was added to the deification of youth; the notion that class barriers that could be
painlessly transcended, and the problematic pursuit of a pre-pubescent ideal of
beauty. 53
52
53
http://www.ysl.com/us/en/Footer/About-YSL.aspx
Steele, Valerie, et al. The Encyclopedia of Fashion: Volume 3. (New York, 2005), 355.
47
During the 1970s, an immense movement claiming civil rights for blacks combined
with the influence of soul music from America created nostalgia for Africa and African
culture.
In competence with the punk/hippie flow of the years before, a “radical street
chic” look emerged -influenced by the likes of James Brown, Diana Ross, and the Black
Panthers- in everything from afro hairstyles to platform soles.
Also, during the 1970s brands greatly increased their share of the international
market. Hems began dropping in 1974 to below the knee, until finally reaching the
lower mid calf in 1977, which was a bit unfavorable among the American women, for it
made them look ‘aged’. Pants, on the other hand, earned unanimous approval: Jeans
profited most from becoming an accepted part of the American fashion scene in the
1970s, their new-found respectability deriving from their inclusion in collections under
the heading of sportswear.
The new stars of American ready-to-wear –Calvin Klein
and Ralph Lauren- adapted the best of what they learned from Europe to the massive
American clothing industry to tackle the question of designing clothes for the men and
women of a new world.
Also significant are the developments in Italian fashion that happened during the
period. In the course of the 1970s, as a result of its ready-to-wear industry, Milan
confirmed its status as second only to Paris as a center of international fashion.
The
“Alta moda” preferred Rome, the base of the couturiers such as Valentino and Mila
Schon.
Capitalizing on the dominant trend of anti-fashion, Italy offered a glamour
that had nothing to do with the dictates of Parisian haute couture. While profiting
from a clearly defined style, Italian fashion was luxurious and easy to wear. The most
influential Italian fashion designer of the time was probably Giorgio Armani.
Giorgio
Armani produced his first collection for women in 1975. From the outset, the line was
dynamic, urban, and understated, androgynous in inspiration.
Armani offered a
restrained style that greatly appealed to the increasing population of women who now
had access to the world of work and occupied progressively more senior positions within
it.
This was only the beginning of a tremendous career, which came to fruition in 1981
when Emporio Armani was launched.
After the ‘flower children’ of the 1960s and ‘please yourself ’ decade of the 1970s, 1980s
turned to the masculine.
While the 1970s silhouette of fashion tended to be characterized by close fitting
clothes on top with wider looser clothes on bottom, this trend completely reversed itself:
Both men and women began to wear loose shirts and tight close fitting pants.
Men
started to wear power suits as a result of the greater tendency for people to display their
wealth, and brand names became increasingly important in this decade, making Ralph
48
Lauren and Calvin Klein household names.
In America, Madonna was titled the
“Material Girl”, and many teenage girls looked to her for fashion statements.
The
popular movie Flashdance (1983) made ripped sweatshirts well-known in the general
public.
With such conflicting fashions appearing randomly across the globe, Paris started to
lose its fame as the center of fashion, and more and more haute couture houses started
to depend on a second ready-to-wear line, luxury goods, and licensing ventures for
income.
The most successful of this was Christian Lacroix, who also had, perhaps as
the last of French designers, tailoring technique and flexibility of design to be called a
real couturier. [See Box 2]
Box 2
Christian Lacroix: the Last Couturier
It seems that the name Christian has always been given to designers who would leave
a strong impression on the world of haute couture.
After the World War 2 and the
Roaring 1920s, Christian Dior presented the ‘New Look’ in 1947, which was an instant
success among women who fantasized of feminine clothing such as those seen in the
cinema, and was tired of wearing rationed clothing.
Even though it did not last long, it
managed to restrict the women who were once made free during the 1920s in corsets
again, and pushed the ideal women from the men’s point of view.
In Christian Lacroix’s case, in a time where mass-production and ready-to-wear
consumer trends was the major flow of fashion and haute couture seemed to be on the
verge of collapsing, he once again shed light on the beauty of it: strictly observing
antiquated rules and ‘by embracing nostalgia, by employing an idiosyncratic approach
which contravened the rules of marketing, and by acting on the whim of the moment’. 54
In this way, he performed a dramatic coup de theatre and became an instant hit with
the public.
1. His Eternal Muse: Arles
In the sleepy town of Arles, Christian Lacroix was born in May of 1951.
Here, he
was to find the sources of his inspiration and heritage, which came from the enduring
tradition of this former Roman colony, with its magnificent remains, lively
amphitheatre, proud language and strong sense of identity, which would earn him the
status as a reluctant hero of the glamorous world of fashion. 55
I have personally always hovered between the purity of structures and the
54
Baudot, Francois. fashion memoir: Christian Lacroix. (New york, 1996), 5.
55
Ibid., 7.
49
ecstasy of ornaments. Because Couture is both at the same time. I know I
shall always detest emptiness and that I shall fill it with flowers, painting,
or something similar. I know that I shall always be the Mediterranean
man of paseos, of the Lices and of those processions combining
ornamentation with allure, gypsies from the Ganges with bohemians from
Kensington. I know that I shall always love snobbery, the real kind, when
it signifies the right to be different, when it's about elegance, about the
humble spangles of traveling shows.
At the end of the 20th Century,
Couture will survive if it manages to situate itself coherently between
luxury ready-to-wear, that it must not be, and radical creativity that is not
its role. 56
An enterprising man of other things beside fashion, he was a learned man in the field
of art, music, and theater, and also a traveling performer at heart. Brought up in
Saints-Marie-de-la-Mer alongside gypsy caravans, he was thrilled by the small
fairground theaters, basking in the occasional splendors of the festivals at Aix, Orange
and Avignon.
“Theater for me was above all what I did for myself.
As a child I
enjoyed making costumes and putting them on little cardboard cutout figures.
I would
then redesign the costumes when I came back from the theatre”. 57 This created his
independent look -which was something of the future rather than a ‘tabula rasa’ of the
past-, and radically altered the accepted rules governing the development of haute
couture.
The finest signs of personal identity are always to be found in what is
ephemeral, particular, and unique.
Luxury in itself must achieve
individuality, a difference, a personal dandyism - not an esthetically
outdated middle class. I believe that we only have one thing to say but that
this thing consistently evolves. It is this consistency within change that
determines a style…Couture is mad, contradictory, unpredictable, and most
of all, it's stronger than I am. 58
During his time in Paris studying art history and museum studies at the Sorbonne
and the Ecole du Louvre, he met up with his life-long partner Françoise, who helped
him make his fantasy world come true.
After working at Hermes as an illustrator and
experiencing being an assistant to Guy Paulin for a while, he became the chief designer
at Jean Patou and worked there for 5 years before opening his own house.
56
57
58
http://www.christian-lacroix.fr/english/biograph/cdrev.htm
Ibid.
