Fashion is a language. Some know it, some learn it, some never will—like an instinct.”

Biography

The legendary costume designer Edith Head loved to refer to herself as Hollywood’s “dress doctor.” Throughout her six-decade career, and in more than 1,000 films, Edith dressed up extravagant cinematic personas (Biblical seductresses, jungle princesses, showgirls, and cowboys) and yet she saw her task first and foremost as that of a roll-up-your-sleeves problem-solver: a curer of wardrobe ills, a soother of vexed brows, and a tamer of egos. Edith was grounded and pragmatic, a shrewd politician and savvy businesswoman who not only operated an efficient “fashion clinic” at Paramount Studios (and later at Universal), but became a celebrity in her own right.

Clara Bow in Wings
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Mae West in She has done him wrong, 1933
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Mae West dressed by Edith Head
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Ingrid Bergman as Maria in Whom the Bell Tolls
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Ginger Rogers in Lady in the Dark

The praise wasn’t unanimous, however. After Head claimed her sixth Oscar for the 1954 film Sabrina, rumors circulated that Audrey Hepburn’s striking black cocktail dress with bateau neck and bow-bedecked shoulder straps was actually designed by the Parisian couturier Hubert de Givenchy (Hepburn’s friend), while Head publicly took credit for it. Even after her death, former colleagues would claim that Head had no compunction about accepting plaudits for others’ work.

Head’s career eventually waned in the late sixties, as the role of the studio costumer began to die out; more and more, clothes were being bought off the rack. By the seventies her output dwindled to just a few pictures a year. Nonetheless, she worked almost till the day she died, in 1981. The comedienne Lucille Ball remembered her this way: “Edie knew the truth about all of us. She knew who had flat fannies and who didn’t—but she never told.”

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The hilarious Play

http://www.edithhead.biz/

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Book

Edith Head: The Fifty-Year Career of Hollywood’s Greatest Costume Designer

All About Eve. Funny Face. Sunset Blvd. Rear Window. Sabrina. A Place in the Sun. The Ten Commandments. Scores of iconic films of the last century had one thing in common: costume designer Edith Head (1897–1981). She racked up an unprecedented 35 Oscar nods and 400 film credits over the course of a fifty-year career.

Never before has the account of Hollywood’s most influential designer been so thoroughly revealed—because never before have the Edith Head Archives of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences been tapped. This unprecedented access allows this book to be a one-of-a-kind survey, bringing together a spectacular collection of rare and never-before-seen sketches, costume test shots, behind-the- scenes photos, and ephemera.

http://www.amazon.com/Edith-Head-Fifty-Year-Hollywoods-Greatest/dp/0762438053

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“Edna Mode” in The Incredibles (2004) was modeled on Edith Head

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A small diminutive woman, famous for her Anna May Wong inspired crop and signature sunglasses – Edith Head may not have been a fashion visionary, but she knew how to concoct screen glamor like nobody before her or since. She managed to make clothes that not only conveyed the moods and ideas behind a screen narrative, but were also beautiful, flattering to the stars, and inspiring to everyday women.

To succeed in the industry, Edith said, one had to be a “combination of psychiatrist, artist, fashion designer, dressmaker, pincushion, historian, nursemaid, and purchasing agent.”

But she was sometimes economical with the truth, taking credit for designs she had not created, such as Audrey Hepburn’s bateau-necked black dress in Sabrina and Paul Newman and  Robert Redford’s wardrobe for The Sting, for which she won an Oscar. After winning the Oscar, she was sued by the illustrator who really designed Redford and Newman’s clothes.

Always discreet about the size and shape of the stars’ backsides, she knew about all the skeletons in their closets but she was never one to gossip, although she did reveal that full-figured Clara Bow was known as “a sausage”, that Claudette Colbert was “mean-spirited”, and that Barbara Stanwyck was “frumpy” until she took over her designs.

“Go on a diet!” Edith would instruct an overweight woman, while instantly making her look ten pounds slimmer by pulling her shirt out of her trousers, whipping a belt around her middle and swapping her cheap gold jewellery for her own signature pearls.

In the first year for which costume design becomes an Academy Awards category, she receives a nomination for best costumes in a black-and-white film, for Billy Wilder’s The Emperor Waltz, a period comedy set in turn-of-the-century Vienna. But no worry,in the following years Edith was nominated 35 times and won 8 Oscars!!!

In 1966 Edith makes cameo appearance as herself in The Oscar, for which she also designs gowns. As more and more cinematic wardrobes begin to be bought off the racks, Edith remains one of the last studio costumers. A year later How to Dress for Success, Edith’s advice manual for the career-oriented, is published. She moves to Universal after her contract is not renewed at Paramount.

With her film work declining in frequency, Edith and June Van Dyke present more and more costume fashion shows—up to eighteen a year. In 1970 Elizabeth Taylor presents the Oscar for Best Picture to the makers of Midnight Cowboy wearing a curve-hugging, low-cut lavender dress by Edith.

Elisabeth Taylor & Richard Burton
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Young Elisabeth Taylor wearing a Edith Head dress.
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Elisabeth Taylor at her 5th wedding, wearing Edith Head

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In 1974 Edith gets a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. She also begins creating sewing patterns for the Vogue Pattern Company. December Vogue toasts an exhibit at the Met, curated by former editor Diana Vreeland, of costumes from Hollywood’s heyday, including many looks designed by Edith Head.

Edith died on October 24, 1981, four days before her 84th birthday, from myelofibrosis, an incurable bone marrow disease.

Edith Head gets a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1974

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Edith Head & Grace Kelly

Edith adored Grace Kelly, for whom she designed many movie wardrobes. When Grace won an Oscar for The country girl, she asked Edith to design her Academy Award ceremonial dress. 

Edith was upset when the luminous actress slighted her by not inviting her to design the wedding dress when she got married to Prince Rainier of Monaco. She did create Princess Grace’s grey going-away suit, though.

Edith & Grace Kelly preparing the wardrobe for To catch a thief
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Working on the Oscar dress with Grace Kelly
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1955, Grace Kelly in her ceremonial Oscar dress by Edith Head

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Edith Head & Audrey Hepburn

Audrey Hepburn & Edith Head 

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The 8 Oscars won by Edith Head

When asked about the most important men in her life, Head would always reply: “There were eight of them – they were all named Oscar.”

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1950, Oscar for The Heiress

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1951, Oscar for Samson and Delilah 

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1951, Oscar for All about Eve

“Her life was all about glamour in the most glamorous place in the world, Hollywood,” Bette Davis once said of her. Indeed, it was Edith who designed the brown silk, sable-trimmed cocktail dress Davis wore as Margo Channing in the 1950 classic All About Eve, warning everyone as she swept down the staircase for the big party scene to fasten their seat belts because it was going to be a bumpy night.

Bette Davis later bought the dress for herself, because she loved it so much – it had been square-necked, with a tight bodice, but when Davis tried on the finished gown the bodice and neckline were much too big. Edith was horrified, but the actress pulled it off her shoulders and shook one shoulder sexily, saying: “Doesn’t it look better like this anyway?” In the wake of this “accident”, Head won another Oscars for the film.

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1952, Oscar for   A Place in the Sun  

“The prototype of the perfect debutante dress, and every girl coming out or having her sweet-16 birthday party wanted this dress because they all wanted to look like Elizabeth Taylor in this movie, which was one of Taylor’s first  films as an adult. It was a tribute to a typical ’50s gown: strapless top covered with silk petals, waisted in silk with a full, bold but lightweight tulle skirt with petals sprinkled all over. It became the prom dress for American teenagers when it was copied by all the leading department stores.

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1954 Oscar for Roman Holliday

Although Edith Head won an Oscar for Best Costumes, the Capri Collection (Capri Skirt, Capri Blouse, Capri Belt, Capri Pants) was, in fact, designed by the European fashion designer Sonja de Lennart. However, since the outfits were actually made in Edith Head’s Roman temporary Atelier of the sorelle Fontana—that acted as the costume department—Edith, Paramount’s costume designer, used only her name without giving credit to the original designer, Sonja de Lennart, as it was pretty common at that time in history. Costume designers around the world used only their names, regardless who created the costumes. However, Edith was given credit for the costumes, even though the Academy’s votes were obviously for Hepburn’s attire. Sonja de Lennart’s Capri Pants were sewn and used in the next movie, Sabrina, by Hubert de Givenchy. Edith Head did not refuse that Oscar either…….

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1955. Oscar for Sabrina

1954. “Audrey Hepburn plays the daughter of a Manhattan chauffeur. She goes to Paris and returns a total fashion plate. The white gown with black embroidery was the source of some controversy. Hepburn had a relationship with Givenchy. He probably was the one who actually designed the gown, but Edith (again) ended up getting the credit. Rumors circulate that Audrey Hepburn’s famous black cocktail dress with high, straight bateau neck (subsequently dubbed the “Sabrina neckline”) was also designed by Hubert de Givenchy  and merely made by Edith’s studio—a claim that she roundly denies. After this, Givenchy started designing on the record for many of Hepburn’s films.”

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1961, Oscar for The Facts of Life   (together with  Edward Stevenson)

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1974. Oscar for The Sting

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Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis will forever be remembered for bringing a sense of style to the White House, but her younger sister, Lee Radziwill, who is direct, free-spirited and true to her own ideals, may have done her one better. The impeccably dressed former princess has almost reached the well-preserved age of 80. Known for her Aristocratic looks and upper-crust taste, Lee Radziwill has swirled through life in the High Society for the better part of the last half-century. Lately she’s become a regular at the shows in New York and Paris, where she’s been photographed often in fabulous outfits and glamorously over-sized sunglasses.

Jacqueline & Caroline Lee Bouvier at their debutante ball
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Lee Radziwill’s sometimes rivalrous relationship with her sister and her tabloid-ready romances have long fascinated. But it’s her enviable wardrobe and not-a-hair-out-of-place coiffeur that have served as inspiration to designers from Yves Saint Laurent to Marc Jacobs. Michael Kors once dedicated an entire collection to “the Lee Radziwill look.” With Balmacaan coats and stovepipe velvet slacks, Kors conjured “what Lee would wear to walk her dogs in the sixties.” Add furs, cashmere, and kitten heels, mix with simple jewelry and minimal makeup, and you’ve got the Lee Radziwill recipe for era-spanning chic.

Jacqueline & Caroline Lee Bouvier
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Caroline Lee Bouvier was born on 3-3-33 in Southampton, New York. Growing up, she made the usual socialite rounds: Miss Porter’s boarding school, Sarah Lawrence College, summers in Newport, R.I—all while favoring sweater sets, three strands of pearls, and frocks in sweet 16 pastels.  She married young, admitting that girls often married in the fifties just to get their own apartments.    

Lee’s starter marriage to “homebody alcoholic” Michael Canfield was annulled after a short time, and she threw herself into supervising Vogue‘s exhibition at the American Pavilion for the 1958 World’s Fair in Brussels. While in Europe, Lee met real estate mogul/ Polish emigré Prince Stanislas Radziwill in England and married him on March 19, 1959, giving birth to son Anthony six months later.

Lee Radziwill
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“Jackie married twice for money with splendid results,” Gore Vidal—the Bouviers’ step-brother—wrote. ”Lee married twice too, far less splendidly.”  (Lee finally married three times) But both sisters lived the life, taking trips around the world resulting in a funky scrapbook-type book, One Special Summer, which was created by the pair in the fifties (and published many years later).

The high point of the 1966 social calendar was Truman Capote’s Black and White Ball, with a guest list that read like a who’s who of Hollywood and high society: Frank Sinatra, Greta Garbo, and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, included. Radziwill went with white for the occasion.

