Designer Label Freakout

As a Seattle-based fashion historian I try not to be too elitist and couture-focused when discussing clothing. Fashion is not just for the rich! Practical clothing can be stylish! Plaid shirts are sexy!

But today I'm going to tell you the story about how I nearly had an excitement-induced heart attack when discovering a famous Paris designer label on something in the museum collection.

A volunteer and I were preparing a dress for display and something was funny about how the hemline was hanging. So I decided to steam it a little bit. It was a 1920s evening dress with sequins, and I knew that sometimes sequins from that period can be made of gelatin and can literally melt. So I decided to turn the dress inside-out and be extremely cautious. As soon as I had it inside-out I spotted it:

I was basically like:

Jean Patou was an innovative couture designer in the 1920s and early 1930s (he died in 1936). In his time he was on par with Chanel in influence and success. If you google image search him you will also discover that he was dapper AF: 

Library of Congress, George Grantham Bain Collection, PD-US

via perfumesociety.org

After calming down a little...

(It took a while)

...I spent a little time researching the donor.  Her name was Edana Collins Ruhm, and this is what she looked like on her wedding day in 1906:

MOHAI collection

Her father was the fourth mayor of Seattle, and she grew up in luxury in the Collins mansion. Her husband died young, and so she spent the next 50 years of her life as a widow. She travelled, she gave lectures, and generally appeared to live it up. The travel included frequent trips to Paris, and she was described in the Seattle society news as wearing Patou, so it isn't some weird coincidence that she donated this dress. This was her dress.

Ok, ok, enough background. Here it is:

 BAM

This is some HIGH LEVEL HARDCORE MUSEUM QUALITY FASHION

Also, look again at the wedding photo and then look at this dress (c. 1925-26). What better illustration of the seismic shift in women's fashion between the turn of the 20th century and the 1920s? She was in her twenties on her wedding day-- all frothy and demure in ruffles -- and in her forties when she purchased the dress above. 

DAMN GIRL.

GET IT.

also can we just recap the fact that THIS DRESS IS IN THE COLLECTION I MANAGE AND HAS A LEGIT MISSION-RELATED STORY

(It is on display now if you want to see it in person)

How Studying Fashion Made Me Feel Better About My Body

Like 99.99% of adult women in this country, I sometimes feel bad about my body. So fun! Being a woman is the best.

Anyway, the other day I looked down at my stomach and saw that I was developing bit of a belly. And I felt gross, because everyone knows that women are supposed to have flat stomachs. But then I remembered some things I've learned in fashion history, and I shut down that body-shaming nonsense.

Some might think that studying fashion would make me feel worse about my body. There are all kinds of studies that show that a woman's self esteem goes down after paging through a magazine full of idealized, photoshopped images. I don't doubt that. The fashion of any particular time always revolves around an ideal body, and we are always fooled into thinking that the ideal body of this time in history and place in the world is permanent and universal. If what you see in the mirror doesn't match what you see in the pictures, something is wrong with you. But once you back up and look at images of beauty across time and geography, you realize how meaningless today's ideal actually is.

Let's start with the idea of "belly fat"

It seems like every time I dress a late 1880s dress on a mannequin, I or one of my volunteers makes the same rookie mistake. The late 1880s was a period of bustles and hourglass corsets, and when padding the body, my volunteers and I envision the hourglass as having only three sides: small waist with fullness at the back and hips. Our 21st century instincts make sure the front is flat, like we think it "should" be. But the dresses always look weird and saggy when we do it that way. Why? Because Victorians didn't give a s#*t about having a flat stomach.

Madame McCabe corset, 1887-90. Metropolitan Museum of Art.

When you cinch the waist the flesh has to go somewhere, and so corsets and dresses were built to bulge back out below the waist. Once we remember this, we stuff some "belly fat" onto the form and the front of the dress suddenly drapes beautifully. Victorians may have had all kinds of restrictive beauty ideals about paleness, sloping shoulders, and tiny waists, but when it came to stomachs they were basically like DUH WOMEN HAVE BELLIES IT IS A BIOLOGICALLY NORMAL PLACE TO HAVE FAT.