Ibid.
50
The
introduction of his first collection in 1987 was one that verged on the orgasmic: the
press was in raptures over his use of froufrou, textural mix and wonderful flair for
theatrically.
Lacroix scored a double whammy: he blew the cobwebs away from Paris
couture and brought in the puffball skirts at the same time. 59
His revival of the ‘old
world’ in a romantic, full-blown rose was one that distinguished itself from the ones
which were mainly on full-on sexuality.
Inspired by his childhood home Arles, Picasso,
and Cecil Beaton, he continued producing clothing with resolution that was not to make
any heavy-handed or risky recuperation, with its incumbent misunderstandings; but
understanding at the same time that the sensitive lucidity of a positive eye can only
re-state the importance of drawing inspiration from the street and from the outside
which then serves to enrich a person on the inside. 60
In 1988, he produced his first ready-to-wear collection which was inspired from
culture cross-breeding, created with insight that we must go one step further and
beyond toward the next generation who bound to have another approach to clothing, to
consumer-buying and luxury. 61
The following year, he produced an accessories line and
a year later, launched the perfume C’est la Vie!
After extending his empire worldwide,
he launched his sportswear collection Bazar followed by furnishing fabrics in 1995 and
jeans the year after with thoughts to diversify in order to propose a specific product, to
learn another trade, to bend to other demands. In other words, always tell a new story.
Now a universal uniform, jeans also let the imagination run riot and I have a lot of fun
transforming them with embroidery, coordinating them, applying them with lace...
while leaving their natural, subtle and chic style intact. 62
While haute couture in the 20th century proved flexible and resilient in face of radical
social transformations, it remained inbuilt in the society. However, in the 1960s and
beyond, it was under siege.
As Coco Chanel demonstrated with her use of jersey and
fake jewelry, luxury need not imply riches to become fashionable.
With mass
consumerism and mass media blowing a prevailing wind, haute couture could no longer
stand where it had stood since the beginning of the 18th century: For in a mass market
world, the penalty for refusal to change was death.
The time was ripe for a change, and a change from an unexpected direction: Japan.
59
60
61
62
Watson, Linda. 20th Century Fashion. (Ontario, 2004), 280.
http://www.christian-lacroix.fr/english/biograph/cdrev.htm
Ibid.
Ibid.
51
Part Two
Three Designers’ Tales:
Japan and the World of Haute Couture
52
Part 2
Nowadays, designers of Japanese nationalities have gained an unquestionable
position among the fashion industry, but what is it that gives them such status among
the innumerable number of designers today? While the runway designs of Miyake,
Yamamoto, and Kawakubo strive toward theatricality, visual splendor, and organic
movement much like the costumes of the Noh, and is celebrated for fusing age-old
couture tailoring with Japanese design ethos, it is not only these essences which gives
their names the respect that is seen today. 63
In this chapter, I analyze 3 Japanese designers –Issey Miyake, Yohji Yamamoto, and
Rei Kawakubo- and illustrate how they were able to save haute couture from the brink
and bring it back with a new power and view.
My purpose is to highlight the
rejuvenating effect the fresh inputs with regard to fabric, cutting, and drapery had,
especially when combined with a very different ethos both for clothes and the wearer of
clothes.
2.1. Not ‘of ’ the street, but in response to it…
Trickle-up of Street Fashion
The shift from high culture to popular culture in the late 20th century resulted in
recognition that innovations in matters of arts, music, and dress can derive from all
social strata rather than, as previously, only from upper classes.
While the
high-fashion world remained largely impervious to influences from outside the tight
atmosphere of elite-designers and their wealthy customers, the system of perpetual
style change that is called “fashion” was developed, and a broader perspective on dress
revealed a growing appreciation of styles and fabrics with distinct, explicit working or
lower-class roots and connotations. 64
Items such as denim –originally worn only by
male manual workers- was featured in Sears catalogue of 1947 as casual wear for both
women and children, and the flamboyant, extravagant, zoot-suited “hipster” styles of
black jazz musicians increasingly influenced the styling of the time.
As more and more
of those who had looked up only to upper-style for inspiration before began to be
influenced by these “working class styles”, the previous ‘trickle-down’ flow of designs
was replaced with a ‘trickle-up’ back current; which loosened the stranglehold the upper
da Cruz, Elyssa. “Miyake, Kawakubo, and Yamamoto: Japanese Fashion in the
Twentieth Century”. In Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum
of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/jafa/hd_jafa.htm (October 2004)
64 Steele, Valerie et al., Encyclopedia of Clothing and Fashion: Volume 2. (New York,
2000), 225.
63
53
class had on ‘good taste’ and gave way for the emergence of street style as a potent,
energizing force.
After World War 2, the standardization of life led to the increased appeal of
‘alternative’ lifestyles for individuals in search of ‘authenticity’, and clothing styles of
both the ‘outlaw’ and those ‘from the wrong side of the track’ became attractive as
symbolic totems of escape from the reality.
Also, the baby boomers born just after the
war came to represent a new sociocultural category –the “teenager”- that became a
significant focus of the economic and cultural worlds by their expenditures in numbers
and money. With the rapid decline of traditional sociocultural divisions such as class,
race, religion, and nationalism, fashion offered a much needed sense of community
–especially for teenagers who were beginning to separate from the parental family but
not yet having created their own family unit: Every street “look” brought with it an
entire lifestyle package; values, beliefs, philosophy, and, often hoped, a new, alternative,
community.
However, the growing complexity and pluralism of the postmodern age made it
increasingly harder for haute couture to preserve its power and control over the fashion
industry as the possibility of progress, the value of uniformity, and the desirability of
transience became questioned. 65
Owing to the society moving from a linear,
chorological classification of information to a connective, interactive one, the fashion
phenomenon encompasses shifting patterns of consumerism, ideas of public image and
a sense of individualism, enriched by music, film and literature, fine art and
philosophy. 66 This being so, fashion became a perfect vehicle for mass consent to an
expressive individualism.
The offer of ‘alternative’ choice and its capacity to ‘say’
something different about those who wear it gave street fashion a key position in this
postmodern age, and besides stylistically inspiring the designers to look to “the street”,
it has changed the function of clothing for the consumer; how it is purchased, worn, and
valued, has moved away from the world of Dior’s “New Look” to a field defined by
suburbanization, mass marketing, franchising, and other changes unknown before.
As a result of highly talented stylists, who in the 1990s began consciously to combine
the runway clothes with high street and ethnic items even in top-of-the-range-fashion
magazines such as Vogue, the social pressure to conform to a single prevailing style has
been lifted. No more are the days when consumers would seek out a “total look” from a
particular designer: the construction of a presentation of self is increasingly seen as the
Steele, Valerie et al., Encyclopedia of Clothing and Fashion: Volume 2. (New York,
2000), 226.