Lee Radziwill all masked up for Capote's Black and White Ball 

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Truman Capote, for some years Lee and Truman were inseparable friends, encouraged a newly blond Lee to pursue acting. After critics panned her performance in a Chicago stage production of The Philadelphia Story. The show sold out its run as fans flocked to see Lee the personality–not Lee the actress–take the stage in a custom-made wardrobe by Yves Saint Laurent. Jackie was conveniently out of the country for the show’s entire run, so those fans hoping to catch a glimpse of the other famous sister in the audience never got their wish. 

Truman wrote the TV adaptation of Laura for Lee—cribbed from Otto Preminger’s film noir of the same name. It was also badly received and she discontinued her acting work.

Lee Radziwill in her various houses
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Lee & Jackie visiting India and Pakistan along in March 1962
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Peter Evans’ 2004 book Nemesis stated that Radziwill also had a long-standing affair with Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis, and was privately bitterly disappointed when he married her elder sister Jackie, who allegedly stole Ari away, heating up the rivalry that existed between the sisters.

In 1972 Lee tagged along with Truman on tour with the Rolling Stones; she also rented Eothen, the Montauk retreat owned by Paul Morrissey and Andy Warhol. Photographer Peter Beard lived nearby and was coincidentally the official photographer for Rolling Stone magazine, which was paying Truman Capote to cover the Stones’ tour. Lee and Peter became really, really good neighbors.  

Lee Radziwill & Truman Capote

Lee Radziwill with Mick & Bianca Jagger
Rudolf Nureyev & lee Radziwill
Andy Warhol & Lee Radziwill

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For some years, Lee was a public relations executive for Giorgio Armani and on September 23, 1988, she became the second wife of American film director and choreographer Herbert Ross. They divorced in 2001, shortly before his death.

She was listed as one of the fifty best-dressed over 50s by the Guardian in March 2013. A longtime lover of fashion, Lee is still a front-row fixture, turning up from Marc Jacobs in New York to Giambattista Valli in Paris. She’s still beautifully kitted out in simple shapes with theatrical flourishes, armed with cigarettes and sunglasses.  

Lee Radziwill by Mario Sorrenti

Lee Radziwill
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Lee & Stass Radziwill
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Truman Capote & Lee Radziwill
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Lee Radziwill by Andy Warhol
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Lee Radziwill photographed by David Bailey
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Lee Radziwill & Jackie Kennedy
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Books

One Special Summer

http://www.amazon.com/One-Special-Summer-Lee-Bouvier/dp/0847827879/ref=pd_sim_b_2

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Happy Times

Happy Times offers readers a very personal perspective on a highly publicized life.

http://www.amazon.com/Happy-Times-Lee-Radziwill/dp/2843232503/ref=pd_sim_b_1

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In Her Sister’s Shadow: An Intimate Biography of Lee Radziwill

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http://www.amazon.com/Her-Sisters-Shadow-Biography-Radziwill/dp/0316187534

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The name Halston evokes a highly decadent moment in our cultural history: the nightlife-as-performance days of Studio 54, electrified by seventies disco, drugs, and celebrity. But Halston was also synonymous with characteristically American kind of sporty, easy fashion that, as Vogue put it in 1980, was (and remains) “unpretentious, unexcessive, with an instant attractiveness that answers the needs of all women who demand fashion that works.” Whatever he designed—a halter jumpsuit, a fitted jersey dress, a fluid blouse to be worn with an A-line skirt—was executed with a chic simplicity that kept it very wearable.

Roy Halston Frowick was born in Des Moines, Iowa, April 23, 1932. After his school education, Halston becomes a hatmaker in Chicago. (during his childhood he had been referred to as Halston to distinguish between himself and his uncle Roy). At 26 he moves to New York to work for prominent milliner Lilly Daché and meets designer Charles James, whom Balenciaga had called “the greatest couturier in the world,” and who becomes his friend and mentor.

By 1960, Halston is working at Bergdorf Goodman as a hatmaker and becomes the chief milliner to future First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy, now on the campaign trail. Reportedly, she has a large head—the same size as Halston’s. An assistant to the designer later will say that before hats were sent to Mrs. Kennedy, “Halston would put them on his head and sit there and look at them with two mirrors, one behind him and one in front, turning his head at different angles to make sure they looked right. When the First Lady wears a Halston pillbox hat to her husband’s presidential inauguration. Halston is famous.

 At a tea dance in the Pines on Fire Island, meets Edward J. Austin, Jr., an assistant buyer of menswear at Alexander’s department store and the two will be lovers for at least five. Two years later, when Halston branches into designing women’s wear, Newsweek dubbed him “the premier fashion designer of all America.”His designs were worn by Bianca Jagger, Lauren Hutton, Liza Minnelli, Anjelica Huston, Gene Tierney, Lauren Bacall, Babe Paley, and Elizabeth Taylor, setting a style that would be closely associated with the international jet set of the era. He opens the first Halston Boutique, within Bergdorf’s; he will create several collections for the store over the next couple of years.

When he opens an independent salon on Madison Avenue, Edward becomes Halston’s boutique manager. After showing his first collection of 25 pieces, receives a visit—the next morning at 9:30—from socialite Babe Paley, who wants an argyle pantsuit. “It wasn’t my intention to go into a made-to-order business,” Halston later says. “I didn’t have that kind of staff, you know, but of course Mrs. Paley is probably the number-one client you could possibly want as a designer. So I started.” Calls from other society belles follow. Halston often closes the store to lunch with clients like Barbara Walters or Lauren Bacall, with a very civilized routine of wine in Baccarat glasses, salad, a main course, and freshly brewed espresso. The salon is the setting for exclusive parties at night.

Pat Cleveland in Halston by Irving Penn 

Still loyal to his friend and mentor Charles James, in 1969, Halston sponsors a retrospective of the older designer’s work at the Electric Circus, a trendy nightclub in the East Village. Soon after, he hires James to work for him in his showroom. In 1970, the two designers show a collection of their commingled efforts; it is roundly panned by critics. The pair have a bitter falling out, both personally and professionally, shortly thereafter—from which James never recovers. Halston, on the other hand, becomes even more successful. “Halston became Halston after the Charles James show, because he realized he was as good as Charles James.” (?)

Halston once told Vogue that his role in fashion was to clean it up: “just getting rid of all of the extra details that didn’t work—bows that didn’t tie, buttons that didn’t button, zippers that didn’t zip, wrap dresses that didn’t wrap. I’ve always hated things that don’t work.”

Halston was ‘addicted’ to the nightlife and partying in Studio 54, where he meets Victor Hugo, a 24-year-old Venezuelan male prostitute, who he asks to dress his boutique windows. Soon he fires Ed Austin, his ex-lover and boutique manager, whose responsibilities have been encroached upon by Hugo.

In 1974, Halston sells his business, and his design services, to Norton Simon, Inc., for about $12 million in stock. The company goes on to license Halston womenswear, menswear, bedding, accessories, luggage, fragrances, and more.  

Halston & Bianca Jagger.

In 1977, Halston hosts a white-themed party for Bianca Jagger at Studio 54. Liza Minnelli attends in a white-sequined sweatsuit, and she and Jagger release white doves in the club.

Halston is very influential in the design of uniforms. In 1977 he is contracted by the airline Braniff International Airways to create a new look for their flight attendants. Halston created interchangeable separates in shades of bone, tan and taupe. An elaborate party was thrown at Braniff’s Acapulco Executive House in January, 1977, dubbed Three Nights In Acapulco, to introduce the new Halston fashions along with the new and elegant Braniff International Airways. The party and the Halston creations were a hit not only with the fashion press but also with Braniff employees who thought they were the easiest and most comfortable uniforms they had ever worn.

Halston moves from his small boutique to a skyscraper called Olympic Tower, a location that receives spectacular reviews. The collections that follow are huge hits. His first at the new location includes a showstopping live performance of “New York, New York” by Minnelli, and a cameo appearance by Hollywood legend Elizabeth Taylor.

After years of huge success, the designer launches a lower-priced line of clothing and accessories for JC Penney, telling Vogue, “I always wanted to reach a wider America. When you’re able to produce a dress—that a woman can wear to work, wear out, that’s machine-washable—for $75, that’s magic.” Bergdorf Goodman drops Halston’s line…

Halston photographed with “Halston”, the perfume

As “the first designer to realize the potential of licensing himself,” his influence went beyond style to reshape the business of fashion. Through his licensing agreement with J.C. Penney, his designs were accessible to women at a variety of income levels. Although this practice is not uncommon today, it was a controversial move at the time. Halston, his perfume, was sold in a bottle designed by Elsa Peretti and it was the second best selling perfume at the time.

Despite his achievements, the increased pressures from numerous licensing deals, in particular that of J.C. Penney which demanded eight collections per year plus accessories, in addition to his Made to Order, Ready to Wear, and Haute Couture lines, all took their toll. Halston was a perfectionist and he would not allow junior designers to design licensed products bearing his name. In October 1984, Beatrice Foods subsidiary the Playtex Corporation managers asked Halston to leave the Olympic Tower, headquarters of Halston Enterprises, due to several conflicts. 

Halston is no longer able to design or sell clothes under his own name. Nevertheless, he continued to design clothing for his family and friends, including costumes for his friends Liza Minnelli and Martha Graham and her Martha Graham Dance Company.

Roy Halston died on March 26, 1990, of, an AIDS-related cancer.

Book

http://www.amazon.com/Halston-Steven-Bluttal/dp/0714863181/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1391103665&sr=1-1&keywords=halston+book

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Documentary

Ultrasuede: In Search of Halston

The documentary got bad reviews, mostly because it’s more a gossip story of the rise and fall of the person, Roy Halston instead of an overview of Halston’s importance in fashion for America.

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http://www.amazon.com/Ultrasuede-In-Search-Halston/dp/B006QVRV1I

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Halston  circa 1977

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Years ago I got a the book about Francesca Woodman‘s work as a present from a friend. I’d never heard of Francesca Woodman, but I was immediately intrigued by her photographs. Her short life was intense and full of passion , as was her work.

In 2010 a documentary by director C. Scott Willis about the artistic family Francesca came from, called The Woodmans, won an award at the Tribeca Film Festival.

Francesca & her father George Woodman
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Francesca Woodman Bio

Francesca Woodman (1958-1981) only lived to be 22 years old, but her remarkable body of work has continued to increase attention in the world of contemporary art since her suicide in 1981.

She was born to an artistic family in Denver, her mother, Betty Woodman, is a sculptor and ceramicist and her father, George Woodman, is a photographer and painter. Her older brother Charles later became an associate professor of electronic art.

Beginning in 1975, Francesca attended the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). She studied in Rome between 1977 and 1978 in a RISD
honors program. A year later Francesca moved to New York “to make a career in photography”.  She sent portfolios of her work to fashion photographers, but “her solicitations did not lead anywhere”.

Francesca was also deeply interested in the Surrealist movement and neo-Pictorialism—as seen in the work of fashion photographer Deborah Turbeville—and both movements are evident in the abstraction, motifs, and ghostly air of her work.

While her work would remain unknown for the entirety of her life, today she is widely celebrated for her black-and-white depictions of young women, frequently in the nude and blurred by slow shutter speed and long exposure. Many of her photographs are self-portraits—though you rarely can see Woodman’s face unobstructed—and men are an infrequent presence. Francesca made a number of short films as well, along the same aesthetics of her photographs.

Sometimes she dressed up like the heroine of a Victorian novel – she collected vintage clothes long before it was fashionable – or as Alice about to disappear through the looking-glass. In one famous image, she stands alongside two other naked women, each of them concealing their face behind a photograph of her face, while a different Francesca Woodman face, in a self-portrait pinned to the wall, gazes out at us too.

Her nudes often recall Bellocq‘s haunting Storyville portraits of New Orleans prostitutes. One startling photograph of her legs bound tightly in ribbon or tape, her hand holding a striped glove that rests between her legs, has traces of the disturbing doll photographers of the German surrealist photographer Hans Bellmer.

