the king of fashion and his king

because i am annoyed and so disappointed that the met has not constructed a website for their new, opening today, exhibit on paul poiret (king of fashion), i decided to instead devote today's post to raoul dufy, who was given fashion/artistic freedom by poiret as they made-over western fashion in the style of the japanese.

poiret handled the lines, the cuts of the fabric, and dufy designed the fabrics

themselves. it is astonishing to do a little research into women's fashion in the 1800s. it was quite literally not until the final half decade of the century that colors, other than black and white, were allowed in the door.

and it was past the century mark itself before color and pattern beyond calico showed on the well-dressed woman. and at the very same moment, the whole shape of the fashions changed as well.* gone were the corsets and the bustles and stays. yes, there were 'hobble skirts,' also poiret's doing, but for the most part women's bodies had been freed.

many of dufy's designs were created using woodblock prints, thereby using both method and themes he found in japanese art. poirot, even an entrepreneur, commissioned some of paris's newest and best artists to paint portraits of his dresses for publicity purposes. he used a technique called pochoir, also modeled after the woodblock.






Dufy transformed the face of fashion and fabric design, formulated practically all modern fabric design between 1909 and 1930, and his style most radically influenced the popular arts and the commercial design of the Western world. Even today, his vision influences the color, design, texture and imagery of a wide range of products such as book covers, perfumes, posters and stage decor, and textiles for furniture and clothing.

It was his friendship with Poiret that first gave Dufy the scope he needed to develop his talents. His fabrics immediately aroused great interest. Dufy's designs were very different from the available printed silk fabrics which had small paisley or polka dot designs. Dufy's fabrics were stunning and Poiret used them extensively in his fashions, creating magnificent coats, capes and dresses in sumptuous silk brocades block-printed with large designs, such as La Perse; and when Poiret took his models to the races to publicize them, they were the center of attraction.

Dufy designed and carved woodcuts for me based on the illustrations he had just created for Apollinaire's Bestiaire. I made dresses with the sumptuous materials printed from them................ Paul Poiret, En Habillant l'Epoque, Paris, 1930. 2

The cat

I wish in my house: A woman having her reason, A cat passing among the books, Friends in any season Without which I cannot live.1

(le chat translated by google. see previous dufy entry here, and poiret here and here. oh, and doesn't the owl one remind you of this?)

* in fact, the only place they changed as quickly and dramatically was, well, japan.

sui generis

anna sui lists among her favorite artists George LePape, Christian Berard, Aubrey Beardsley, John William Water- house, and Edward Burne-Jones, and Paul Poiret among her favorite designers. 1

to my eyes, her fall/winter 2008 collection owes even more to the designers of the wiener werkstatte. this may not be surprising, given poiret's inspirations.



[In] May 1903, Koloman Moser and Josef Hoff- mann, with funds supplied by Fritz Waern- dorfer, Hoff- mann's patron, and the advice of Charles Rennie Mackin- tosh -- founded the Wiener Werkstätte (Vienna Workshops) for "the promotion of the economic interests of its members by training and educating them in handicraft, by the manufacture of craft objects of all sorts in accordance with artistic designs drawn up by Guild members, by the erection of workshops and by the sale of the goods produced."

These artists wanted to institute a par- ticularly Viennese style and to produce ensembles in which all elements would reflect the same aesthetic principles. They looked back to the Biedermeier period of the early nineteenth century as the last great era of genuine Viennese design. The artists of the Wiener Werkstätte regarded the tradition of handcraftsmanship as basic. Machines were used, but the artist maintained complete control over what was produced. Wiener Werkstätte textile and fashion divisions were opened in 1910, and Paris couturier Paul Poiret was among the first to visit them.

Critics of French decorative arts urged artists to learn from the effectiveness of the German and Austrian workshops in presenting designs in a single overarching national style. Ironically, French attitudes toward luxury and quality seemed to be part of the problem. French artists, instead of joining to form workshops to produce practical, well-designed objects for the middle class as in Germany and Austria, worked in isolation as fine artists making handcrafted individual pieces aimed at the aristocratic luxury market.