66 Wilcox, Claire. “I Try Not To Fear Radical Things”. Radical Fashion. (London, 2001),
5.
65
54
work of the creative individual.
Some clearly identifiable seasonal trends are still on
offer, but the turn of the century has undoubtedly witnessed the release from linear
developments in fashion. 67
New Age Designers
“Their obsession with disorder and asymmetry, with luminosity and violent colors, with
the renewal of visual sensibility, led them…to conceive a mode of dress that integrates
the sensations of movement, in order for their dress to reflect the energy of a new urban
society.” 68 –Crispolti, Enrico.
In an era where stylistic inspirations for designs are ‘trickle-up’ and more a mimic of
the numerous subcultures picked up by the media, designers come and go; and clients
too.
Before the emergence of designer ready-to-wear after the World War 2, over
40,000 clients sought for the luxurious garments which were couture made –a status in
itself.
Nowadays, haute couture is only the preserve of some 2000 women who are able
to afford this luxury, evoking some journalists –and even the odd designer- to forecast
‘the death of couture’. While the rise of publicity –and thus the rise of ready-to-wear
sales- make up for the cost of a seasons catwalk in gold, haute couture was nevertheless
dancing to its last tune; dwindling from center stage and barely escaping the black hole
named ‘mass market fashions’.
However, a new wave of designers rose up to take haute couture in its hands and take
the high-fashion world entangled in its traditions down a new road: Designers whom
Claire Wilcox defines as “radical designers”.
Such radical designers on her lists are:
Hussein Chalayan -a man defiantly independent of commerce; Iconoclastic designers
Vivienne Westwood and Jean Paul Gaultier –both pursuers of nostalgia through a lock
in to an historical narrative; Alexander McQueen –an explorer of borders previously
untouched by fashion: the violence of desire; Helmut Lang –a balancer of decadence and
classicism; and Japanese designers –creators of inspired, uncompromising pieces and
challengers of Western fashion.
While each stands out as individual designers with unique, radical approach to
clothing, what this group of designers have in common is that their craft basis of work is
achieved while embracing changes in technology –not as a substitute but for its own
qualities.
In their careers, they have uncompromising and highly influential positions
in contemporary fashion, but underlying radical appearances lie craft skills learnt
Laver, James. Costumes and Fashion: A Concise History. (New York, 2004), 291.
Sischy, Ingrid. ‘The “Futuristic Reconstruction” of Fashion’. Art/Fashion. (New York,
1996), 41.
67
68
55
through years of refinement, experimentation and sheer hard work –but craft that
embraces technology. 69 And even in this group of leading designers, it is the visionary
Japanese designers who have changed the face of fashion.
“Described
as
innovative
and
challenging,
eminently
wearable
or
utterly
incomprehensible, works by Issey Miyake, Rei Kawakubo…Yohji Yamamoto…stands
independently
on
fashion’s
global
stage,”
says
Amy
de
la
Haye.
“Ardent
internationalists, these designers are disdainful of any joint categorization by virtue of
their shared ethnicity; indeed they might argue that the notion of ‘Japaneseness’ is
irrelevant in an industry that transcends national boundaries. Yet, in exploring their
aesthetic and working practices, there are threads that bind.” 70
69
5.
Wilcox, Claire. “I Try Not To Fear Radical Things”. Radical Fashion. (London, 2001),
Wilcox, Claire. “A Dress is No Longer a Little, Flat Closed Thing”. Radical Fashion.
(London, 2001), 29.
70
56
2.2. Japanese Culture, Western Life
History
Since the signing of the commercial treaty with America in 1854 which opened the
door to the ‘outside world’, Japanese have enthusiastically borrowed and adapted
Western styles and practices.
A parliamentary form of government was instituted, and
Western educational and technological practices were adopted also, a phenomenon
which encouraged the spread of Western clothing –a desirable symbol of modernization.
By the 1890s, traditional Japanese clothing was being coordinated with Western
clothing, and both men and women have more of less adopted Western fashions.
At the same time, Japanese goods were also a trend in the West.
The open-up of Japan’s doors enabled the West to come in contact with Japanese
culture for the first time, and by the end of 19th century, Japan was everywhere; from
fashion to interior design to art.
This trend was called “Japonisme”, and appreciation
for Japanese art and object intensified all the more with World Fairs exhibited during
this era when media was not known.
After the World War 2, Western fashion literally replaced traditional clothing, and as
the economy prospered in the 1980s, Japanese fashion and apparel industries expanded
rapidly and became very profitable as consumers became more fashion-conscious. This
general assimilation of western tailoring and fashion clothing has, whether for good or
bad, formed a dominant image of the representation of modern Japan: To western eyes
the decline of traditional dress has done much to erode occidental fantasies of an
oriental ‘other’.
To the Japanese the rise of transient fashions, otherwise symbolic of
emancipation and modernity, have in times of conflict with the West been condemned as
insidious capitalist manipulation. 71
It was among this distort that designers like
Miyake embarked on their fashion careers –which radically influenced western fashion
and changed the face of haute couture forever.
‘Japanese’ or ‘designers’?
Though the respective collections of these designers are often inextricably linked to
their derivations of or deviations from Western fashion, each has used Japan's rich
visual heritage as a foundation for aesthetic, social, and sometimes political collages of
cultures worldwide. 72
Although recognized for their achievements because of their
Wilcox, Claire. “A Dress is No Longer a Little, Flat Closed Thing”. Radical Fashion.
(London, 2001), 29.
72 da Cruz, Elyssa. “Miyake, Kawakubo, and Yamamoto: Japanese Fashion in the
Twentieth Century”. In Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum
71
57
“Japaneseness” reflected in their designs –called “the Japanese fashion” in some circlesthis was a miss-classification, for it was called so only because these clothing were
definitely not Western in construction, silhouettes, shapes, prints, or combination of
textiles.
Born and raised within a society that simultaneously embraced western popular
culture while preserving native customs, the tension between these conflicting, dual
identities are explored in collections that reveal a hybrid east-west influences. 73
While the source of their design inspirations comes from symbols of Japanese culture
without question, their uniqueness is in their deconstruction of traditional concept of
clothing and the reconstruction of new rules of what fashion is and can be.
By
promoting Western societies to reassess the concept of clothing and fashion and also the
universalism of beauty, they were labeled as creative and innovative and were given the
status and privilege previously available only to Western designers. 74
Issey Miyake, from the first generation of Japanese designers, laid the foundation for
avant-garde designers worldwide in Paris and paved the way, especially the Japanese
ones in particular. [See Box 1]
Best known for his original fabrics, Miyake challenged
not only the conventions of garment construction, but also the normative concept of
fashion.
By breaking the Western convention of fashion, he suggested the new style
and new definition of aesthetics.
create a style based on life”.