But it wasn't just that women's bellies were tolerated or ignored in the past, there were also times when they were openly celebrated. Remember this painting from art history class?

Jan van Eyck The Arnolfini Portrait, 1434

At first glance, many assume that the woman is pregnant. I mean, she has some serious belly fullness going on. But if you look more closely, you see that she is actually lifting up the front folds of her dress and creating the illusion of fullness. Why? Because that was considered a fashionable, elegant gesture at the time. The ideal in this part of the world and at this time included a full, swollen belly for women--not as a symbol of pregnancy, just for everyday fabulousness. Don't believe me? Here is a painting by the same artist of Adam and Eve:

Or this one from another artist:

Pol de Limbourg The Earthly Paradise from Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry

Today we are also convinced that a "good" body should be toned and taut, but in the early 17th century the beauty ideal called for fleshy softness and skin full of rippling dimples.

Peter Paul Rubens The Three Graces, 1635

Anne Hollander covers a lot of this in her book Seeing Through Clothes. She discusses nudes and nakedness in western art and how you can always tell what the clothes of the period are like because the bodies are shaped the way the clothes are shaped. She says stuff like...

Barnardino Luini Venus, 1530

In general the female body of the High Renaissance appears to have been conceived as a long, large stomach stretching from the collarbone to the crotch, with breasts the shadowiest of swellings. (Hollander, pg. 104)

So basically today someone might feel bad about her small breasts and "thick" waist, but in another era artists would fawn over her perfect proportions. The point is not that these past eras were utopias of body acceptance, but that the ideal is constantly shifting. Fashion tricks us into having here-and-now tunnel vision, but fashion history gives us a way to step out of our own time and see the bigger picture. 

And the bigger picture is this: If you identify as a human woman, you have a woman's body. There is no "real" woman's body, there is no attribute that all women "should" have, there is no universal standard of beauty. Even if our culture in this time and place tries to tell you that nothing about you is beautiful, you are entitled to feel beautiful anyway. And if feeling beautiful isn't important to you, you are also entitled to not give a crap. 

End of Year Cleanup

One of the best gifts I got for Christmas this year was a vase of fake flowers for my desk. You see, I'm not allowed to have fresh flowers in my office. (Actually, I always feel sort of strange saying that I'm "not allowed" as if it is cruelly banned by some order on high. Us collections folks put that rule on ourselves.  We are obsessed with keeping bugs out of the collection, and so we self-impose a no food and no fresh flowers policy in our office space.) So my parents bought me a lovely vase of fake flowers.

One requirement of the gift was that I clean off my work desk to make room for them. I have a problem of allowing mountains of papers to pile up on my desk, and since last year I was sick on New Year's Eve for my usual year-end desk clean-off day, I had TWO YEARS worth of desk piles to go through this year.

But I got through it and oh man did it feel good. I love the last two weeks of the year. It is a quiet time to just wrap up a lot of loose ends and get stuff done. Besides cleaning off my desk I...

Put away about 40 hats that had been inventoried but not yet put in boxes

Finished processing all the 2015 clothing and textile accessions

Best moment for that was when I was going through some items from the 1990 Goodwill games and was using my friend EB (who was a Russian major) to help translate the text on a shirt that had been purchased from a vendor at the games. Here is paraphrased version of our text conversation:

Me: Can I get some help with some Russian translation?
EB: Yes!
Me: [Sends photo of patches on shoulders]
Me: It is a sailor-style shirt that looks very official. So maybe the word is "Navy" or "Security"?
EB: Umm....I think it says "Fish Farm"

(We eventually figured out that it was an abbreviation for the Ministry of Fisheries)

Finished a super exciting data cleanup project that a volunteer and I have been chipping away at for over a year

Wrapped up some loose ends from the shoe project

There were some random socks and spats that had been found on the shelves which needed to be moved to different places, and there were two pairs of thigh-high boots which I hadn't figured out what to do with yet.

The shafts of the boots (yes, that is what it is called) were very fabric-y so rather than stuff them like tall leather boots, I stuffed the feet and then rolled the tops of the boots into neat little bundles.

Found some interesting stuff on my messy desk

On a page of random notes from something I attended in 2015 I found the following message:

"A necessary first step to grandeur is a delusion of grandeur"

I've decided to make that my motto for 2016.