French designers decided to band together to form the Société des Artistes Décorateurs in 1901. Artists in many media took part in its exhi- bitions. Jacques Doucet, Jeanne Paquin, Paul Poiret, Sonia Delaunay, and the American Mainbocher represented fashion over the years, while Émile Jacques Ruhlmann and Louis Süe, among many others, produced ideas for textiles because of their commitment to the decorative arts. This gave designers more visibility through annual exhibitions, but the French still could not agree on a central design philosophy. The debate raged throughout the first decade of the century. What style would be exclusively French and exclusively modern and could compete in the marketplace with industrial creations?

Couturier Paul Poiret, who had been considering these issues even as he looked back to the Empire period for his influential straight loose gowns of 1907, was also acting to develop a new French style in textile design. By 1909, he had already visited Germany, where he showed his collections to great acclaim. There he purchased a group of German and Eastern European decorative arts, which he regarded as akin, in their "primitive" simplicity and vigor, to all of the various artistic expressions mani- fested by the Ballets Russes, founded by Serge Diaghilev with painter Léon Bakst and choreographer Michel Fokine and then the toast of Paris.

In Vienna, Poiret had been captivated by the Wiener Werkstätte with its cooperative spirit among architects (Josef Hoffmann), decorative artists (Dagobert Pêche, Koloman Moser), and painters (Gustav Klimt, whose companion, Emilie Flöge was herself a fashion designer with a salon in Vienna).

In Germany and Austria, Poiret encountered the new modern styles on their own ground. He purchased textiles. He went to every decorative arts exhibition possible,

meeting Hermann Muthesius, the Prussian architect and critic; designer Bruno Paul; and Gustav Klimt. He wandered the streets looking at new buildings and visited every recently completed interior to which he could gain admittance.

He was especially struck by the products of the Wiener Werk- stätte, and on his return to Paris he decided to adopt the Viennese workshop concept and to strive for the freedom and spontaneity he had observed in both French and Eastern European folk art. Poiret rejected the idea of employing highly trained artists or craftsmen. Thinking of the peasants who had made beautiful objects without any formal art education, he decided to experiment with new designs by untrained artists free of what he called "false principles" learned in school. 2

The Crazy Years (two reasons i wish i was in paris today)

LEXPRESS.fr du 24/10/2007
Au rythme des Années folles

Héloïse Gray

Le musée Galliera célèbre cette formidable époque de créativité, qui marque l'avènement de la garçonne et d'une mode libérée des corsets.

Le jour, elle roule vers l'hippodrome de Longchamp dans son manteau «100 à l'heure» de chez Dornac; le soir, elle fait danser les franges de perles de sa robe Poiret au Bœuf sur le toit, rue Boissy-d'Anglas... Le musée Galliera nous fait revivre la vie effrénée de la femme des Années folles, à travers l'exposition du même nom. «Nous voulions montrer la richesse des pièces du musée, dont certaines ont été restaurées pour l'occasion. Par ailleurs, les années 1920 sont à la mode: un livre sur Jeanne Lanvin [éd. Rizzoli] et un autre sur Lucien Lelong [éd. Le Promeneur] vont être publiés, et les collections actuelles font écho à cette période aux influences multiples», explique Sophie Grossiord, commissaire de l'exposition.

Mais, au-delà du cliché de la garçonne en robe tubulaire à taille basse et chapeau cloche, Les Années folles veulent montrer en quelque 170 modèles et 200 accessoires la naissance d'une mode libérée de ses corsets. «C'est une époque qui marque l'émancipation de la femme et l'avènement de valeurs comme la jeunesse, la minceur et le sport», poursuit Sophie Grossiord. Les couturiers travaillent donc sur le mouvement en jouant sur les coupes et aussi les matières, à l'instar de Coco Chanel et de Jean Patou, qui ennoblissent la maille.

Un volet est consacré à la garçonne, qui, cheveux courts et clope au bec, emprunte au vestiaire masculin ses sweaters et ses pyjamas... mais revêt le soir une robe à danser. Cette invention résume à elle seule l'esprit de l'époque: mouvement et confort, simplification des lignes et richesse des motifs décoratifs (broderies métalliques, perles, franges, plumes...).