75
As he says, “I do not create a fashionable aesthetic…I
Opposing against usage of the words “haute couture”,
“mode”, and “fashion” because these words imply a sense of novelty, he has stretched the
boundaries of fashion and destroyed all previous definition of clothing and fashion.
Miyake’s concept that there is beauty in the unfinished and neglected had a major
impact on fashion.
“In the Eighties, Japanese fashion designers brought a new type of
creativity; they brought something Europe didn’t have.
There was a bit of a shock
effect, but it probably helped the Europeans wake up to a new value”. 76
Box 1
Issey Miyake: The Innovator of Consumer Design
On starting his series of lectures under the title “Pushing the Boundaries”, facing a
crowd of art school students and teachers, Miyake said the following words: “Design is
of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/jafa/hd_jafa.htm (October 2004)
Wilcox, Claire. “A Dress is No Longer a Little, Flat Closed Thing”. Radical Fashion.
(London, 2001), 29.
74 Steele, Valerie et al., Encyclopedia of Clothing and Fashion: Volume 2. (New York,
2000), 263.
75 Mendes, Valerie, and Amy de la Haye. 20th Century Fashion. (London, 1999), 233.
76 Wood, Dana. “Miyake’s Lust for Life”. Women’s Wear Daily. (December 18, 1996), 32.
73
58
the link between commerce and innovation”. 77
Indeed, looking on past collections and retracing his steps in his search for the
meaning of clothes, one can only agree with his choice of word: ‘innovation’ is the best
way to explain Miyake’s clothes.
1. Birth of the Child
Born in 1937, Issey Miyake was 7 years old when the atomic bomb exploded in his
native city, Hiroshima. He never speaks about what he saw then or the death of his
mother –who died 4 years after the bombing, surviving from the burns- but it is obvious
that these experiences provided both inspirations and strength.
Graduating the Tama Art University in 1964 where he studied graphic design, he
went to study in the Ecole de la Chamber Syndicate de la Couture Parisienne. He
mentions that these years were very important, but at the same time that, “the ideas of
‘beauty’ and the body were too rigid for me.
1968.
The ideas were displaced by the freedom of
I couldn’t continue with the formality of ‘Madame, please’.” 78
With an internal struggle within himself, he quit work and hung out on the streets
where people were out demonstrating, and also went to London on weekends, which had
a significant impact on him,
said.
“To me, French culture seemed heavy and cerebral”, he
“In contrast I loved the excitement of London and I identified with the spirit of
the place. I then gained the self–confidence to continue along the line in which I had
always believed.
I gained a power to realize a dream for the future.” 79
After working under Givenchy for whom he had much respect, he went to New York
with intentions never to return to Japan, but the Expo of 1970 changed his mind.
Working with Toray and other textile industries, he produced new kinds of fabrics –and
designs inspired from these cloths- which gained much attention during the Expo.
In
the same year he founded the Miyake Designing Studio, and started presenting clothes
which can be described as “a celebration of ‘fun’ of dressing expressively…timeless yet
modern” 80.
When asked to describe his clothes, Miyake said that, “Sometimes my clothes are
radical, probably, sometimes challenging, but I try not to fear radical things.” 81
As one
of the ground-break-designers with Japanese nationalities, Issey Miyake’s collections
77
78
79
80
2.
81
Holborn, Mark. Issey Miyake. (Koln, 1995), 16.
Ibid., 24.
Ibid.
Wilcox, Claire. “I Try Not to Fear Radical Things”. Radical Fashion. (London, 2001),
Interview with Issey Miyake. Guardian Weekend. (London, 1997)
59
have a stance of breaking and remodeling the concept of what clothes are in shape and
texture.
2. East meets West
One of Issey’s representative collections from his early career is East Meets West.
From the time he founded his own design studio, he has sought a conflation of
Eastern and Western aesthetic ideals, incorporating the imagery of African and Middle
Eastern textile decoration into his tailored ensembles. He did not try to invent a new
style of western clothing, admitting that, and “western clothing is already perfect. I
realized that, even if I tried, there is not much I could do to improve it.” 82
So instead, he strived to bring the traditional Japanese clothes back into real life, and
create a new genre of clothing which was, “something different, not traditionally
Japanese, not purely Western, but something which has the best of both”. 83 This, he
claims, is his challenge as a clothing designer and what he has repeatedly presented
over the years: from the tattooed second-skin design featuring faces of the late Jimi
Hendrix and Janis Joplin to the silicone bustier presented in his Bodyworks tour of
1986.
“East Meets West existed as words which expressed the possibility of indefinite,
eternal human qualities”, he says. “The title created a framework for my work, and
functioned as a creator.
It was not intended to be more than a small window through
which to observe my work.” 84
Thus, after doing an exhibition titled the “A-UN” in 1988
and published a book with Irving Penn, Miyake put an end to the East/West dialogue.
3. Pleats Please: The Consumer Finished Clothing
Another line that still continues, ‘Pleats Please’ was a series which had both design
and textile innovations mixed together to form simple, functional pieces of clothing at
no great expense.
In a way, it was Miyake’s ‘blue jeans’: he had aimed to create “an
‘easy style’, like that of the jeans and T-shirt, but one that could be worn in a wider
milieu; of apparel that, regardless of age or profession, could possess a modern kind of
beauty while still being functional; of a style that would stay trend-free”. 85 Using a
lightweight, easy-care stretch polyester fabric that could be permanently pleated and
accommodate any body movement, Miyake designed a new kind of pleats by feeding the
fabric diagonally into the pleating machine and also pleating after making the clothes,
not before.
When asked why pleats were chosen as his new framework, he says, “Pleats move and
change form with the wearer’s body movements.
82
83
84
85
Japan Today, lecture, (San Francisco, 1983)
As the pleats move they change
Ibid.
Holborn, Mark. Issey Miyake. (Koln, 1995), 44.
Kazuko, Sato. Issey Miyake Freedom Clothes. Domus, 798 (1997), 102.
60
colors, giving an optical illusion like a kaleidoscope.
for me and also inspire a multitude of
images”. 86
Pleats contain endless fascination
The flat pleats that had lain on the
floor became voluminous and alive, transformed from graphic shapes to sculptural form
with the existence of the wearer.
On creating the series, he manufactured several heat-embossing and texturing
processes through the Miyake Design Studio collective and working with the textile
designer Makiko Minagawa, manipulated knitwear and synthetics after a garment was
constructed by infusing pleats and bumps into otherwise tranquil weaves.
4. A-POC
The ‘A Piece of Cloth’ (thus A-POC) is the newest concept Miyake is dealing with right
now, and to focus more fully on this topic, he has handed over his reigns of his mainline
collection to Naoki Takizawa.
A-POC continues to explore the relationship between
clothing and human body, and has come to represent Miyake’s innovative artistic
ideology.