In late 1980 Francesca became depressed due to the failure of her work to attract attention and to a broken relationship. Her life ended when she threw herself off a building in New York in January 1981. She was just 22, but left an archive of some 800 images.

Francesca’s photography was first exhibited at Wellesley College in 1986 after it was discovered by Ann Gabhart, the director of the Wellesley Art Museum, in the Woodmans’ family home in Colorado. Her first retrospective opened at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 2011 and traveled to the Guggenheim in 2012. The photographs are in the permanent collections of both the Whitney Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and prominent artists such as Cindy Sherman continue to cite her as an inspiration for their work.

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Documentary:  The Woodmans

The tragic story of Francesca Woodman, a young photographer renowned for her extraordinary nude self-portraits, is also the story of her brilliantly artistic family.  With THE WOODMANS, director C. Scott Willis shows how the struggle for fame in the high-stakes world of art resulted in tragedy, and then in healing and redemption.  As a family, the Woodmans are noted for their talent.  Betty Woodman, in particular, is an internationally renowned ceramicist whose work has been shown at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.  But it is the fate of Francesca, the youngest Woodman, that will haunt them over the years.  By piecing together Francesca’s photos, never-before-seen experimental videos and personal journals, and through candid conversations with George and Betty Woodman, Charlie Woodman and a host of friends, Willis depicts four lives committed to art.  And whose art lives through them.  It is an extraordinary debut film that explores what it truly means to create.

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http://www.amazon.com/The-Woodmans-Francesca-Woodman/dp/B007IHH4H0

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Books

The only portret of Nettie Rosenstein
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Years ago, on a flea market, I found a label that said: Nettie  Vogue model. Although spelled different from my first name (Netty), it’s pronounced the same and I treasured it for a long time.

I never knew what the label stood for untill this week. When starting to work on a new story for my blog, I stumbled on the jewelry by Nettie Rosenstein. Reading about this very talented designer, whose clothes were promoted by Vogue and designed patterns for Vogue, the mystery of the Nettie Vogue model was unravelled.

Coat, Nettie Rosenstein ph.Erwin Blumenfeld for Vogue, 1955 

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Nettie Rosenstein Bio

Born Nettie Rosenscrans in Salzburg, Austria in 1890, she and her family migrated to America in the 1890s and settled in Harlem, New York, where they ran a dry-goods store. She began making her own clothes when she was only 11 years old.  Her interest in and exposure to the fabrics in her parents’ store formed the backbone of her career. Nettie’s sister, Pauline, ran a millinery business known as Madame
 Pauline in the Rosencrans family house, next to the dry-goods store. Nettie began her career as a custom dressmaker for her sister’s clients.

In 1913 Nettie married Saul Rosenstein, who ran a women’s underwear business. In 1916, Nettie Rosenstein started a custom dressmaking business in her home on West 117th Street. By 1921, she employed fifty dressmakers and had moved her business to a more fashionable address at East 56th Street. During the 1920s, Rosenstein switched to selling wholesale. By the late 1920s, I. Magnin, Neiman-Marcus, Nan Duskin, and Bonwit Teller were some of the stores that carried her clothing.

Clothes by Nettie Rosenstein

When Saul Rosenstein retired from his successful women’s underwear business in the late 1920s, Nettie tried retirement, too. Two years later, however, she began working for the dressmaking firm Corbeau & Cie. She started couture clothing around 1927 and a couple of years later, she reopened her own dressmaking firm on West 47th Street with her sister-in-law, Eva Rosencrans, and her former boss at Corbeau & Cie., Charles Gumprecht.  . In 1931 she moved to West 47th Street and in 1942 to Seventh Avenue.

“It’s what you leave off a dress that makes it smart.”

At her peak in the 1930′s, Nettie designed 500 models a year, preferring to work by draping material directly on the figure.  Her clothes were sold all over America, but only to one store in each city.  The store that featured her clothes by name in New York was Bonwit Teller.

In 1936 LIFE magazine profiled Nettie Rosenstein, as one of the most respected American designers, showing a photograph of one of her evening dresses.

In spite of the Depression, Rosenstein’s business flourished, grossing $1 million in 1937.

Nettie Rosenstein wedding dress
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Nettie was very well-known for her little black dresses and her evening gowns. Her wedding gowns were also very much admired. Her designs were among the highest-priced wholesale clothes in New York City. Because they were so widely copied, the influence of her work went far beyond those who could afford her clothing. The reasons for her high prices were her use of high-quality materials and construction techniques, and her precise fit process. Each of her designs was first conceived on a showroom model, and then adapted in fit and proportion five times to five different-sized workroom models that represented the average figure. Rosenstein, who was given a design award in 1938 by the department store Lord & Taylor

Together with old friend Sol L. Klein, who also came from Austria and moved to the United States in 1920, in the 1940s Nettie  founded Nettie Rosenstein Accessories Inc. The company manufactured costume jewelry and handbags.

Handbags by Nettie Rosenstein

She announced her second retirement in March 1942, inspiring a tribute in TIME Magazine. However, also this retirement did not last long, as she resumed fashion design a few years later, winning a Coty Award in 1947. She  contributed largely to the movement of the democratization of fashion in America during the first half of the twentieth century by making good-quality clothing of sophisticated design available for the ready-to-wear customer.

Commissioned by Neiman Marcus, she designed the pink brocade Inaugural gown shown here on the right for Mrs. Mamie Eisenhower in 1953 when her husband Dwight Eisenhower became President of the United States.  First Lady Mamie Eisenhower‘s style landed her on many a best-dressed list and made her a fashion icon to women across America.

Mrs. Mamie Eisenhower in 1953
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Nettie was again called upon again by Mrs. Eisenhower in 1957.  She made a beautiful yellow gown for Mrs Mamie Eisenhower when he husband became President for the second time.

Mrs. Mamie Eisenhower in 1957
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Nettie cultivated excellent relationships with European fabric houses, so they made exclusive materials for her including shantung, organdy and taffeta gauze.  Lace, one of her favourite fabrics, went on sheer bodices of cocktail dresses or whole ball gowns. In 1957 she went into sportswear with maillots made out of Lastex.

Charles Kleibacker joined her house in 1958, and designed till 1961.  He was a master of bias-cut garments with a beautiful fall. In 1961 Nettie stopped making dresses, and concentrated on design of jewellery and accessories. Her jewellery is nowadays very much in demand and there are many sites on the net offering these pieces.

After Nettie retired from the fashion industry, her name was carried on by Sol L. Klein with Nettie Rosenstein Accessories Inc . He retired in 1975, at which time the Nettie Rosenstein brand closed too

Jewellery by Nettie Rosenstein

On March 13, 1980, after a long illness, Nettie died at the age of 90.

In 2000 the City of New York included the name of Nettie Rosenstein in a list of great American fashion designers, when considering whom to honour by a plaque on the pavement of 7th Avenue called the FASHION WALK  OF FAME.

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Who does not recognize the picture above…? It’s one of the most published images ever, but not many know whose face this is. Well, it’s the face of Jean Patchett, one of the most recognizable and popular models in American fashion.

An absolutely stunning creature with a signature beauty mark, Jean was a super model decades before the term ‘super model’ was invented and staggeringly, has had more covers than any fashion model in history. Jean’s distinct features helped define the face of fashion for over a decade, the body of work she did is enormous and the legacy she and fashion photographers created together is monumental. The camera loved Jean and Jean loved the camera.

Editorially, as Jean herself once said, she “belonged to Vogue.” She is the subject of two of the magazine’s most famous covers ever, shot by Erwin Blumenfeld and Irving Penn, respectively, in January and April of 1950. The first, which has been described as “a visual haiku,” features only Patchett’s slanted doe eye, lips, and a beauty mark. The second, titled  Girl in Black & White, was the first noncolor cover the magazine had run since 1909. The symmetry is broken only by Jean’s sidelong glance. To help get the contrasts Penn wanted, Jean used black lipstick, improvised from mascara. In 2008 a signed, initialed, titled, dated in ink copy of the famous photograph by Irving Penn of Jean Patchett was auctioned at Christie’s, New York for a fabulous sum of $266,500.

Some of Jean Patchett’s Vogue covers

Jean Patchett's first Vogue cover, 1948
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Girl in Black & White by Irving Penn
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The start of Jean’s modeling career

In 1948, 21-year-old Jean Patchett (1927-2002) borrowed $600 from her father and headed to New York City. Their she met future boyfriend Louis Auer, a banker  who lived at the Yale Club, at a luncheonette (they married in 1951). In February she signed with the Harry Conover modeling agency and two months later, April 10, Jean signed with the Ford Model Agency (a new agency when Jean walked in the door) and became their first star model. ”I’ll always remember what our first great model Jean Patchett went through when I told her she had to cut her hair. I don’t remember everyone, but I do remember her,” Eileen Ford said. “You just had to take a deep breath, even then. She had on a black tent coat that her mother had made with black velvet at the shoulders and a black hat with veil and garnet earrings, bracelet and necklace. She really was a country girl.  When she took off her hat and veil I saw that she had beautiful ‘doe eyes’ and a marvelous mole on her face, which she darkened with an eyebrow pencil. Jean was unique.”  Impressed with Jean, however Eileen told Miss Patchett: “Loose 20 pounds and come back in a month; you’re as big as a house!” At that time Jean weighed 135 pounds. “Jean didn’t mind the weight part, but her hair was her glory,” Eileen continued. “We took off just one inch, but you’d have thought we’d taken her life’s blood!” In september Jean modelled for her first Vogue cover.

Another Vogue cover with Jean Patchett by Irving Penn
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One enthusiastic reporter suggested that “almost alone Jean changed the accent in high-fashion modeling. Before, models of that ilk often had a warm, girl-next-door look. Today they mostly appear unapproachable, unattainable.”  While Jean was not as alone in this shift (Dovima, Evelyn Tripp, and Barbara Mullen could also cop an attitude), she readily admitted to purposefully
playing the ice queen. (There were practical reasons for this, too: The mood didn’t require Patchett to grin. “I have baby teeth; when I open my mouth I look like a child,” she said.).

The Tarot Reader. Ph. Irving Penn, Vogue, 1949

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Working on ’The Tarot Reader’ in 1949, Irving Penn discovered Jean was not only of seldom beauty, but also had great skills as a model. Their frequent collaboration resulted in many iconic photographs, like the one  1949 he took of her chewing pensively on a string of pearls as she sat in a cafe, a picture that came about spontaneously. This photo was for a photo-spread article for Vogue “Flying down to Lima” a romantic travelogue as lived by the model. Jean was also photographed in a shoeshine stand with an admirer and rubbing her tired feet; again in a real life and spontaneous moment. In later sessions, Irving Penn  (who called Jean Beautuful Butterfly)  would give her the suggestion of a story she could act upon,

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Jean Patchett & Irving Penn, Award Winning Photography in Lima, Peru, Vogue 1949

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Jean later said  “Flying down to Lima”  for Vogue was her big Break-Through. 

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“A young American goddess in Paris couture”

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“She has great physical energy and throws it all into a job,” Irving Penn said. “She is not conventionally pretty but has the real beauty of a person of deep intelligence and sympathy, and that all comes out.”

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Some other pictures of Jean by Irving Penn

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The story of Paul Poiret is one of a working class son, who used his natural charisma to gain entry into some of the most exclusive ateliers in Paris and eventually became one of the twentieth century’s great couturiers. But it’s also a cautionary tale about a man who refused to adapt to changing times and styles after WWII due to his arrogance and finally ended penniless and bitter, his once-great label long forgotten.

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Biography  (the beginning)

Paul Poiret is born 20 April, 1879 as the son of a cloth merchant, in Paris’s working-class quartier of Les Halles. As a young boy he is sent to apprentice with an umbrella manufacturer, where he gathers “the scraps of silk left over after the umbrella patterns had been cut,” and uses them “to dress a little wooden doll that his sister . . . had given him.”