In All The Choirs: Christmas Update

As I mentioned back in October, my time has been consumed with approximately 75% more choir than last year. I thought I would get burnt out, but it hasn't happened yet. And now that it is December I am LOVING all the Advent and Christmas music I get to sing.

Side note: I also like it when the sheet music has weird illustrations on the cover. Like, what exactly is going on here?

Anyway, last weekend I went to a Christmas crafting party that I go to just about every year. It is with a friend's family, and while everyone else has cool creative stuff to work on I usually just grab all the old magazines I can find and glue together some weird collage. I've never quite lived down my masterpiece from the first year I went, when we all made "pin-a-peeps" which are basically dioramas set up in a shoebox that you view from a hole at one end of the box. This was mine:

If you can't quite tell, that is Christina Aguilera and her underboob peeking out from behind a festively snowy tree.

I've yet to make anything quite that good, but I've been decently proud of some of my other creations. Here is one from a couple years ago:

I woke up on the morning of the craft party this year with no good ideas. But after a morning of singing I felt inspired by our purple and white choir robes. So I ended up making myself a little celebrity choir.

(I suggest clicking on it to get the full view)

Not gonna lie, I think it is a minor masterpiece. 

This week I'm looking forward to experiencing a Christmas Eve singing marathon-- one of my choirs is singing for the 7:30 service and the other for the 11pm. ELEVEN PM IS THE START TIME. I'm hoping i'll be so hopped up on Christmas cheer and Wilcox descants that I won't even notice how tired I am. But if I start hallucinating and Jane Fonda appears to me in the Soprano section...well... it might be a weird Christmas. 

Fashion in Unexpected Places

A few weeks ago I was at a concert at an old church in Seattle. They had rented a small organ from St. James (Catholic cathedral up the hill) for some pieces that needed more of a small continuo sound rather than the big pipe organ. At the intermission my Dad, ever the organ nerd, went up to check it out. He came back excitedly saying that I had to see something. I expected that I was going to have to muster up some enthusiasm for the keyboard or the style of pipes, but instead this is what he was pointing to:

In case you can't read it, the little plaque says:

In Memory Of

JOHN DOYLE BISHOP

Dedicated Advent I 1986

John follows me everywhere!!

Hay Girl Hay

Since JDB passed away in 1980, this would probably have been purchased with money he left to St. James after his death. (As opposed to the green carpet he bought for the church while he was still around to enjoy it.) I always find it meaningful to discover some new, tangible mark left by someone from the past.  John left money for St. James to use for the arts, and 30 years later it is still being used and enjoyed by the people of Seattle.

Speaking of lasting marks left by people of the past, I had the joy this week of visiting the Leary Mansion again, aka the HQ for the Episcopal Diocese of Olympia. It was with a group of other registrars and collections managers and we got a full tour.

No one seemed to be in that day so the archivist took us everywhere, even the Bishop's office.

I'M IN UR OFFICE CHECKING OUT UR CROZIER

But the best part was the fireplace in the bedroom of the original owner, Mrs. Leary. 

What have we here?

I thought it was sort of funny that in this pseudo-classical scene of nymphs and cherubs, this lady was wearing a 1920s bathing suit. But then the archivist explained that she was originally painted naked and that at some point someone decided she needed to be covered up. And apparently it wasn't the church people who did it! It happened before the church bought the building, so either Mrs. Leary didn't like people leering at it, or it was the Red Cross workers who used the house during WWII.

Also, this time I snapped a picture of one of those Ted Rand bishop paintings:

Ted Rand who also created images like this: 

So there it is. John Doyle Bishop sneaking into 21st century choir concerts, vintage bathings suits making appearances in pastoral fire places, and fashion illustration entwined with church portraiture. Wherever you are, fashion will find you. 

St. Catherine's Day 2015

Back in 2013, when I first started posting about St. Catherine's Day, I wrote this modification of the traditional St. Catherine's Day prayer:

St Catherine, St Catherine, O lend me thine aid, And see that another Poehler/Fey movie one day gets made

Well, well, well, what have we here?

St. Catherine is looking out for us y'all!