Taking a single piece of cloth –mainly constructed from Raschel-knit tubes
produced by computer programming to minimize waste-, Miyake's APOC designs
attempted to “enhance tactile exploration, providing a strong material foundation to
clothe the body naturally”. 87
Another thing that sets A-POC aside from the other collections is its stance as being
left completely in the hands of the viewer to finish it: “All that stands between the
wearer and their clothing is a pair of scissors by which to free them.
The lines of
demarcation create a pattern of surface design that in turn becomes structural seams.
The wearer needs only to select and free her choice.” 88
When the roll is unfurled, an
entire wardrobe is presented, but these are all trapped within the lines of demarcation,
and the choice is completely up to the wearer: she makes the choice to ‘wear’ the clothes.
In contrast to Issey Miyake -who was more of a sculpture of clothing, Yohji Yamamoto
and Rei Kawakubo wrapped and draped great swathes of fabric around the body
–foregrounding form and texture-, and exploited the full width of their loosely woven
and pre-washed fabrics to create oversize garments that moved sensually with and
independently of the wearer.
The duo reveled in calculated disarray, offering garments
with a lived-in appeal, which were often multi-purpose, could be worn in a variety of
Ten Sen Men, Hiroshima, (1990)
“Issey Miyake: Dress (2003.79.3)”. In Timeline of Art History. New York: The
Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–.
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/ho/11/eaj/ho_2003.79.3.htm (October 2006)
88 Wilcox, Claire. “A Dress is No Longer a Little, Flat Closed Thing”. Radical Fashion.
(London, 2001), 34.
86
87
61
ways and eroded occasion-specific formalities. 89
Yohji Yamamoto is one of the few designers in the industry who have broken down the
boundaries between commodities and successfully blended them into a single,
unwavering style that is ‘Yohji style’.
From athletic shoes to couture-inspired gowns
that are nothing short of malleable mobile sculptures, this master craftsman and
philosophical dreamer has balanced the seemingly incompatible extremes of fashion’s
competing scales. 90 While his works are often mistakenly referred to as having its
roots in his Asian heritage, the reality is that his clothing which appeared unfinished,
tattered, and often haphazardly put together was as shocking to the average Japanese
as to the West.
From his earlier designs which focus on deconstruction in search for universal
expression of design to his recent designs which embrace the sweeping romanticism of
postwar Parisian haute couture, Yamamoto’s historical recontextualizations contrasts
sharply with the designs of other marquee designers. 91 [See Box 2]
Box 2
Yohji Yamamoto: The ‘Big’ Man
“My most important concern about fashion is still about breaking some code, some
tendency, which I do by using fashion.” –Yamamoto, Yohji. 92
Said to be the designer most visited every year after doing his Paris collection, Yohji
Yamamoto is one of the most important and influential designers in the current world of
haute couture.
He nods to history and innovations while giving no quarters when it
comes to his own designs, which has given sheen to his reputation as a radical, but
responsive designer.
1. In Her Steps…
Born in 1943, Yamamoto lost his father in the war, and he lived with his mother who
worked as a seamstress to keep the food on the table.
He enrolled into the Keio
University to study law, but his passion was for fashion, not law, and after graduation
he went to Bunka school to study more professionally. Following a trip to Paris for a
while then coming back to help his mother, he established his own label in 1971. He
held his first show in Tokyo in 1977, and his Paris debut in 1981. Like his then
Wilcox, Claire. “A Dress is No Longer a Little, Flat Closed Thing”. Radical Fashion.
(London, 2001), 30.
90 Steele, Valerie et al., Encyclopedia of Clothing and Fashion: Volume 3. (New York,
2000), 453.
91 Ibid., 454.
92 Interview with Yohji Yamamoto by Susannah Frankel. Guardian Weekend: Fashion
Special. (London, 1996), 4.
89
62
girlfriend, Rei Kawakubo of Comme Des Garcons, his Paris debut was a great hit, and
his label became a status symbol amongst urban creative types.
In contrast to Kawakubo’s designs, Yamamoto’s clothes are expansive in outlook,
blurring the notions of history, culture and nation, while acknowledging that fashion is
each.
He is a superb tailor and his softly structured silhouettes give a silent proof to
his innovative skills. Another beautifier of imperfection, he “dismissed neat and tidy
as boring…often inspired by the ill-fitting and disheveled tailoring finally consigned to
Dickensian waifs”. 93
Often described as a purist, he is also a humorist who has made mock of the fashion
system in his past collections.
In his collection of his 1998 S/S runway, he sent Jodie
Kidd down the runway wearing a hat so large that it was supported by four men, and
wearing an over-exaggerated hoop skirt bridal gown.
Concerning this, his only
comment was that he was playing up to mass-market perceptions that fashion was
extravagant and stupid. 94
Another collection that poked not-so-gentle fun was the
runway for 2007 A/W, where his first top model appeared wearing a monogram trench
coat much like Louis Vuitton and even pulling a trunk with the same logo on it.
It
caused quite a stir, but just as Kawakubo cast doubt against mutely accepted
conventions, so does he against the fashion industry itself.
As can be seen when asked
his thoughts on ‘fashion’, Yamamoto knows that fashion is changing everyday and is not
something that is perfect for long unless it adapts to the world outside fashion.
If fashion is clothes, then it is not indispensable. But if fashion is a way
of looking at our daily lives, then it is very important indeed…Fashion is
a unique and fundamental form of communication, that has to do with
the feelings of a generation wearing clothes it has chosen…Making a
garment means thinking about people.
I am always eager to meet
people and talk to them. It’s what I like more than anything…I start
with the fabric, the actual material, the “feel” of it. I then move on to
the form. 95
2. Silhouette in its purest form
On breaking away from the conception of what clothes should be, Yamamoto did it by
breaking the visual codes that clothes give when accepted mutely; “by rethinking the
glamorous signals sent out by their external appearance; by redefining their
Wilcox, Claire. “A Dress is No Longer a Little, Flat Closed Thing”. Radical Fashion.
(London, 2001), 31.
94 Ibid., 32.
95 Baudot, Francois. Yohji Yamamoto. (New York, 2005), 12.
93
63
relationship with the male or female body; and, ultimately…by radically reinterpreting
the respective contributions of beauty and ugliness, past and future, memory and
modernity. 96 One of his main tools in this accomplishment was by using the color
black, so called the “ultimate darkness and universal silhouette”.
Whenever one looks at Yamamoto’s collections, one cannot help but notice how devoid
of jewelry, decoration, and other forms of embellishment. There is only one form of
accessory and that is the clothes themselves and nothing else. This is emphasized
even more by the color of black –a color of mystery and darkness.
It is also this color
which makes his designs a ‘classic’: stripped of all boundaries and reduced to their
essentials, timeless and ageless.