Still a teenager, Poiret takes his sketches to Madeleine Chéruit, a prominent dressmaker, who purchases a dozen from him. He continues to sell his drawings to major Parisian couture houses, till he is hired by Jacques Doucet, one of the capital’s most prominent couturiers. Poiret is only nineteen years old at the time. Beginning as a junior assistant, he is soon promoted to head of the tailoring department. His debut design for Doucet, a red wool cloak with a reverse gray crepe-de-chine lining, receives 400 orders from customers.

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Paul Poiret Sketches

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After two years of mandatory military service (1914-1918), he returns to Paris and is hired by House of Worth, once founded by Charles Worth, but now taken over by his sons. Instead of working on the luxurious eveningwear the House is famous for, Poiret is put in charge of the less glamorous and more practical items. Gaston Worth, the business manager, referred to Poiret’s division as the “Department of Fried Potatoes.” His ideas and designs are not appreciated by the clients. One of his “fried potatoes,” a cloak made from black wool and cut along straight lines like the kimono, proved too simple for one of Worth’s royal clients, the Russian princess Bariatinsky, who on seeing it cried, “What horror; with us, when there are low fellows who run after our sledges and annoy us, we have their heads cut off, and we put them in sacks just like that.” 

At twenty-four (Poiret has a tireless self-confidence, despite his experiences at the House of Worth) he breaks out on his own and after borrowing funds from his mother, opens his own shop on Rue Auber. Its flashy window displays attract attention and he makes his name with the controversial kimono coat. Looking to both antique and regional dress types, most notably to the Greek chiton, the Japanese kimono, and the North African and Middle Eastern caftan, Poiret advocated fashions cut along straight lines and constructed of rectangles. 

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Paul, Denise & the children

Denise & Paul Poiret in their home at Faubourg
Paul & Denise Poiret at workDenise & Paul Poiret at work
Denise & daughter Rosine (the cosmetic line was named after her)Paul & Denise Poiret with their children, November 1922
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In 1905 Poiret marries childhood friend Denise, with whom he’ll go on to have five children. “She was extremely simple,” he later will say, “and all those who have admired her since I made her my wife would certainly not have chosen her in the state in which I found her.” Denise Poiret will eventually become his artistic director as well as muse, wearing his designs as they travel around Europe together and winning a reputation as a trendsetter. (A fact her husband will later take credit for: “I had a designer’s eye, and I saw her hidden graces.”)

Years later, Denise Poiret is described as:

“the woman who had inspired the feminine silhouette of this century”

Poiret’s process of design through draping is the source of fashion’s modern forms. It introduced clothing that hung from the shoulders and facilitated a multiplicity of possibilities. Poiret exploited its fullest potential by launching, in quick succession, a series of designs that were startling in their simplicity and originality. From 1906 to 1911, he presented garments that promoted a high-waisted Directoire Revival silhouette. Different versions appeared in two limited-edition albums, Paul Iribe’s Les robes de Paul Poiret (1908) and Georges Lepape’s Les choses de Paul Poiret (1911).

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Denise Poiret, the Fashion Icon

Denise Poiret, ph. by Man Ray 1919
Denise wearing the Amphitrite cape by Poiret


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Every decade has its fortune-teller, a designer who, above all others, is able to divine and define the desires of women. In the 1910s, this oracle of fashion was Paul Poiret, known in America as “The King of Fashion.” In Paris, he was simply Le Magnifique, after Süleyman the Magnificent, a suitable nickname for a couturier who, alongside the great influence of Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, employed the language of orientalism to develop the romantic and theatrical possibilities of clothing. Like his artistic confrere Léon Bakst, Poiret’s exoticized tendencies were expressed through his use of vivid color coordinations and mysterious silhouettes such as his iconic “lampshade” tunic,  “Kymono” coat and his “harem” trousers, or pantaloons. However, these orientalist fantasies (or, rather, fantasies of the Orient) have served to decline from Poiret’s more enduring innovations, namely his technical and marketing achievements. Poiret effectively established the canon of modern dress and developed the blueprint of the modern fashion industry. Such was his vision that Poiret not only changed the course of costume history but also steered it in the direction of modern design history..

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Anecdote

Lady Asquith, wife of British Prime Minister H. H. Asquith, invites Poiret to show gowns at 10 Downing Street. Stories of half-nude models running amok at the prime minister’s residence cause a furor in the press and the resulting scandal almost forces Asquith to resign...
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Peggy Gugenheim wearing Paul Poiret Helena Rubenstein in Poiret, 1926

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Paul Poiret on Tour with his Collections

Historians consider Poiret the first haute couturier to have taken his collections on tour in Europe and America. He visited Berlin in 1910, and the next year went on a six-week trek (in a chauffeured car) to Moscow, St. Petersburg, Warsaw, Vienna, Frankfurt, Berlin, and Bucharest—where he was arrested for not having a proper permit. Poiret’s arrival in New York in 1913 was prefaced by an open letter from John Cardinal Farley warning against the temptations offered by “the demon fashion.”

..Paul Poiret was the first couturier to tour America
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King of Fashion, The Autobiography of Paul Poiret

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B009ZXN07S/ref=rdr_kindle_ext_tmb

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Paul Poiret was the first couturier to embrace draping over the more traditional techniques of tailoring and corsetry; in doing so he played a key role in liberating women (Madeleine Vionnet also advanced an uncorseted silhouette, but it was Poiret, largely owing to his acumen for publicity, who became most widely associated with the new look). Draping freed not just the woman but the designer as well, allowing him to develop the innovations that became his trademarks: billowing kimono coats, neoclassical Empire and lampshade dresses and hobble skirts.

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.Biography   (follow-up)

In 1911 Poiret’s house expanded to encompass furniture, decor, and fragrance in addition to clothing, the first “total lifestyle“. Rosine, a perfume and cosmetics line is named after his eldest daughter. Poiret introduced “Parfums de Rosine” becoming the first couturier to launch a signature fragrance linked to a design house. 

On 24 June 1911 Poiret unveiled “Parfums de Rosine” in a flamboyant manner. A grand soiree was held at his palatial home, a costume ball attended by the cream of Parisian society and the artistic world. Poiret fancifully christened the event “la mille et deuxième nuit,” the thousand and second night, inspired by the fantasy of sultans’ harems. Gardens were illuminated by lanterns, set with tents, and live tropical birds. Madame Poiret herself lounged in a golden cage luxuriating in opulence, waiting for her master’s arrival so that he could set her free. The bejeweled silk harem pants Poiret made for Denise (who played the part of a concubine) were said to be inspired by a production of Scheherazade by the Ballet Russes, eventually became the basis for a new kind of lampshade silhouette that was soon all the rage. Poiret was the reigning sultan, gifting each guest with a bottle of his new fragrance creation, appropriately named to befit the occasion, Nuit d’Perse. Improperly dressed guests were requested to either outfit themselves in some of Poiret’s ‘Persian’ outfits or to leave! Poiret’s marketing strategy played out as entertainment became a sensation and the talk of Paris.

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“The Thousand And Second Night”party

Denise & Paul Poiret at “The Thousand and Second Night” party. Paul Poiret in an Arabian outfit for one of his parties At the end of the Thousand and Second Night partyDenise Poiret at “The Thousand And Second Night”party, by George Lepape (illustrator)

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Design by Paul Poiret made for the “thousand and second night” party

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 In 1911, publisher Lucien Vogel dared photographer Edward Steichen to promote fashion as a fine art by the use of photography. Steichen then took photos of gowns designed by Poiret. These photographs were published in the April 1911 issue of the magazine Art et Décoration. This is “…now considered to be the first ever modern fashion photography shoot..

In September 1913 Poiret travels to New York with Denise to tour department stores and give a series of lectures. The Manhattan fashion world welcomes them with noisy fanfare. The New York Times runs the excited headline, “Poiret, Creator of Fashions, Is Here.”

“My wife is the inspiration for all my creations; she is the expression of all my ideals. She was to become one of the queens of Paris” .”

During World War I, Poiret left his fashion house to serve the military by streamlining uniform production. He returns to Paris briefly to design the fall collection, but after two of his children die suddenly (first Rosine from an ear infection, then Gaspard from Spanish influenza), he abandons the idea. His house will now lay dormant until the end of the war. He does release one perfume during this time “Sang de France” (Blood of France), but the authorities ban it..

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Edward Steichen; The First Modern Fashion Photography Shoot

April 1911, Art et Décoration magazine

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Poiret returned after being discharged in 1919. He meets a young Elsa Schiaparelli. They strike up a friendship and he gives her clothes to wear to in-crowd hangouts. He encourages her to start her own line, which she will do a few years later.

Because he has failed to move on from his pre-war aesthetic, his designs start to be outshined by those of younger, more modern designers such as Coco Chanel, who were producing simple, sleek clothes that relied on excellent workmanship. In comparison, Poiret’s elaborate designs seemed dowdy and poorly manufactured. (Though Poiret’s designs were groundbreaking, his construction was not—he aimed only for his dresses to “read beautifully from afar.”) Struggling, the house was on the brink of bankruptcy, he decides to sell the rights to his business to a group of backers. His new maison du couture, however, is described by a visitor as “rich and tasteless. His struggle to be unusual has wound up making it all impossible. It’s like a sweetshop.”

After their bitter divorce in 1928 (Time reported, “M. Poiret charged that his wife’s attitude was injurious; Mme .Poiret countercharged that her husband was cruel”), Denise still held her ex-husband’s work in high esteem. She kept her spectacular wardrobe for posterity’s sake and it was passed down to her children and grandchildren.

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Parfums de Rosine bottles

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Poiret was suddenly out of fashion, in debt, and lacking support from his business partners and he soon left his fashion house. In 1929, the house itself was closed, and its leftover clothes were sold by the kilogram as rags.

When Poiret died in 1944 in German-occupied Paris, his genius had been forgotten. His road to poverty led him in odd jobs as a street painter trying to sell drawings to the customers of Paris’ cafes. and working as a bartender.

At one time it was even discussed in the ‘Chambre syndicale de la Haute Couture’ to provide a monthly allowance to help him, an idea rejected by the Worths (at that time at holding the presidency of that body). Only the help of his friend Elsa Schiaparelli prevented his name from encountering complete oblivion and it was Schiaparelli that paid for Poiret’s burial.

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.Licensing

One of the first designers to explore licensing, Poiret got burned by illegal copies and trademark infringements. He fought this in court and became the head of the Syndicat de Défense de la Grande Couture Française, an organization to protect the rights of designers.

 A warning against false labels, from Women's Wear Daily, 1913

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Info about Paul & Denise Poiret: Voguepedia & Wikipedia
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Next week: Paul Poiret, Pictures of Garments (part 3)

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Style is not just about beauty, it’s about finding out what fits you well and putting it all together. Serge Gainsbourg was a french rock star with great style and always surrounded by sexy girls. Something about him that fitted his personality and life style, and it all came together and worked. That is what style is. Finding what works on you and wearing it well.

Finding his signature style is what matters here. It takes some people their entire life (and let’s face it some people never figure it out), but when you realize the absolute basics to fashion and that style has to do with how clothes fit you and how those clothes interact with your lifestyle, then you truly figured it out. Gainsbourg, who was always smoking and had a crazy party life, was always wearing a white shirt that look liked he had slept in it. He never had anything ironed or looked neat, but was always wearing a suit or a jacket. He was chic, and with purpose effortlessly cool. He was definitely trendy, but seemingly wore his clothes without care,

Short Biography

He was, by his own account, a freakishly ugly man, blessed with jug ears, narrow eyes and a huge hooter. In Joann Sfar’s biopic, he’s represented by a golem-like puppet that bears more than a passing resemblance to the Count from Sesame Street. So how was it that Serge Gainsbourg managed to seduce some of the world’s most beautiful women?