So what should us archivists, educators, hat enthusiasts, and unmarried folks wish for this year? Here are a few I came with. I decided to break out of the rhyming format and just go free form. 

St Catherine, St Catherine, O lend me thine aid. Guide my eye and my hand as I pass over the hat collection in inventory. Give me compassion for the ugly and fragile, enthusiasm for those rich in provenance, and hope for those whose provenance is not yet known. And give me courage when facing hats with giant bird faces or weird fur appendages, for they are creepy, St. Catherine. 

St Catherine, St Catherine, O lend me thine aid. Deliver me from the temptation of joining Tinder. Unless I change my mind about that, then please be supportive and cool about it, St. Catherine. Either way, deliver me from dick pics. 

St Catherine, St Catherine, O lend me thine aid. Help me to find a winter hat that is warm but that won’t make Olivia embarrassed to be seen with me. Draw back my hand when I reach for that 1990s Blossom hat that always calls to me from the depths of the closet. 

St Catherine, St Catherine, O lend me thine aid. Impart thy wisdom on those who call me with donation offers. When there is a voicemail, let the connection be good, the description concise, and the phone number recited slowly (deliver me, St. Catherine from puzzling descriptions and garbled phone numbers). And let it not be a wedding dress. 

Amen.

My Favorite Period Movies

Today, I decided I was in the mood for making lists, and decided to make one about my favorite period movies. Period dramas were basically my gateway drug into a career as a fashion historian and they continue to have a huge influence on my life. A list of 10 would be nice and round, but for some reason I could only come up with 9 that I felt truly deserved to be on my best list. Maybe there is something meaningful about always being on the search for that great movie that will round out the list. Or maybe tomorrow I'll wake up and think of the 10th and feel like an idiot for forgetting it. Whatever. There are 9. Deal with it.

1. Pride and Prejudice (1995)

Olivia and I re-watched this the other day, and I commented that I've basically never recovered from seeing this the first time. This is where it all started. There is something about this adaptation that is so compelling, so delightful, so re-watchable. Loving this movie led to watching other period movies, reading the books they are based on, developing understanding of historical fashion and eras, and eventually led me to graduate school and the job I have now. Blame Jane Austen. Blame Andrew Davies. Blame Mr. Darcy and his proclivity for swimming.

Best Costume Moment:

Ok, even I'm not cheesy enough to pick the wet T-shirt. But how about the scene right after the lake dive?

After changing clothes with historically inaccurate speed, Darcy re-emerges in this beautiful green coat with a striped vest and tan pants. Elizabeth has on this dark orange spencer jacket and they just look so perfect and elegant.

2. Sense and Sensibility (1995)

It is hard putting Sense and Sensibility second to anything, because as a feature-length movie I think it is basically perfection. This movie is excruciatingly good. The screenplay is funny at times and heartbreaking at others; the cast includes Emma Thompson, Kate Winslet, Alan Rickman, Hugh Grant, and Hugh Laurie; and it is beautifully directed by Ang Lee.

Best Costume Moment

Bad girls get the most colorful and ridiculous clothes in Jane Austen adaptations and FANNY DASHWOOD IS HERE FOR THAT PARTY.

3. North & South (2004)

There are a few deviations from the book that bother me every time I watch this, but everything else is so good that it still comes out near the top. This story has layers of interesting commentary on class, economics, worker's rights, the role of women, religion, military service...as well as mesmerizing shots of a working 19th century mill. This is the movie you show your friend who thinks period films are just about rich people going to parties. Also, it has a male lead who gets a five star rating on the Mr. Darcy scale of tortured brooding.

Best Costume Moment:

I both love and hate the ending of this movie (mild spoilers ahead). Hate, because the makeout session in the train station is WILDLY inappropriate for the time period and why oh whyyyyy is Henry there to watch...but also love because it is so good and so satisfying and everything you want after 4 hours of sexual tension between these characters. But also, Margaret wears this fantastic striped dress for this scene and I want it.

4. Our Mutual Friend (1998) 

Speaking of movies with layers...where do I even start with this one? I feel like I am riveted by a different plotline every time I watch. Sometimes it is the romance of Bella and John. Sometimes it is Eugene and Lizzy. Sometimes I can't get over how terrifying David Morrissey's performance is as Bradley Headstone (which is why I struggle to warm to him as Colonel Brandon in the new Sense and Sensibility adaptation), and sometimes I'm just in love with the bromance between bored lawyers Eugene Wrayburn and Mortimer Lightwood.