The only beauty is in the clothing, and that is a
beauty accomplished by tailoring, an unseen craftsmanship. There was once a brightly
colored collection which he did in 2004 A/W, saying, “I just wanted to prove I can do
color”, although adding jokingly that these flowery patterns were inspired from “a cheap
hotel”. 97
3. Overbearing darkness
In the interview enclosed within Tachen’s Fashion Now 2, Yamamoto answers his
signature design as “anything over-sized”. 98
By blowing the silhouette of the clothes
out of proportion, Yamamoto managed to free the body from its silhouette and identity
that goes with its shape.
What used to be men’s clothing becomes unisex or less and
the same goes for female clothing…all that remains in reference to sexual identity is the
conceptions within our minds about what sex this piece of clothing ‘used to go to’ or not.
Over-sized can give a feeling of masculine power and feminine elegance at the same
time; a balance Yamamoto is sure to weigh equally against.
His draping techniques
are used in reference to early methods of clothes binding, and by inserting adjustable
straps everywhere on his clothes, it is possible to manipulate the dimensionality –and
thus the shadow- of the piece in a way befitting to the wearer’s opinion.
my clothes to make a statement”, Yamamoto says. 99
“People wear
With the appliance of black and
adjustable silhouette, the final coloring is left to the consumer who may use it as a form
of communication with the power of choice to back the statements made.
4. Parts Enchantment –Thought Identity
In line with his over-sized clothing, Yamamoto has always included in his designs
pieces that were over-exaggerated that that itself became the identity of the clothes.
96
97
98
99
Baudot, Francois. Yohji Yamamoto. (New York, 2005), 9.
http://www.style.com/fashionshows/collections/F2004RTW/review/YJIYMOTO
Jones, Terry et al. Fashion Now 2. (Koln, 2005), 521.
Baudot, Francois. Yohji Yamamoto. (New York, 2005), 9.
64
It
has been ties, collars, tails, or the pattern of cloth.
Any one of these is the fundamental
part of the identity of clothes, and by marking these pieces as the center piece for the
overall design, Yamamoto presents what it means to have that piece which most people
do not even notice when wearing it. A single way of binding has the power to turn the
piece into western or eastern clothing depending on the angle it is tied, and thus
Yamamoto cuts the pieces out to strip the clothes’ identity out where there is no
escaping it, and again asks what the identity of clothes are in any genre.
The sole female designer in this group of Japanese designers, Rei Kawakubo could be
phrased as the most uncompromisingly severe and challenging designer of them all.
Never relying on the standardized concepts of fashion when creating her own designs,
her designs often revel against the Western aim to contour the body and general gender
ideals.
With her label “Comme Des Garcons” –named after the title of a French
soldier’s song meaning “Like the Boys”-, she designed clothes that eschewed
conventional sexuality. “Not what has been seen before, not what has been repeated;
instead, new discoveries that look toward the future, that are liberated and lively” was
the message from Comme Des Garcons in the spring of 1997. 100
Box 3
Rei Kawakubo: The Self-taught Deconstructer
Self-taught designer Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garcons has always been
unhindered by tradition or convention.
Unlike Issey Miyake, who has preferred to
avoid controversy even when presenting radical designs, the first show in Paris for
Comme Des Garcons caused a “furor”, as Amy de la Hay phrases it.
To express exactly
how much of a furor it was, she has noted the contrast between Paris couture and
Kawakubo’s designs as, “at this time impeccable grooming, daytime power-dressing and
ultra feminine, fantasy evening wear was in vogue. The contrast could not have been
greater”. 101
1. From Keio to Paris
Rei Kawakubo was born in Tokyo in 1942.
After studying philosophy at Keio
University, she worked in advertising for a textile company and as a photographic
stylist, acquiring skills needed for future endeavors.
She began work as a freelance
stylist in 1967, and established Comme Des Garcons in 1973 –starting with a women’s
line-, and added the men’s line in 1978.
Comme De Garcon first introduced its collection in Paris in 1981, and it was
Fukai, Akiko, et al. Fashion: A History from the 18th to the 20th Century. (Koln, 2005),
648.
101 Wilcox, Claire. “A Dress is No Longer a Little, Flat Closed Thing”. Radical Fashion.
(London, 2001), 30.
100
65
something of a shock: Rei Kawakubo presented clothes that challenged mutely accepted
conventions, and her use of dark colors like brown, grey, black, and white was dubbed as
‘Hiroshima Chick’.
In the 1980s she was strongly inclined to use such colors, but as
times changed, she began to use other colors such as red, orange, and pastel pink also.
However, most of these colors are tied up strongly for what they symbolically stand for
and used as an expression of passion rather than random coloring.
Reactions to her collections were extreme, said to have reached a crescendo with
Comme Des Garcons’ A/W 1983 show, and “ultimately, many were enchanted, sensing
that, like Miyake, the genius of Yamamoto and Kawakubo lay in their ability to create
radical yet wearable fashion for women of various ages and sizes.” 102
This was
achieved owing to her –and Yamamoto’s- use of wrapping and draping great swathes of
fabric around the body, instead of molding it along the contours of the body like western
fashion.
While Rei Kawakubo’s line has inspired many young designers such as
Martin Margiela, Ann Demeulemeester, and Helmut Lang, none has yet reached the
free-thinking experimentalism which characterizes her from the other designers.
She
won the Mainichi Fashion grand prize in 1983, and was honored as one of the leading
women in 20th century design by the Fashion Institute of Technology in 1987.
2. Touch-Inspiration
According to an article from Jap, when asked what she envisions while designing, Rei
Kawakubo answered:
やっぱり見たり着た人がドキドキしたり、何かを感じることじゃないですか。
それがなかったら意味がないと思っています。ということはつまり、新しいも
のじゃなきゃダメなのです。一番怖いのは、新しいものをつくれなくなること
で、その恐怖はずっと続いています…まず、コレクションで何を一番言いたい
か、言わなければいけないかということ、それを最初に考えますよね。それを
考えるときに、例えばひとつの素材やパターンだけじゃなくて、色々な要素を
複雑にミックスしながら、表現方法を考えなければならない。最低三つ四つの
要素は、表現するためには見つけなければいけないですよね。 103
Owing to this “touch inspiration”; she never plans her collections ahead of time: she
always goes along with what she feels she wants to do.
She mentions later on that she
never decides on her designs until the last month before the show starts, and says to be
open minded about what she wants to do until then.
This “touch-inspiration” has produced a collection that is filled with uniform-like
Wilcox, Claire. “A Dress is No Longer a Little, Flat Closed Thing”. Radical Fashion.
(London, 2001), 30.