“I never actually had a relationship with him,” says Marianne Faithfull, who first met Serge in 1965. “But I sometimes wish I had. You could tell that anyone who slept with him would come away very satisfied indeed. Ha ha! He had a wonderful aura of quiet confidence around him, an odd mixture of shyness and arrogance.”

There was certainly no lack of implausibly attractive women who were more than willing. “Serge liked to surround himself with women,” says the actress and singer Jane Birkin, who was married to Gainsbourg in the 1970s. “He was insecure about his looks and felt validated by their attentions.”

 Indeed, it was women who transformed Gainsbourg’s career. None of his early records sold many copies or attracted much attention, but he started to make a name for himself when women started to cover his songs.

The stunning actress and singer Juliette Gréco was the first, releasing an EP of Gainsbourg songs in 1959. But it was the 16-year-old blonde France Gall – one of the country’s new “yé-yé singers” – who transformed his career. After initially dismissing yé-yé – a style of music popular in France and Spain in the 1960s – as “banal”, he started writing for Gall in 1965. “I am a turncoat,” he said. “I turned my coat and I now see that it is made of silk.”

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His first song for her was a chart topper; his next won the Eurovision Song Contest. Later, he got her to sing the innuendo-laden Les Sucettes, about a young girl’s fondness for sucking lollipops.

Gall’s success brought Gainsbourg celebrity, including several movie roles. His songs were covered by the likes of Françoise Hardy, Michèle Arnaud, Valérie Lagrange, Michèle Torr, Régine, Dalida, Barbara, Isabelle Aubret and Brigitte Bardot, not to mention overseas artists such as Petula Clark, Marianne Faithfull, Dionne Warwick and Nico.

The attentions of some of these women infuriated Gainsbourg’s wives. He’d actually been married twice by the mid-1960s. In 1951, aged 23, he married fellow bohemian art student Elisabeth Levitsky. Levitsky came from Russian aristocratic stock and worked as an assistant to Salvador Dalí’s friend, the poet Georges Hugnet. As a result she had access to Dalí’s Paris apartment, which the couple often used as a hurried love nest.

They split and, in 1964, Gainsbourg married the beautiful, if long-suffering, Béatrice Pancrazzi, although they lived separately. By this stage, Gainsbourg had started to stray..

Serge Gainsbourg & Brigitte Bardot
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One of his affairs was with Brigitte Bardot. Bardot, aged 34, was still a huge star, but her film career appeared to be over. Gainsbourg assisted her transition from film to music, providing Bardot with some memorable psych-pop material. They had a brief, passionate affair, raising his public profile and consolidating his credentials as an unlikely sex symbol. He and Pancrazzi briefly reconciled, and even had a child together, but it wasn’t long before Gainsbourg was on to marriage number three.

Born in 1946, Jane Birkin was an upper-middle-class Englishwoman 18 years younger than Gainsbourg. They met on the set of the film Slogan, in which Serge had a small acting role. Birkin had recently split up with her first husband, the film composer John Barry, and fell for Gainsbourg. “He was mesmerising company,” she says. “His talent and odd sense of shyness seemed to demand affection.”

Their union was not without controversy after they wrote and produced the song ‘Je t’aime… moi non plus’ which contained explicit lyrics and orgasmic moans. The song was banned by numerous radio stations including the BBC and the Vatican declared it was ‘offensive’..

Serge Gainsbourg & Jane Birkin

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Together they had a daughter, Charlotte, and also brought up Jane’s earlier daughter, the photographer Kate Barry. They split in 1980, with Birkin citing Gainsbourg’s alcoholism. “He was insupportable, so drunk and so difficult,” she says. “He would come home at 4am and be so drunk he couldn’t get his key in the front door.” She left Gainsbourg for the film director Jacques Doillon.

After the divorce, Gainsbourg was rumoured to be involved with the actress Catherine Deneuve. Instead, he entered into what would end up as the longest relationship of his life, with Bambou, a Eurasian model and singer a quarter-century his junior. They were together until his death in 1991.

Intro

In many ways Antony Price made Roxy Music the in crowd that they used to sing about. Often called the silent member, he created a look ahead of its time: fetish wear fused with fantasy, the 80s long before the 70s were over. He created the visuals for their album covers. He shaped Bryan Ferry into a style icon in shiny matinee idol suits – a little bit military, a little bit Dietrich. He designed high-waisted trousers with intriguing seams up the bottom and called them “arse pants”. 

Mr. Price also dressed Gayla Mitchell for the infamous back-cover shot of Lou Reed’s Transformer album. A decade later he created the highly stylised look of Duran Duran – Nick Rhodes had been obsessed with Roxy Music. He made Jerry Hall look like a mermaid throughout the 70s and 80s. He could deal with all sexes and shapes; he knew how to “get the best out of the flesh”. He cut to create illusion.

Antony Price & Jerry Hall
Roxy Music album cover

Brian Ferry wearing Antony Price designed suit
David Bowie wearing Antony Price designed suit
Back-cover of Transformer by Lou Reed.
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Antony Price is known as “the doctor”. He listens to women’s body problems and his clothes perform a kind of surgery. He is famous for making body doubles out of chicken wire on which to base his couture creations. “I’m the man who has spent 40 years measuring and studying women’s bodies. Not just thin women. Everyday real women. Real bosoms. Real problems. Women who have no tits and want them, and women who want them smaller. I build frocks.”

“He reinvented the suit so that it was no longer about going to the office. He made it rock’n’roll. He started at a time when British fashion didn’t have sponsors. It was the era before the superstar designer. They all came after him. Yet he was a visionary. He created that military, dandy, sexy, eclectic men’s look. He created rock’n’roll fashion.”      (stylist David Thomas)

Short biography

Antony Price (born in 1945) graduated from the Royal College of Art 40 years ago, just after David Hockney and Ossie Clark, and was a perfectionist even then. He would hide from the caretaker so he could stay in college and machine all night. When he graduated he was recruited to the Stirling Cooper group, which was at the heart of fashion in the 60s.

Prudence Glynn, fashion editor for The Times tipped him as a major new fashion talent in ‘Trendsetters’, giving him the main picture and writing that ‘Antony Price is a sensational cutter and he puts a lot of work and thought into the shaping of even the most casual clothes. His range of little bare tops in crepe and cotton, for example, are technical feats, for they all have bra sections cut into the pattern … he is undoubtedly a trendsetter and in advance of his time … his clothes have great wit and gaiety and he is certainly a name to be watched in the future’. 

Before long Mr. Price was styling the Rolling Stones, Roxy Music, David Bowie and was responsible for the controversial back cover photo of Lou Reed’s ‘Transformer’ album, featuring a model with a cucumber down his trousers.  His button trousers for Stirling Cooper were worn by Mick Jagger for The Rolling Stones’ 1969 American Gimme Shelter Tour. In addition, his bridge-crutch trousers were feat of technical skill, inventing a new construction that high-lighted the male crotch and buttocks. 

Harpers & Queen 1979, drawing of the bridge-crutch trousers

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Mr. Price has been credited as the chief illusionist of what he dubbed “the Roxy Machine” and contributed to all eight album covers – something which can be boasted by no-one besides Bryan Ferry himself. The manner in which Mr.Price dressed – or in many cases, undressed – the “Roxy girls” on the covers of their albums helped to define the band’s pop retro-futurism.

He joined the Plaza Clothing Company in 1972, which specialised in the mass production of garments in retailers in the United Kingdom and abroad. Portugal. He spent 5 years working in Portuguese factories concentrating on developing ranges of stretch garments that sold in extremely large quantities to all major fashion outlets..

Antony Price drawings

In 1979 Mr. Price and his business partner Richard Cunninghmam (Head of Sales at Plaza) began a 15 year business relationship and took over the Plaza shop launching his own label, Antony Price, with shops in SouthMolton Street and on the King’s Road, which became the centre for Rock and Roll Glamour for the stars and also involved major interest from various magazines; Vogue, Tatler and Harpers and Queen. The blue glass exterior of the shop was hailed in high esteem by retail architects and the media as it had a revolutionary method of visual merchandising, i.e. the clothes were displayed as art within the store. The window was a huge television/cinema screen displaying controversial fashion images of the clothes sold within.

He also operated a shop called ‘Ebony’ in the 1980s. And in 1982 he collaborated with the British band Duran Duran, designing electric silk tonic suits for the “Rio” video.

A few years later, in 1984, Mr. Price staged another ‘Fashion Extravaganza’ at the London’s Hippodrome, combining fashion and rock music. “I’m partly responsible for the marriage of rock and fashion,” he said in 1998, “When I started out, rock people thought fashion people were snobby and fashion people though the music industry grubby and dirty.”

Antony Price received the ‘Evening Glamour Award’ from the British Fashion Council in 1989 and the following year British Vogue published a profile on Price written by Sarah Mower. He was widely considered to be a frontrunner in the search to replace Gianni Versace in 1998, after that designer’s untimely death.

Like the rediscovery of Celia Birtwell, Topshop’s Topman brought out three Antony Price collections (s/s 2009, a/w 2009 & a/w 2010), called Priceless, which were only on sale in the UK and the US. He also assisted Daphne Guinness on her eponymous line of exquisitely tailored shirts for Dover Street Market.

He continues to design clothing for the elite, including the Duchess of Cornwall. In May 2012, he dressed actress Tilda Swinton for her appearance in drag for the cover of Candy magazine, described as “the first fashion magazine completely dedicated to celebrating transvestism, transexuality, crossdressing and androgyny in all their glory.”

The secret to his success? Antony Price is a master tailor, incredibly adept at sculpting and moulding the body to perfection. Not for him size zero waifs, his dresses are created for women who have curves – and aren’t afraid to show them off in figure hugging, eye-catching dresses. The likes of Alexander McQueen and Roland Mouret have plenty to thank him for.

Antony Price for Topman

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Antony Price has remained unfinanced through out his entire career trying to compete against his French and Italian counterparts in the glamorous couture end of the Fashion industry. It has been a notoriously difficult journey, but Price fights on.

By his own admission, “It has not been easy.”

Brian Ferry & Antony Price
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“He is one of the most remarkably gifted people I have ever met, and an authority on a bewildering range of subjects. He is a master craftsman – quite rare in this day and age – and has quietly exerted an enormous influence on so many people. Although most of his work has been associated with urban nightlife, he is surprisingly a man of nature, an expert on exotic plants and rare birds and the niceties of human behaviour. To those who know him he is a constant source of amusement. In times of adversity, an incredibly loyal friend.”    (Brian Ferry).
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Jerry Hall & her Antony Price wedding dress (marriage to Mick Jagger)

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Annie Lennox dressed by Antony Price

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The exquisite designs by Antony Price can be ordered on :  http://www.antonyprice.com

 Antony Price & Christopher Kane for Vogue 2006. Ph. by David Bailey

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 info: article by Chrissy Iley for The Guardian  & Wikipedia

Pat McGrath, ph Steven Meisel

Short Biography

Pat McGrath is born in 1970. She was raised by her mother, Jean McGrath, a Jamaican immigrant, in Northampton. Pat didn’t have a formal training as a make-up artist, but she did become one of the most influential ones in the fashion industry.

Pat says her mother, who was a keen follower of fashion, is the one who stimulated her creativity.The two made a habit of studying classic Hollywood films, which Pat cites as a key to her ultimate success . Jean would quiz her daughter on different shades of eye shadow.  “She trained me, basically, to do the shows, right there… look at the pattern, check the fabrics, look for the make-up – and begin.”   “She was always mixing up colours because there wasn’t anything out there for black skin.”

She has described her upbringing as “very religious, very conservative” and has spoken of her teenage fascination with the Blitz Kids – Boy George, Marilyn, Spandau Ballet – all of whom were famed for their outré make-up and whom she used to follow around the King’s Road. “We thought we were New Romantics, we’d get changed on the train and try to get into all those clubs,” she told the Guardian in 2008.