Best costume moment:

Mortimer Lightwood is the unappreciated heart of this film and his white tie evening look--complete with top hat, cane, and opera cape--is the best. Close runner up: his giant nightgown shirt, but THERE ARE NO PICTURES OF IT ON THE INTERNET.

5. Northanger Abbey (2007)

Tortured brooding is all well and good, but sometimes you want a male lead who is just plain fun. Henry Tilney is the anti-Darcy: great at parties, full of jokes, smirks, and smiles. This adaptation is delightful, short, and full of winks at the gothic romances that Jane Austen was parodying.

Best Costume Moment:

After Catherine meets Henry, she fantasizes about him fighting a duel in a disheveled white shirt and black greatcoat, while she looks on in a filmy nightgown. Hahahahaha YES GURL.

6. Wives and Daughters (1999)

This movie is sort of quietly wonderful, and sneaks up on you. There are so many period pieces that have "sweet," "perfect" characters that are cloying and dull, but somehow Molly Gibson manages to be compelling and strong while dealing with everyone else's crap and always doing the right thing. One word of (spoilery) caution: there is no kiss at the end and it feels deeply unsatisfying. Have the final scene of North & South cued up just in case you can't handle it.

Best Costume Moment:

This is a horrible screen grab, but apparently there aren't that many pictures on the internet of this amazing hairstyle with pearls literally dripping out of her hair. One thing that is fun about Wives and Daughters is that it is set in the 1830s, which is an era that doesn't translate well to our modern eye. The hairstyles are wacky and the dresses are fluffy and wide. Because we are supposed to like Molly, her costumes and hairstyles are subdued and simple. But for her terrible step-mother? Release the breaks on the 1830s crazytown express!

7. The Young Victoria (2009)

I saw this movie in the theaters. Afterward, someone asked me how it was. I thought about it for a moment and realized that I had no idea. It was so full of things I love that I felt sort of intoxicated by it and and I could't come up with any kind of objective assessment. This movie has 1) beautiful costumes and scenery 2) an empowering, female-centered story 3) history stuff and 4) a hot guy. I've now re-watched many, many times and it seems to hold up, so I'm going to declare that it is a good movie.

Best Costume Moment 

The fabric of this gown jumps out at me every time. Iridescent green with a woven pattern of blue circles. Also, everything that is going on next to her.

8. Cold Comfort Farm (1995)

How is it that so many people have not seen this movie? Maybe because if I describe the plot it sounds embarrassingly trite: Orphaned girl from the city moves in with her dreary farm relatives and brings joy into their lives. But it is based on a hilarious satirical book, and it is surprising and cynical and charming all at the same time. It also includes a performance by Ian McKellen which you will never forget.

Best Costume Moment 

Ugh, I think MOHAI has this hat.

9. Marie Antoinette (2006)

When people say they think the 2005 version of Pride and Prejudice is superior to the 1995 version I have to take a breath and pretend that that is a valid opinion and not an invitation for me to give them a 20 minute rant about how they are WRONG WRONG WRONG. But if you tell me you hate this movie, I'll be chill about it. It isn't for everyone, but I keep coming back to it and really enjoying it.

This movie also brings me full circle from the journey that started with Pride and Prejudice. Soon after I began grad school at FIT I had a friend visit me who had just started law school. We were hanging around my apartment and she saw Marie Antoinette on my shelf and expressed interest in seeing it. We put it in, and since it is the kind of movie that is easy to talk over, we started chatting and I was telling her about stuff I was learning in school and pointing out costumes that were and weren't accurate. A few minutes in she started groaning about how stressful law school was and how she should be studying right now instead of having fun. I realized that this sort of did count as studying for me. And I felt pretty good about my life choices.

Best Costume Moment

How can I choose? This movie is all visual. The whole thing is a costume moment! But if I have to pick, it would be this ridiculous pink dress with feathers and a tricorn hat. It isn't accurate. It isn't practical. But I want it.