103 http://members.jcom.home.ne.jp/h.nobu/Rei_Kawakubo_Interview.html
102
66
clothes that are neither obviously for men nor women; that distort rather than enhance
the female form; that use atypical fabrics and deconstruct them sometimes to the point
of destruction; but at the same time alluring enough to attract and inspire people from
day one. 104
3. Power Women
Kawakubo has emphasized over the years that she designs for independent women
who are capable of attracting men with their minds rather than their bodies, and
although she denies that fashion could have a political ambition for her, her use of
external stimuli to create unhindered have left an image of mockery against ‘power of
men and wisdom’, which can be seen especially from recent collections such as 1997,
2005, and 2006. 105
Putting aside the argument concerning her insistence on using flats as an expression
of feminism, she took men’s wear and exaggerate the ‘manliness’ of it to indicate how
the unconsciousness of unquestioned conventions are given power.
At the same time,
she used feminine fabrics and designs to express the softer side of women, and also by
exaggerating the shapely curves of women’s clothes, she confronted one of the oldest
taboos of fashionable and wealthy society: the shapes of the feminine ideal. 106 With
the collaboration of these on one piece of clothing, she expressed the issues modern
women needed to admit, and rethought her needs speed, toughness, rigorous
self-discipline, and wisdom.
4. Clothes × Clothes
For the collection of 2006 A/W, Kawakubo said the key was thinking about “the
persona-what’s in front and what’s behind”. 107
By actually putting clothes on clothes,
one is shown the clothing rather than the model who is wearing it –the same as real life.
Being presented in the 2-dimensional way rather than 3-demensional as it would be if
it were actually worn, the clothes exist without any additional character from the
wearer, and lies in its simplest form.
Thus it is not a costume for self-expression -like
most clothes have become these days-, but rather a functional garment that exists for its
own shape and not the meaning it may hold.
5. Perfect Imperfection
Jones, Terry et al. Fashion Now 2. (Koln, 2005), 164.
Wilcox, Claire. “A Dress is No Longer a Little, Flat Closed Thing”. Radical Fashion.
(London, 2001), 31.
106 “Rei Kawakubo: Dress (1998.516.1a,b)”. In Timeline of Art History. New York: The
104
105
Metropolitan
Museum
of
Art,
2000–.
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/jafa/ho_1998.516.1a,b.htm (October 2006)
107 http://www.style.com/fashionshows/collections/F2006RTW/review/CMMEGRNS
67
If one was to say western clothing striven for –and achieves- perfection, then
Japanese culture has been about ‘gaps’ between perfect and imperfect.
The slight
deviation from ‘what it should be’ has been considered the way to stand out attractively
while remaining within the social ring in Japan, and has embraced imperfection as a
measure of perfection within creativity. 108
This imperfect beauty can be seen in
collections like 2004 S/S and 2007 S/S.
In 2004 S/S, Kawakubo’s only item is skirts, and nothing else.
However, even that
single item was left unfinished; seams were exposed and left raw, and there were no
waistbands –more like pieces of cloth bunched and put together than a skirt as we know
them.
Kawakubo said that the show was about, “designing from shapeless, abstract,
intangible forms, not taking into account the body”, which gives an insight to her
comprehension of the collection itself. 109
In 2007 S/S on the other hand, which she meant to express ‘cubism’, was about
incomplete tops deconstructed in her own style, and put together again with sheer mesh
or delicate over layers of organza and plastic.
By deconstructing the perfect forms and
putting them together in an imperfect form again in both cases, Kawakubo
demonstrates that the imperfect it just as beautiful as perfect for, “Beauty is whatever
anyone thinks is beautiful”, and the incomplete forms gives a beauty never associated
with perfection before. 110
“If my ultimate goal was to achieve financial success, I would have done things
differently, but I want to create something new.
I want to suggest to people different
aesthetics and values. I want to question their beings”. 111
Wilcox, Claire. “A Dress is No Longer a Little, Flat Closed Thing”. Radical Fashion.
(London, 2001), 31.
109 http://www.style.com/fashionshows/collections/S2004RTW/review/CMMEGRNS
110 Jones, Terry et al. Fashion Now 2. (Koln, 2005), 171.
111 Frankel, Susannah. Visionaires: Interviews with Fashion Designers. (London, 2001),
158.
108
68
2.3. Concluding Remarks: Japan, Haute Couture, and The Age of Consumption
Today, the availability of inexpensive ready-to-wear clothing has made it possible
even for those with limited sources to adopt or create personal styles that express their
perception of their identities.
In the 19th century and before, as Simmel wrote in his
theory on fashion and clothing behavior, fashion was more ‘top-down’ owing to the
relatively distinct class cultures. His model centered on the idea that fashions were
first adopted by the upper class, and later, by the middle and lower class.
Lower status
groups sought to acquire status by adopting the clothing of higher-status groups and set
in motion a process of social conation whereby styles were adopted by groups at
successively inferior status levels. 112
This theory can also be seen in Thorstein
Veblen’s The Theory of Leisure Class, in which he describes economic behavior as
socially determined, and through “conspicuous consumption”, people attempt to impress
others and seek to gain advantage.
While both theories are open to argument, there is
no question that fashion once was consumer goods that was beyond the reach of the
working class, and it was a means of status to be wearing the luxurious haute couture
made clothing.
However, in the later 20th century, it all changed.
Within social classes, there has been before, a competence among individuals for
social distinction and cultural practices cording to class-based standards of taste ad
manners. However, as clothing became one of the first consumer goods to be widely
available, the cycle of clothing design became faster, and social standing became
blurred; breaking away from social constraints and of appearing to have more social or
economic resources than was actually the case. 113
While the availability of fashionable
clothing to the working class varied by region, ethnicity, race, and gender, technologies
for simplifying the production of clothing contributed to the eventual democratization of
clothing.
In the 20th century, consumer choice was affected by means of mass
distribution including chain stores, mail order, and Internet shopping.
Chain stores
made fashion accessible within a relatively short order; Mail order enabled consumers
in remote areas to follow fashion trends; and with the popularization of the Internet, it
is now possible to place orders anytime-anywhere.
These have extended the reach of
fashion and created new consumer groups. 114
Crane, Diana. Fashion and its Social Agendas: Class, Gender, and Identity in
Clothing. (Chicago, 2000), 6.
112
Ibid., 67.
Steele, Valerie et al., Encyclopedia of Clothing and Fashion: Volume 2. (New York,
2000), 25.
113
114
69
In a 1994 research by Faces International –a Paris-based market research firm,
where they surveyed 300 European women about their attitudes toward fashion, the
French respondents sounded just like the Americans where their “dream world of
fashion” was in “designer labels at affordable prices” and not haute couture.
Concerning the question on “Who or what do you emulate when you try to be
fashionable?”, only 2 percent mentioned about models in fashion magazines, while 70
percent said “No one.
I just want to maximize me.” 115
By 1995, French economy was
facing an “ice age” that affected fashion and other local industries: Consumer spending
was down, unemployment stood at 12 percent, and the overvalued franc was affecting
negatively on France’s ability to increase exports of consumer products.
Moreover,
more and more consumers were looking outside France for “refinement-luxury”:
America.