After leaving school, Pat completed an art foundation course at Northampton College. She had planned to undertake a fashion degree but abandoned this when she met the stylist Kim Bowen, who invited her along to watch her work on shoots for The Face and i-D. Her big break came when she received a phone call asking her to go on tour in Japan with Caron Wheeler from Soul II Soul, whose make-up she had done one afternoon three years previously as a favour for a friend. “I left my job and went to Japan for three months, scared to death. I cried all the way there because I’d never been on a plane before and I was terrified.”  This opportunity led to McGrath working with i-D magazine’s fashion director Edward Enninful and subsequently, being named beauty director for the title – a position which she holds to this day.

The drama of Pat’s work is a reflection of her larger-than-life personality. She can create fantasy at the drop of a hat and is known for arriving backstage armed with at least 20 cases of ammunition, from standard-issue mascara to sequins, doilies, and art books.

Additionally, she designed Armani’s cosmetics line in 1999 and in 2004, and in 2009 for Dolce & Gabbana, was named global creative-design director for Procter and Gamble, where she is in charge of Max Factor and Cover Girl cosmetics, among other brands.

In the 2013 Queen Elizabeth II’s New Year Honors List,Pat McGrath was “named an MBE, or Member of the Order of the British Empire, for services to the fashion and beauty industry.”

“Everything goes into fashion, it isn’t just makeup. . . . It’s film, TV, history of art, books, clubs. The culture.”

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Lisbeth Salander

Pat McGrath also designed the makeup for “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”,Lisbeth Salander, one of my favorite movie characters and transition: to make the porcelain-faced Rooney Mara into a stone-cold punk computer hacker, her eyebrows were bleached and her hair dyed black. It made her become this dark, androgynous, and mysterious loner.

Rooney Mara

Keeping the look minimal, as a real tomboy would, Pat focused mainly on shaping the eyes with smoky shadow and bare skin (“There was no foundation. I wanted her skin to be translucent and for it to change color in the cold. In fact, the most beautiful scene is when she was actually very cold.”) The trick was to take black and brown eye colors and add a tiny drop of red—that created a look that was vulnerable but hard and strong.

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Pat McGrath & Anna Piaggi 

info: Vogue UK & Voguepedia

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Polly Mellen by Richard Avedon, 2002

In a career that spanned more than half a century, Polly Mellen , today 90 years old, helped create some of the most indelible imagery in the history of fashion. Her work as a stylist and editor, first under the legendary Diana Vreeland at Harper’s Bazaar, and later under both Vreeland and Grace Mirabella at Vogue, helped define a new, more modern ethos about clothes and how women wore them.

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Short Biography

Polly Allen Mellen was born in Connecticut, in 1924. She attended Miss Porter’s School for girls,in the early ‘40s, and later work as a nurse’s aid at an Army hospital in Virginia during WWII. 

In 1949 she moved to New York and became salesgirl at Lord & Taylor and a fashion editor at Mademoiselle. Soon after she was introduced to Diana Vreeland, then a fashion editor at Harper’s Bazaar and joins her at the magazine, where she will meet her future longtime creative collaborator, Richard Avedon. At first he is not keen on working with Polly, he finds her “to noisy”. She also worked with Helmut Newton, Irving Penn, Arthur Elgort, and, more recently, Mario Testino, Steven Meisel, and Steven Klein.

Later Avedon stated: “From Vreeland’s rib came Polly Mellen,”  of the longtime Vogue fashion stylist, “from that day on, Eden never looked better” and “She was the most creative sittings editor I ever worked with.”

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Bathhouse by Deborah Turbeville

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Polly marries her first husband Louis Bell in 1952, moves to Philadelphia and has two children. After she and Louis divorced (1962), she meets Henry Wigglesworth Mellen, who becomes het second husband in 1965.

A year later she returns to New York to work for Diana Vreeland as a fashion editor at Vogue, and rekindles creative partnership with Avedon. There first collaboration for Vogue is a five week trip to Japan where they produce ‘The Great Fur Caravan’ ( read & see the post of last week!). When in 1971, Diane Vreeland leaves Vogue, Polly carries on under editor in chief Grace Mirabella and in 1979, she becomes fashion director of Vogue,  . .

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Nastassja Kinski 

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.In 1991 Polly joins the staff of new Condé Nast beauty magazine Allure as creative director. Two years later she receives a lifetime achievement award at age 68 from the CFDA (Council of Fashion Designers of America, Inc.) and makes a memorable, nostalgic cameo appearance in Douglas Keeve’s fashion-industry documentary, “Unzipped.” More than ever, fans appreciated her on-air grandiosity and declarations of fashion truisms.

After a brief freelance period of two years, Polly retires from styling in 2001, 

In addition to producing unforgettable fashion stories, Polly was also inspiring young fashion talent, mentoring at-the-time-newcomers including Vera wang, Nicolas Ghesquière (whom she spotted already when he was an intern for Jean Paul Gaultier), Isaac Mizrahi, and Phoebe Philo, as well as future hair and makeup stars François Nars and Garren. Considered eccentric by some people, she was committed to never being “over it” when it came to fashion. She became known at runway shows as the editor who, when excited  by a collection, would raise her hands high above her head and clap long and loud.

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Various work by Polly Mellen

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Unzipped (1995)

Isaac Mizrahi, one of the most successful designers in high fashion, plans his fall 1994 collection. He combines inspirations such as the Hollywood Eskimo look, the Mary Tyler Moore show, and Ouija-derived advise like “dominatrix mixed with Hitchcock” into a well-received collection. A behind-the-scenes look at the creative side of fashion.

Isaac Mizrahi.

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Deborah Turbeville was born in Massachusetts and raised in New England. When she was twenty years old she moved to New York City to become a sample model and assistant for  designer Claire McCardell, who will later  introduce her to Diana Vreeland . Having a fond interest in designer clothing Deborah became a fashion editor, but not long after she realized that her heart was in photography. She has been taking amazing photographs ever since.

Unseen Versailles

She begins work on Unseen Versailles, a book dreamed up by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, an editor at Doubleday, in 1979. “I wanted her to conjure up what went on there,” Jacqueline later tells People magazine, “to evoke the feeling that there were ghosts and memories.”  Despite having encountered a beautiful restored palace when she arrived to scout it, Deborah delivers—after two years of research and work—just the haunting imagery that Jacqueline had envisioned. “I destroy the image after I’ve made it, obliterate it a little so you never have it completely there,” Deborah says. Alexander Liberman, editorial director of Condé Nast publications, calls Unseen Versailles “a pioneering breakthrough in photography.” It wins the American Book Award.

She remains consistently popular with fashion editors, working continuously with Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar and W Magazine, shooting for Ungaro, Karl Lagerfield and Valentino, in the meantime receiving personal requests from personalities such as Jackie Kennedy. Taking photographs for more than 30 years, her aesthetic has never changed. Deborah divides her time between New York and Mexico and always spent a great deal of time in St. Petersburg, Russia, the city that inspires her most.

The Fashion Pictures

From internationally acclaimed photographer Deborah Turbeville comes the first book on her highly influential visionary avant-garde fashion photography. Celebrated for her poetic grace and cinematic vision, Deborah Turbeville has produced fashion tableaux that draw the viewer into her otherworldly environments. A romantic and modernist, Turbeville bridges the boundaries between commercial fashion and fine arts photography. In this remarkable presentation, Turbeville reveals her highly individualistic point of view of fashion photography and the stories behind her photographs. 

This first retrospective presentation of Turbeville’s fashion photography was selected by the artist herself. In addition, she has designed the evocative layouts to create yet another masterwork. The presentation includes Turbeville’s most famous photographs, among them the controversial Bathhouse series of 1975 for American Vogue with disturbingly isolated figures and her Woman in the Woods series of 1977 for Italian Vogue showing psychologically charged emotions, along with her numerous photography campaigns for labels like Sonia Rykiel, Valentino, Yamamonto, Ungaro, and Commes des Garçons, as well as commissions for Chanel and work that has never been seen before. Her most current project for Casa Vogue–Italian nobility dressed in special couture outfits–evokes Turbeville’s vision of everlasting beauty.

http://www.amazon.com/Deborah-Turbeville-The-Fashion-Pictures/dp/0847834794

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Info for this story: Another Magazine & Voguepedia.

Next week:  More Work by Deborah Turbeville

Claire McCardell modeling her own design

Paris reigned the fashion world, also in New York untill Claire McCardell came along. Before Seventh Avenue was mass producing copies of French creations, Claire originated The American Look and paved the way for designers as Halston, Calvin Klein and Donna Karan.

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Biography

Claire McCardell on the way to Paris

Claire McCardell , born in 1905, grew up as a tomboy, probably due to being a girl only having three brothers, who nicknamed her “Kick”. She dreamed of being an illustrator and in 1925 she persuaded her father to let her transfer to the New York School of Fine and Applied Art (later Parsons). 

In 1927, Claire went to Paris, “what was then the source of all fashion” and continued her studies at the Parsons branch school at the Place des Vosges. While in Paris, Claire worked part-time tracing fashion sketches and learned, in her own words, “the way clothes worked, the way they felt, where they fastened.” Together with her classmates  she would often comb Parisian flea markets, looking for cast-off couture clothing, which they would then take home and unstitch to see exactly how the garments were created. especially the samples from the French couturier Madeleine Vionnet, whose influence was evident in Claire’s work; though she did not work in the couture tradition, she was able to create ready-to-wear clothing by simplifying Vionnet’s cut. Claire incorporated the bias cut into her designs, both for aesthetic as well as functional effects. 

After graduating Claire takes a series of jobs -painting rosebuds on lampshades and modeling for B. Altman- before she gets a job at a knitwear company. She is fired eight months later, after the owner tells her, “Stop designing for yourself and start designing for the customers.” Instead she finds a job with designer Robert Turk.

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Bathing suits/ Play suits by Claire McCardell

two-piece bathing suit, 1948

bathing suit 1951 

play suit 1944, bloomer sihouet

play suit early 1950’s, bloomer silhouet 

denim plat suit, 1946

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When Robert Turk shuts down his business, Claire follows him to Townley Frocks. Shortly after the move to Townley and just a month before the spring showing in 1931, Robert Turk tragically drowned while swimming, forcing Claire to finish the collection. She recalled how she dealt with the opportunistic crisis: “I did what everybody else did in those days – copied Paris.  The collection wasn’t great, but it sold.”  This success encouraged Claire to experiment.

In 1934, Claire launches her first innovation: the interchangeable separates, for which the public took some time to get used to. “It is my experience that a good, new idea must be repeated over and over to catch on,” she’ll later say. “You have to sneak up with it, at least in mass-produced clothes.” Three years later she designs her first bathing suits for Townley..

Department store Lord & Taylor becomes one of the first retailers to promote homegrown design during the Depression years of the thirties, it was almost a decade, according to The New York Times, before “people started talking about the ‘American look’ in fashion. It was fresh, spirited, young. It was made for healthy, long-legged girls who were going places and wanted clothes they could move in.”

For fall 1938, Claire shows dirndls (skirt with attached apron), which fall flat, and the Monastic  dress—which takes off after Best & Co. buys the look and markets it as the Nada frock. Time will later report, “Until then, American women had little choice of styles between a cotton house dress and an afternoon dress. The Monastic dress gave American fashion a new flexibility that it has never lost.” Despite being an unqualified and much copied hit, the Monastic will eventually—when Claire insists on repeating its silhouette in subsequent seasons—cripple Townley financially. The company closes later in the year.

Monastic dress

Claire joins Hattie Carnegie designing “Workshop Originals”, but the company thought her designs were “too simple for the rich tastes of the Carnegie carriage trade”. In January 1940, four months before the German occupation,she  attends her last Paris fashion show. Soon after, she will leave Hattie Carnegie and work briefly for lower-cost manufacturer Win-Sum, before rejoining the reopened Townley—the surprise outcome of a chance meeting on an elevator with her former employer and his new partner Adolph Klein. She will stay with Townly till her death.