A découvrir également dans ce parcours exhaustif: la richesse des influences artistiques (une veste «simultanée» de Sonia Delaunay), un Orient mythique qui fait rêver les couturiers (la Russie de Paul Poiret, la Grèce de Madeleine Vionnet...). Mais aussi des pièces exceptionnelles de Jeanne Lanvin présentées au Pavillon de l'Elégance de l'Exposition universelle de 1925. Un voyage magique aux origines de la modernité.

Les Années folles. 1919-1929. Musée Galliera, 10, avenue Pierre- Ier- de- Serbie, Paris (XVIe), 01- 56- 52- 86- 00 et [doesn't seem to be working] www.galliera.paris.fr. Jusqu'au 29 février 2008. 1

(and that last photo? well i just found out that mucha designed the entire shop for the jeweler fouquet -- with whom he also made jewelry for sarah bernhardt -- and that the entire thing has been recreated -- long ago but i'm not sure when -- at the musee carnavalet in paris....) 2

When the West Reflects the East

PARIS: The dress is spring green, its flat surface ruffled like wind on water. A pebble path and a few drifting leaves add to the zen-like tranquility of the Japanese garden.

This is not cherry blossom time in Kyoto, but a French couture outfit in a Paris museum. The pallid background, the pebbles and the spare setting, are meant to enhance an original take on East meets West, as rising sun embroideries or bare-nape evening coats are displayed beside the traditional kimonos and geisha prints that inspired them.

The result is an exceptional and thought-provoking exhibition called "Japonisme et Mode 1870-1996" (Fashion and Japanese Style) at the Palais Galliéra costume museum until Aug. 4 [1996]. Although the show originated in Kyoto in 1994, the Paris version has a subtly different slant. It needs to explain the essence of the kimono to Europeans and also to show how high fashion from the mid-19th century on has absorbed the pure spirit of the East, just as Claude Monet was drawn to an aesthetic that "evoked a presence by its shadow, the whole by a fragment."

Themes from Japanese culture are isolated and given their fashion reflections: lacquer work as the shimmering geometrically constructed 1920s dress by Madeleine Vionnet, shown beside a Jean Dunand copper vase; symbolic chrysanthemum patterns as spidery gold embroidery on an emerald green silk 1927 coat by Coco Chanel, or as rich panels of Lyonnais silk. Or there are the Japanese designers' own interpretions in Hanae Mori's calligraphy patterns, Issey Miyake's origami of pleats and the paper-cutout dresses from Comme des Garçons.

The exhibition is in itself a marriage of two cultures, represented by Akiko Fukai, curator of the Kyoto Costume Institute and Fabienne Falluel, curator at the Paris museum. Falluel admits that she has altered the Kyoto focus to include playful pieces that show Japanese influence at its most popular, not to say vulgar. That means including a 19th century poster for an exotic Eastern perfume (complete with parasol and lilies) and cartoon printed kimonos from Jean-Charles de Castelbajac's current collection.

The clothing is reinforced with accessories and objects — René Lalique's Art Nouveau decorative hair combs, as well as vases, boxes and screens. One exquisite Edo screen shows folded kimonos; another kitsch 1919 version has a French society beauty against blossom branches.

"My dream was to show fashion along with other objects so that people would realize that we should not think about major and minor works of art," says Falluel. She had a frisson of excitement when she put together a dress by Charles Frederick Worth decorated with the same vivid fish pattern that appeared on a Dunand screen, and when she found a sample of the original butterfly print fabric used for a 1910 Mario Fortuny kimono. Other matches were serendipitous: a chariot-wheel pattern on a Japanese handkerchief and as Comme des Garçon's cutouts, or a Worth cape decorated with samurai helmets as seen in a warrior uniform on display.

The exhibition first informs the visitor about the kimono, its symbolism, its structure, its sleeves. Then the opening display shows Western variations on the theme from a crimson velvet Worth coat scooped away at the nape à la geisha, to John Galliano's 1994 mini kimonos — a sexy slither of skirt below the obi-sash.

Western designers are divided into those seduced by Japanese decoration — all the crysanthemum prints or the exotic fabrics used by Paul Poiret, and those who were fascinated by the kimono's geometry, like Vionnet's green dress cut in flat panels and decorated only with wave-seaming.