The final ball struck home when French President Jacques Chirac’s put on
an oxford-cloth, button-down-collar dress shirt by Ralph Lauren on his first day of job in
May 1995.
“When you look back to the 1950s and 1960s, Paris designers had an ability
to create a fashion look that everyone wanted to have,” observed Carl Steidtmann, A
New York retail industry economist.
“The French felt they didn’t need to market to
consumers because their brands were very strong.
But now that the focus has shifted
away from designing, and if you have enough money and are good at marketing, you can
create a strong brand”. 116
Japonism
While many scholars have placed focus on influence of Japonism in European
paintings and decorative arts, few have addressed its influence on Western clothing.
Yet, fashion –differing from traditional dress for it stresses urbanity and constant
change- has more than absorbed the principles of Japanese designs in the past.
In 19th
century, textiles and Japanese motifs were conformed to Western silhouettes in Europe
and America.
Later on, some costume items itself –ranging from tea gowns to opera
coats- were constructed with elements adapted from the construction of kimonos in the
20th century.
And nowadays, some of the world’s most influential designers have
emerged from Japan to redefine contemporary fashion. 117
Besides ranking in 2nd place in the world’s economy, Japan has also gained attention
in its cultural aspects besides fashion designers, and subcultures such as “anime”,
Agins, Teri. The End of Fashion: How Marketing Changed the Clothing Business
Forever. (New York, 1999), 44.
116 Agins, Teri. “Not So Haute”. Wall Street Journal.
117 Steele, Valerie et al., Encyclopedia of Clothing and Fashion: Volume 2. (New York,
115
2000), 271.
70
“manga”, and “Harajuku fashion” has become one of the major trends in and outside of
Japan.
Until recently, the strong influence of America right after World War 2 had led to
excessive worship of things ‘foreign’, and traditional values and skills had been
forgotten as ‘something from the old days’.
This voracious pursuit for European things
helped the rebuilding of Japanese economy in the 1980s, and supported major couture
brands such as Louis Vuitton, Gucci, and Chanel.
At the same time, a new fashion
movement called the “DC Burando” occurred, focusing on brands of clothing with
insignia or with clearly identified styling of specific fashion designers.
With this frenzy,
cult-like followings, Japanese fashion and apparel industries expanded rapidly, and
further diffusion occurred among women’s fashion trends.
In the early 21st century, it all began to change as the uncontested arbiters of fashion
–street fashion in particular- were teenagers who embraced Western fashion in a
unique Japanese way. While Japan produced its own distinctive fashion, it drew on a
mix of the latest trends from America and Europe, and these teenagers became the new
breed who was unafraid to break and challenge the traditional values and norms.
Especially after facing the worst economic recession in history, the Japanese shifted
from deeply disciplined, industrial attitudes to much freer consumerist ways.
Nowadays, Japan is back on its feet with a new vitality, and exports its cultural
identities with its goods, causing a “Japan phenomenon”, and shaking the foundations
of European tradition with its distinctive approach to life and design.
Using the
natural dexterity and attention to detail that seems to be national characteristic,
Japanese companies have restored and adapted traditional techniques to the modern
world, and is one of the leading textile manufacture in the world.
It has even become
the country with the most original denim brands –mostly small business enterprises.
While some artists complain that there are no secular markets for the modern arts in
Japan, it is exactly to this reason that we owe for Japanese artists to spread all over the
world and shake the it with its “Japanese way” of deconstruction and reconstruction:
Having the vision and ambition, their vitalities have led them to places which were
hungering for ‘something new and unknown’.
When asked about what it is that
defines Japanese designers and whether they are all moving toward the same goal, Rei
Kawakubo answered, “We certainly have no desire to create a fashion threesome, but
each of us has a strong urge to design new, individual clothes which are recognizably
ours.” 118
118
Seguret, Olivier. “Les Japonaise”. Madame Air France no.5 (1988), 140-141.
71
2.4. Haute Couture, Tomorrow…
In Japan, as elsewhere, with the gradual shift of gender roles occurring before and
especially during the World War 1 & 2, the way women expressed themselves changed.
Beginning with the Gibson Girl and in extension, the flapper girls who gained
prominence during the 1920s, women of the formerly bourgeois started to take a more
aggressive stance in social roles, and began to adopt forms of masculine clothing which
were inconsiderable before the war except during times of luxury or among the very low
working class: Through appearances, individuals announce who they are and who they
hope to become…Moreover, they express who they do not want to be or become. 119
While the dominant style was designed to maintain existing social class boundaries and
effective at marketing gender boundaries, the alternative style –relatively inexpensive
and uncomplicated enough for reproduction-, crossed class boundaries.
Through a
process of symbolic inversion, items associated with masculine costume were given new
meaning, specially, feminine independence, that challenged gender boundaries. 120
This flow illustrated the changing definition of social roles and structures, and gave
women the basis of habit –a powerful, nonverbal means of conveying intentions of
taking on an aggressive role- of wearing such items rather than by conscious habits.
The teenage phenomenon of the 1950s and 1960s featured a revolt against
established fashion standards by mods, rockers, and hippies, as well as an increasing
internationalization of the fashion scene.
Jet travel had spawned a jet set that partied
-and shopped- just as happily in New York as in Paris. Rich women no longer felt that
a dress sewn in Paris was necessarily better than one sewn elsewhere: While Paris is
still pre-eminent in the fashion world; it is no longer the ‘sole arbiter’ of fashion.
While gender still is a socially constructed phenomenon and dressing has been used
as a symbolic tool to convey meanings about gender specific to a culture, the traditional
codes have been lost with the disappearance of gender roles.
The traditional chain of
girl-imitating-mother has snapped, and fashion is no more about being feminine or
restricted: it is completely in the hands of ‘living teenagers’ who are more concerned
about the life that they are presently living rather than a rendezvous with the past.
Also with the fall of number of couture houses and -in reaction- the gradual reduction of
revenues, haute couture houses posts enormous financial losses and produces less than
Frietas, Anthony, et al. “Appearance Management as Border Construction: Least
Favorite Clothing, Group Distancing, and Identity…Not!”. In Sociological Inquiry 67,
119
no.3 (1997), 323-335
Crane, Diane. Fashion and its Social Agendas: Class, Gender, and Identity in
Clothing. (Chicago, 2000), 126
120
72
10 percent of the French clothing industry.
Nevertheless, haute couture will survive; and even if Paris loses its pre-eminence,
other places will emerge; among them, quite probably Tokyo. Even now, with Tokyo
becoming one of the international fashion capitals with its enormous numbers of
business enterprises and events such as the Tokyo Fashion Week and Tokyo Designer’s
Week, the Japanese fashion industry is sure to grow and become one of the leaders of
the world.
That would be only fitting: Since in many ways, it was Japan that saved haute
couture.
73
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