Claire introduces the Kitchen Dinner dress—just the thing, a reviewer says, “for the girl who wants quickly to whip up a meal for her beau or her husband and to serve it to him looking smart. Adolf Klein adds Claire McCardell’s name to Townley labels. Valerie Steele, chief curator of the Historic Costume Collection at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City noted that in Claire McCardell’s time, “You had the name of the store or manufacturer. The designer was someone kept in the back room. …But she wanted the credit. It wasn’t an ego trip. It was just acknowledgment of her work.”

Her name is becoming a brand; she is one of the very first American designers to earn this kind of personal recognition. Unable to get proper shoes for her presentations due to wartime restrictions, she uses Capezio ballet slippers, starting a craze for dance flats.

The War Production Board issues Regulation L85, which sets restrictions on womenswear. Claire comes up with another innovation because of the fabric shortish:  Salvage Sally line of patchworked clothes and she introduces the denim Pop-over,a wrap-around housedress which Vogue will later describe as a major invention “born of necessity.” Some 75,000 of these $6.95 dresses ((its low price was because it was classified as a ‘utility garment’ and Claire’s manufacturer, Adolf Klein, of Townley, was able to make a special deal with labor) ) are sold within the year. Some form of a wraparound dress around $25 or $30 was always in Claire’s collection thereafter, and she liked denim so much she made coats and suits of it for townwear completed with the workman’s double topstitching as a form of decoration. … Claire could take five dollars worth of common cotton calico and make a dress a smart woman could wear anywhere. The modern woman could both be chic and do the cooking. The Popover is lauded at the Coty American Fashion Critics’ Awards.

Pop-over dress

At the age of 37, Claire took a break from her professional career to focus on her personal life, marrying Texas architect Irving Drought Harris, who had two children from a previous marriage. She helped raise them, but her growing career and her husband’s disapproval put a strain on the family relationship.  Claire’s brother Bob said about the marriage: “Irving never approved of her career. He would have been very happy if she gave that up.” But she had made a name for herself and she was intent on having her career.  It was her first love.

When Claire wins her first Coty Award, Norman Norell, who received the inaugural prize the year before, will say that she should have had that first: “Don’t forget, Claire invented all those marvelous things strictly within the limits of mass production. . . .

New York Times reporter Virginia Pope writes that Claire “is frequently spoken of as the most American of designer, for she seems to have a special aptitude for understanding and interpreting the life of the American woman.”

Lord & Taylor uses the phrase The American Look for the first time in 1945. In response to MoMA’s query “Are clothes modern?” Vogue publishes an Erwin Blumenfeld portrait of Claire wearing her “future dress,” which is “made entirely of two huge triangles that tie at the neck, back, and front.”

Future dress

Claire McCardell wearing her “Future Dress”, ph. by Irving Penn 

After World War II, Claire continued to branch out in the fashion industry, working as a volunteer critic at the Parsons School of Design, as well as joining an advisory panel for Time, designing a new magazine that would become Sports Illustrated. Her most lasting impression, however, would continue to be in design.

In September 1948, Claire McCardell receives the Neiman Marcus Fashion Award.

Irving Penn for Vogue, 1950: two girls being comfortable in Claire McCardell’s clothes, knitting, reading, smoking, and oozing chic insouciance at a small café table

“The typical McCardell girl looked comfortable in her clothes because she was comfortable,” wrote Sally Kirkland, a fashion editor at Vogue in the forties. “She always had deep side pockets, even in evening dresses, which encouraged a sort of nonchalant Astaire-like stance.”

Of her summer line for 1951, The New York Times says, “The designs were made of distinctive fabrics as always. The clothes were functional and styled basically, following the lines of the fabrics rather than molding anything to the body. Miss McCardell believes in belting gathers in at the waist rather than cutting the fabric to fit.”

In 1952 Claire becomes a partner in Townley.

Claire McCardell designs till 1952

evening ensemble, 1937 

dress, 1939

dress, 1939-40

Info:    VoguePedia & http://msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc3500/sc3520/013500/013581/html/13581bio.html

a lot of pictures found: http://www.metmuseum.org/

Claire McCardell was the founder of American ready-to-wear fashion, and in doing so defined what has become known as The American Look. She created casual but sophisticated clothes with a functional design, which reflected the lifestyles of American women. McCardell’s design philosophy was that clothes should be practical, comfortable, and feminine.

Claire addressed the subject of the great New York–Paris divide: “The basic difference,” she said, “is that we American women always look as if our feet were on the ground and European women mince.” She wasn’t speaking entirely metaphorically, either: She had popularized the ballet slipper as streetwear, when faced with leather shortages during the war; moreover, she built into her clothes “the McCardell slouch,” which she taught her models.

In 1955 Time Magazine published an article in which Claire McCardell’s designs were advertised “dresses that are as at home in the front seat of a station wagon as in the back seat of a Rolls, as comfortable in the vestibule of a motel as in the lobby of the Waldorf, as fitting for work in the office as for cocktails and dinner with the boss.” 

“Claire started the feeling for Americana,” Vogue’s Babs Simpson told Time. “I’ve always designed things I needed myself. It just turns out that other people need them, too,” Claire quoted.

Her clothes were functional and simple with clean lines. They were considered subtly sexy with functional decorations. She utilized details from men’s work clothing, such as large pockets, denim fabric, blue-jean topstitching, metal rivets and trouser pleats. The idea of separates, in coordinating colors and creating endless configurations was revolutionary, because of its practicality and economic.

Before Claire, noboddy dared to use jersey, rayon, calico, seersucker, gingham, and cotton voiles for evening wear. She loved easy and accessible fasteners in her clothing, from zippers, to toggles, to rope. Her Madras cotton halter-style full-length hostess gowns were shown for evening.

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Life magazine

Picasso-print  ensemble  

Marc Chagall-print dress 

Joan Miro-print dress  

Her design trademarks were double top-stitching, brass hardware replacing buttons with decorative hooks, spagetti ties, large patch pockets, and Empire waists. Claire also brought denim to the fashion forefront as a dress fabric, as well as mattress ticking, and wool fleece. Manmade fibers, too, were a source of innovation. She also loved leotards, hoods, pedal pushers, and dirndl skirts. Surprising color combinations were trademarks of Claire’s work. 

The beauty of her clothes lay in the cut which then produced a clean, functional garment. Her clothes accentuated the female form without artificial understructures and padding. Rather than use shoulder pads, McCardell used the cut of the sleeve to enhance the shoulder. Relying on the bias cut, she created fitted bodices and swimsuits which flattered the wearer. Full circle skirts, neatly belted or sashed at the waist without crinolines underneath, a mandatory accessory for the New Look, created the illusion of the wasp waist. The clothes often had adjustable components, such as drawstring necklines and waists, to accommodate many different body types…

The American Look by Claire McCardell 

 Unfortunately, Claire’s life and work were cut short by a diagnosis of terminal colon cancer in 1957.  Many believed that she was just then reaching the height of her career, and yet, despite the prognosis, the designer worked feverishly to complete her final collection.  With the help of long-time friend and classmate at Parsons, Mildred Orrick, Claire completed her final collection from her hospital bed, getting up to alter the sketches when they were not to her liking. One of her brothers, Adrian, recalled how, “In spite of her impending death, anything coming out in her name she wanted to make sure was hers.” On the day of the show, Claire checked herself out of the hospital to personally introduce the collection.  Many fashion followers realized this would be her final showing and crowded New York City’s Pierre Hotel for the show, giving her a standing ovation at the conclusion.

 On March 22, 1958, at the age of 52, Claire McCardell passed away.

 McCardell’s innovations or “McCardellisms” 

Claire contributed many “firsts” to the world of American fashion.  Her revolutionary 1938 Monastic dress was certainly one such revolutionary innovation, as was her use of blue-jean stitching and trouser pleats and pockets in women’s clothing. Like the Monastic dress, the “popover” in 1942, a “wrap-around coverall in denim,” sold more than 75,000 copies in the first season alone and Claire included variations of the popover in every succeeding collection. She also modernized the dirndl skirt, a traditional German full skirt gathered at the waist, in 1938 and although it was not popular at first, variations of the dirndl skirt remain a popular clothing staple even today.  She was also the first to incorporate the “riveted look” using “work-clothes grippers for fasteners and ornamentation. As one of the most innovative bathing-suits designers around, she introduced diaper and bloomer silhouette.s

Claire gave American women a look that set them apart from the traditional Parisian influences and helped make the everyday, such as homemaker chores, fashionable and stylish. At the same time, her designs encouraged American women to wear clothes that flattered their individual bodies and were comfortable, not restrictive ((Claire was the sworn enemy of shoulder pads), therefore ushering in a new approach to American fashion and women’s clothing.

She also started a craze for dance flats (especially Capezio) to be worn on the streets and even under evening dresses!

 Sunglasses by Claire McCardell for Accessocraft

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Exhibitions

Three Women – Madeleine Vionnet, Claire McCardell, Rei Kawakubo

1987, exhibition in FIT-Fashion Institute of Technology-Museum: Curator: Richard Martin.

Due to this exhibition, the three designers work earned them a special award in 1987 from the Council of Fashion Designers of America

http://www.amazon.com/Three-Women-Madeleine-McCardell-Kawakubo/dp/B0044PP6O2

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Claire McCardell: Redefining Modernism”

1998, exhibition opens at F.I.T. “In McCardell’s honest clothes,” publicist Eleanor Lambert writes, “you see the women of the Plains in a completely modern idiom.”

http://www.amazon.com/Claire-Mccardell-Kohle-Yohannan/dp/0810943751/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-6081323-3268934?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1173982477&sr=8-

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Book

What Shall I Wear?  The What, Where, When and How Much of Fashion.

Book description:

The revolutionary fashion designer credited with originating “The American Look,” Claire McCardell designed for the emerging active lifestyle of women in the 1940s and ’50s. She was the originator of mix-and-match separates, open-backed sundresses, and feminine denim fashion; she started the trend for ballet flats as a wartime leather-rationing measure. Spaghetti straps, brass hooks and eyes as fasteners, rivets, menswear details and fabrics: they were all started by McCardell. Her Monastic and Pop-over dresses achieved cult status, and her fashions were taken up by working women, the suburban set, and high society alike.

First published in 1956, What Shall I Wear? is a distillation of McCardell’s democratic fashion philosophy and a chattily vivacious guide to looking effortlessly stylish. Mostly eschewing Paris, although she studied there and was influenced by Vionnet and Madame Gres, McCardell preferred an unadorned aesthetic; modern and minimalist, elegant and relaxed, even for evening, with wool jersey and tweed among her favorite fabrics.

What Shall I Wear? provides a glimpse into the sources of McCardell’s inspiration–travel, sports, the American leisure lifestyle, and her own closet–and  how she transformed them into fashion, all the while approaching design from her chosen vantage point of usefulness. A retro treat for designers and everyone who loves fashion–vintage and contemporary–and teeming with charming illustrations and still-solid advice for finding your own best look, creatively shopping on a budget, and building a real wardrobe that is chic and individual, What Shall I Wear? is a tribute to the American spirit in fashion.

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/what-shall-i-wear-claire-mccardell/1118070664?ean=9781585679706

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Info:    VoguePedia, http://msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc3500/sc3520/013500/013581/html/13581bio.html & The fashion encyclopedia

a lot of pictures found: http://www.metmuseum.org

Irving Penn & Lisa Fonssagrives, 1951

Which photograph can open my story about Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn……? I mean, the’re so many amazing pictures of the woman widely credited as the first supermodel. I know, many are named or self-proclaimed “first supermodel”, but for me and many others Lisa is the one!