"Paul Poiret did wonderful things because he was so influenced by motifs, but Vionnet really understood the kimono and took the geometric idea to construct her clothes — and that brought such freedom into European clothes in the 1920s," said Issey Miyake, who was at the opening party.

"Kimono-mania" swept through fashion in the 19th century, when Japan was opened to the West. Kimonos were cut up and used as decorative fabric for Western dresses, or the corseted body was given a new freedom in kimono house robes made for Liberty of London or copied in India.

"When a new culture comes, people first copy surface decoration, then they study the technique and cut," says Jun Kanai, a curator at Kyoto. "Eventually they assimilate and use it for their own creativity, just as Van Gogh did."

Suzy Menkes
TUESDAY, APRIL 23, 1996
(read the rest)

birth of the blues

how does a color palette sweep the world? why, in the early fifties, did multiple china companies put out sets in grey, chartreuse, maroon, and forest green? and why, after the first world war, was there such a wondrous explosion of, with its complementary colors, cobalt blue?

cobalt blue. it's a color so intense you can hear it. (to me it sounds like a mixture of this and this.)

"Over the last two millennia, there have been blues available to the artist that offer rich hue, good tinting strength and covering power. But they’ve come at a high price, both in terms of cost and in effort to produce.

From 'smalt,' the first-ever compound of cobalt, used by the Egyptians in a ground glass form, to 'Lapis lazuli,' the natural form of ultramarine dug from mines in present-day Afghanistan. Blues were considered a symbol of high status, not only for the painter that could afford to use them, but for the patron that could afford to own a painting that included the colour.

Beginning in 1704, with the synthesis of Prussian Blue, and then in 1806, with the development of Cobalt Blue, and finally, in 1826, with the introduction of a laboratory-produced ultramarine that was identical to the natural lapis, blues became more affordable." 1

some writers on the subject say it was being in the aftermath of WWI itself which dictated that bold colors were needed. the doldrums needed to be over. others suggest it was the influence of the arts from other parts of the world that had begun to have this influence: prints from japan, bakst costume designs for the ballet russe.

"Maxfield Parrish studied the techniques of the Old Masters and then, using pure bold colors, particularly lapis lazuli (cobalt blue is frequently called 'Parrish Blue'), achieved an unsurpassed radiant quality in his work. His idealized women adorned in classical gowns with backgrounds of electric violets, radiant reds and rich earthy pigments, created an idyllic world indeed." (Magazine Antiques, Nov, 1995)

europeans (poiret, the amazingly prolific silver studio, to be covered more fully soon) and americans (gustave baumann, maynard dixon) alike embraced the color scheme as it reached it's most popular moment following the depression. as the popularity of 'art deco' increased, manufacturers in all industries rushed to keep up.

"Designed by Fredrick Rhead for Homer Laughlin, Fiestaware was introduced in first half of 1936. The simplicity and elegance of Fiesta's design, a set of concentric rings near the edge, and bright colors made Fiestaware popular in the 1930's. This response may have been a result of the difficult and bleak times following the beginning of the Great Depression." 2 we have met fredrick rhead before; he is louis rhead's brother!

"Homer Laughlin’s styles shrewdly changed with the fashions of the time, gradually becoming less formal and more clean and stylized. That trend reached its apex in 1936, thanks to the art director Frederick Rhead. After experimenting with various shapes and glazes, Rhead combined the streamlined style of Art Deco with the look of handmade pottery and glazed his new designs with solid, vibrant colors.

(Advertisements claimed that the hues were inspired by “the colorful festivals of Mexico.”) Most of all, the new dishware seemed relaxed and fun. “The layman,” Rhead said, 'likes to mix his colors.'" 3 (note on the posters; they all mention not carnivals but fiestas!)

we have seen this blue before, it's prevalence in promotions for paradise -- california, and in celebrations of and invitations to beauty around the world. and we will see it again (i've been collecting). in the meantime, if you have any thoughts on this, or come across any sites which add light, please let me know. thanks.

and please forgive my recent 'hiatus.' i lost my spacebar!