I chose a photograph of Lisa and the love of her life, Irving Penn. 

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Short Biography

Lisa photographed by first husband Fernand Fonssagrives for L’Oreal, 1935-37

Born Lisa Birgitta Bernstone (May 17, 1911), Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn spends her childhood in Uddevalla, Sweden. As a young girl she takes up painting, sculpting and dancing. At 17, her parents want her to take cooking lessons, but Lisa is determined to pursue dancing. Three years later, she moves to Berlin to take classes with choreographer MaryWigman, a pioneer of Expressionist dance (Mary Wigman was a pioneer of modern dance in the spirit of Martha Graham).  After finishing Wigman’s, she returns to Stockholm to open her own dance school.

In 1933, Lisa takes a train to Paris, after she is asked by renowned Swedish choreographer Astrid Malmbörg  to join her in Paris for an international competition. She falls in love with the city and decides to stay. Lisa meets fellow dancer Fernand Fonssagrives with whom she marries in 1935. Together they give private dance lessons in their apartment .

Fernand Fonssagrives’ nude photographs of Lisa

In the elevator of their apartment building, Lisa catches the eye of fashion photographer Willy Maywald, who asks her to model hats for him (Willy Maywald, a fashion photographer for the houses of Dior, Fath, Griffe, and Jacques Heim. He also worked for Harper’s Bazaar). Fernand takes the prints to French Vogue, where a test shoot is promptly set up with Horst P. Horst. Lisa arrives terrified, in a homemade brown wool suit and long, wild hair. “I had never seen a fashion magazine,” she will later recall. “I didn’t know what fashion was . . .,  had no idea of what to do with myself.” The next day, she visits the Louvre to study paintings of people posing in various forms of dress. 

Lisa begins modeling for Vogue and for her husband, who has taken up the camera following a back injury. In between the collections, the two roam Europe, photographing and selling nudes, sports, and nature shots to magazines all over.

Lisa Fonssagrives becomes the first recognisable model in Vogue.

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A memorable Vogue cover

In this cover of Vogue magazine, Lisa poses in a blue and white bathing suit while sitting in a ‘V’ position, to spell out the word ‘Vogue.  The first, black & white picture is a study for the final one (third picture). 

Horst P. Horst photographed this for the June 1, 1940, issue.

Following a Swedish vacation, the Fonssagriveses are en route to New York when war is declared in Europe. They decide to emigrate to America. Fernand begins photographing for Town & Country; Lisa connects with exiled European photographers including Horst P. Horst and Erwin Blumenfeld. She also enlists with the John Robert Powers modeling agency, doing both editorial and commercial work.

Daughter Mia Fonssagrives is born in 1941. When Lisa returns to modeling, she reduces her workload to 20 hours a week. For a long time she won’t be photographed for Vogue.

Irving Penn’s image of “12 Beauties: The Most Photographed Models in America” runs in Vogue in May 1947; it marks Lisa’s first appearance in the magazine since 1941 and it’s the first time she works with Irving Penn (who placed Lisa at the center of the composition, a delicate ice-carved swan). Recalling this glimpse of his future wife, Irving later says, “I loved her when I first set eyes on her.”  The attraction is mutual.

Lisa becomes the first model ever to grace the cover of Time in 1949. The “Billion-Dollar Baby” is the “highest-paid, highest-praised high-fashion model in the business, considered by many of her colleagues the greatest fashion model of all time.”

In Vogue April 1950, one of Irving’s most memorable portraits of Lisa is published, wearing a harlequin dress and portrait hat. A few months later she models the Paris couture for Irving in a top-floor, north-lit studio on Paris’s Rue de Vaugirard. These pictures will be published in Vogue following September.

After the couture shoot, the couple travels to London. By now Lisa’s marriage to Fernand Fonssagrives is over and she weds Irving Penn at the Chelsea Register Office.

In 1952, a son is born, Tom Penn and Lisa effectively retires from modeling, taking on the occasional job for old pals in the field. She also ends her own photography career, which started in 1947, taking pictures for Ladies’ Home Journal. Her apartment darkroom is changed into a nursery.

The 1950  Paris Couture series by Irving Penn

Cristobal Balenciaga coat 

Lisa’s vision on modelling 

“Making a beautiful picture is making art, isn’t it?” With a photographer’s eye, observing the way light hit the dress she was wearing as well as its drape. Then, with a discipline and dramatic flair learned from years of dance, she would stand in front of the camera and as she once put it, “concentrate my energy until I could sense it radiate into the lens.” She called it “still dancing.”

“There were no strobe lights in those days, but very hot spots, often live thousand watts on either side of you and the exposures were long. You could feel the sweat trickling down your face and the assistant would come over and hand you a towel. In fact I remember one time in New York in the ’50s when I was modeling fur coats in the summer. And there were no air conditioned studios then. It was so hot that I just fainted. And they propped me right back up and I went straight back to work.”

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One of the first pictures after their mariage, Liusa Fonssagrives-Penn, photo by husband Irving Penn. A strapless cloud of tulle from Christian Dior’s landmark New Look collection.

Next week: Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn (Part two)

Lisa Fonssagrives wearing a dress by Lucien Lelong in death-defying pose high on top of the Eiffel Tower overlooking the city of Paris. Photo by Erwin Blumenfeld, French Vogue, May 1939

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In 1952, Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn, the celebrated (first) supermodel effectively retires from modeling after her son, Tom Penn, is born. She begins designing clothes by the mid-’50s. At first just an occasional dress for one of her husband’s (Irving Penn) advertising campaigns, but then people begin to special order evening gowns and suddenly she finds herself designing a line of at-home clothes for Lord and Taylor. Eventually she designs sportswear for them too. This lasts a good six years. When Lisa and Irving have to move, because the Central Park West building will be torn down, she stops designing, not being allowed to have a business in the new apartment. It is time for something else.

In their Long Island house, Lisa spends more and more time in her sculpture studio and enrolls in the Art Students League to sharpen her drawing skills. Finally Lisa and Irving move to Long Island definitely. 

She begins exhibiting her sculptures and paintings in group shows in 1968 and later has many solo shows. She will be represented by the Marlborough Gallery in Manhattan.

“I was a sculptor all my life,” Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn once said, “I was a form in space.”

Lisa dies February 4, 1992 in New York of pneumonia , survived by her second husband, Irving Penn and her two children: her daughter Mia Fonssagrives-Solow, a costume designer who is married to real estate developer Sheldon Solow, and her son, Tom Penn, a designer.

Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn in the Crillon, Paris (by David Seidner, 1990) was a multi talent. During her life she was a successful dancer/ dance teacher, model, photographer, fashion designer and sculptor.

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Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar covers

Ph. Irving Penn

Ph. Erwin Blumenfeld

Ph. Irving Penn

Ph. Horst P. Horst

Ph. Irving Penn

Ph. Irving Penn  

Ph. Louise Dahl-Wolf

And many other beautiful photographs

Ph. Irving Penn

Chicken Hat, ph. Irving Penn

 Lilly Dache hat, Ph. Irving Penn

Ph. Irving Penn

Ph. Horst P. Horst

Ph. Irving Penn

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Books

Lisa Fonssagrives: Three Decades of Classic Fashion Photography

 http://www.amazon.com/Lisa-Fonssagrives-Decades-Classic-Photography/dp/0865659788/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1408631601&sr=8-1&keywords=lisa+fonssagrives+three+decades+of+classic+fashion+photography

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Irving Penn: Photographs. A Donation in Memory of Lisa Fonssagrive-Penn

The complete set of images that Irving Penn donated to the Swedish museum in memory of his Swedish-born wife. A gorgeous production with exquisite printing.

http://www.amazon.com/Irving-Penn-Photographs-Fonssagrive-Penn-Fonssagrives-Penn/dp/B000SL8I00/ref=sr_1_16?ie=UTF8&qid=1408877127&sr=8-16&keywords=lisa+fonssagrives

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info: Wikipedia, VoguePedia and interview with David Seidner

Countess Mona Bismarck (February 5, 1897 – July 10, 1983) was an American socialite and fashion icon. She married five times and was celebrated by Cecil Beaton and Salvador Dalí, satirized by Truman Capote in Answered Prayers, and memorialized in Cole Porter’s Red, Hot and Blue! In 1933, she was voted “the best-dressed woman in the world” by Coco Chanel and other top designers, and she developed a close friendship with Cristóbal Balenciaga in her 30 years as a client and patron.

Short Biography

 Mona von Bismarck wearing Balenciaga in her Parisian hôtel particulier . Photo by Cecil Beaton, 1955.

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In January 1955 Mona married her “secretary” Albrecht Edzard Heinrich Karl, Graf von Bismarck-Schönhausen (1903-1970), an “interior decorator” of an aristocratic sort and the son of Herbert von Bismarck and grandson of the German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck. First the civil marriage in New Jersey and a year later the religious marriage in Rome. Mona became Countess von Bismarck. 

Countess von Bismarck outdid heiress Barbara Hutton when she bought new 88 outfits, following this with a total of 140 items over the next two years. 

Ever energetic, for her own enjoyment, Mona read, swam, did needlework, wrote a book, and cultivated prize tulips. She kept dogs, her favorite being Mickey, a lap mutt.

Eddie von Bismarck died in 1966. Mona now resident in Capri and cut herself off from most of her friends.

Count and Countess von Bismarck

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Cristóbal Balenciaga, who made her gardening clothes, too, showed his last collection in 1968 and retired. Mona grieved for three days, shutting herself behind closed doors in the villa in Capri.

Perhaps Mona was not designed for life alone, in 1971, she married Bismarck’s physician, Umberto di Martini, she was 74 and he was 60. Through her old friend, Italy’s exiled King Umberto II, Mona purchased the title “count” for him. Martini served simple pasta dishes with inexpensive wines and dismissed her long-time employees (he was alleged to keep her medicated). It was only after his death in a sports car accident in 1979 (later referenced by socialites as “Martini on the rocks”), Mona realized that de Martini, like Bismarck, had married her for her money (exactly the same way she had married Schlesinger, Bush and Williams, so many years before), only di Martini turned out to be already married and having told her that he was opening a clinic, he had already pocketed $3 million in a Swiss bank account .

Mona’s old friend Cecil Beaton visited her at Capri and was shocked to find that all traces of her famous beauty had left her. “She is now suddenly a wreck. Her hair, once white and crisp and a foil to her aquamarine eyes, is now a little dried frizz, and she has painted a grotesque mask on the remains of what was once such a noble-hewn face, the lips enlarged like a clown, the eyebrows penciled with thick black grease paint, the flesh down to the pale lashes coated with turquoise… Oh, my heart broke for her.”

Cecil Beaton

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Mona’s health started to fail. She spent her last years putting her affairs in order and on 10 July 1983, she died at her house in Paris. She was buried in a Givenchy gown with her third and fourth husbands, Harrison Williams and Count Eddie von Bismarck, at Glen Cove on Long Island. Of the $90 million she had inherited from Williams, $25 million remained.

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Hubert de Givenchy’s comments on Countess Mona von Bismarck

On one occasion Monsieur de Givenchy was reported to have made the following comments about his favorite client Countess Mona von Bismarck, ” She was splendid as could be seen in the portrait that Dali had painted of her, and had seduced five husbands. She was mad about pearls and brought them in kilos during cruises in the China Sea and the ports of Japan. She had two lifts of different speeds installed in her apartment in Ave de New York; the faster one was for the domestics so that they could reach the landing before her to open the door.”

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Exhibition of Mona’s wardrobe curated by Hubert de Givenchy

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Book

Kentucky Countess: Mona Bismarck in Art & Fashion

http://www.amazon.com/Kentucky-Countess-Mona-Bismarck-Fashion/dp/188200714X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1257796550&sr=1-1-spell

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info: Wikipedia, VoguePedia, Style.com, The Independent & the Mona von Bismarck foundation

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