Nana's Dress Goes to FIT

The spectacular beaded flapper dress here has recently been accepted into the study collection of The Museum at FIT. It bears no designer label, nor was it worn by a boldface name, but since it belonged to my Nana Tillie, we’re very excited by the news.

My grandmother was born in 1902. She was one of five sisters and grew up in Wilkes-Barre Pennsylvania, where her family ran a kosher delicatessen. We have no photo of her wearing the striking black Art Deco-style dress, but we know she wore it in February 1925 to a cousin’s wedding in New York City. We do, however, have a photo of her taken only two months earlier at her own wedding, also in a flapper-style dress.

In trying to pinpoint the year of the dress, I lucked out and found a ridiculously detailed recap in a local Brooklyn newspaper about the wedding she attended.

“A neighborhood romance culminated last night in Miss Alberta Diana Spitz, daughter of …” 

The article details addresses, attendants, fabrics (white satin with flowing rosepoint lace, hand embroidered with pearls), and the floral composition of the bouquet and canopy (orange blossoms and orchids). Not bad advertising, come to think of it, for the bride’s father who was a florist. 

 “As Rabbi Wellerstein pronounced the couple man and wife two beautiful white carrier pigeons were released from the canopy and flew about the auditorium as a token of good luck.” And here I thought credit for that went to modern-day party planners. (The full newspaper clipping is at the end of the post.)

 

Nana Tillie in her wedding dress.

Back to the dress. Thanks to the exquisite care my mother (Tillie’s daughter) takes of everything in her charge, it has remained in superb condition for these many years. That is especially remarkable considering the weight of the beading on the lightweight silk.

Nana’s wedding dress, though the same vintage, did not fare as well and sits as a heap of rusted beads and evaporated chiffon. But remember, this is fact not fiction, so do not in any way take the fate of this garment as a symbol of her life or her marriage of more than 60 years. She was always sweet and loving, and well loved in return. When she died at age 102, Nana Tillie had produced, from her three daughters, a tally of about 50 grandchildren, great grandchildren and great-great grandchildren.

Luckily, she never got bored of going to weddings.

Here’s my mom looking smashing in the dress. She wore it to a costume party in the late 1980s.

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!!

The Photo-Fixated Fashion of Mary Katrantzou

Spring 2014

While digitally photo-printed fabric is fairly standard by now, London-based designer, Mary Katrantzou really does take it up a notch. In fact, because she designs not just the textiles, but the clothing they are made into, she’s been managing to make it new, season after season since Fall 2009.
Katrantzou finds inspiration in everything from men’s brogues to interior design photography. I'm thinking that the aesthetic might simply be called “Photoshop,” where there are no limits to possibilities of image manipulation. Details like the decorative scrollwork on banknotes or the perforations on a wingtip shoe are enlarged to colossal proportions, and the "scale tool" pours her models into gigantic perfume bottles. Nothing, be it a formal garden, a No. 2 pencil, or a skyscraper is safe from being sliced, chopped, duplicated, mirrored, and illogically reconfigured. Then, on top of the dazzling (and sometimes dizzying) print effects, the fabric is engineered into garments, with architectural precision."It's hellishly difficult to put a placement print on a bias-cut dress," said the designer when she started working with softer silhouettes.

You can see all of her collections at Style.com, where these photos are from. It seems that each season's review expresses some version of wonder as to how Katrantzou has succeeded, yet again, in causing jaws to drop.

Spring 2014

Fall 2009

Fall 2013

Fall 2012

Spring 2013

Spring 2011

Wearable Photography

Appealing photo-prints from  Agnès B ...

Bonnie Cashin's Sweater Paintings

American sportswear designer Bonnie Cashin, is probably best known for the iconic bags she designed for Coach leather, from 1962 to 1974. As a pioneer of women’s sportswear, she was all about comfort and ease of movement to support the active lifestyle of the modern woman. Though her medium was clothing and accessories, her output was more art, sculpture, or design, than “fashion.” 

In a piece about her for the 2001 “The Lives They Lived” section of the the New York Times Magazine, Amy Spindler wrote:

Her clothes alone were so colorful that she used them, in open closets and exposed shelves, as her apartment's primary decor. That decor blended beautifully with pieces by the designers of the day she considered her peers, people who didn't make clothes at all -- the Eamses, George Nelson and Isamu Noguchi. She had little patience for the inbred fashion industry, which she felt was devoted to hobbling women with its fussy clothes.

In 1964, she designed cashmere sweaters for Scottish company, Ballantyne of Peebles. These paintings of sweater bodies, are in the archive of her work at UCLA. They could so easily hang on the walls of a modern art museum.

I love these color names.

Above: anthracite and Robin red.

Below: Bursom, seaweed, sundew, and coral

Hybrid Footwear Alert

I’ve always enjoyed a good shoe hybrid, so I definitely got a kick 

out of spotting these spectator/wedge/slides for men in Stockholm. 

They are available in black and brown. 

I'm not quite sure what these boots are mated with. A shower curtain?

Clear PVC pipe? The rain/riding boots are at the Acne

flagship store in Stockholm.

Other shoe hybrids I’ve had on file ...

Work boot/pump

Sneaker/clog

Teva heels

Spectator/platform/espadrilles by Prada

Nike/wooden shoes (okay, this was for a design exhibit)

High-heel high-tops

Arm Partying

Suzy Solidor, 1932

Jacqueline Goddard, 1932

Man Ray knew a good arm party when he saw one. He famously photographed Nancy Cunard, heiress turned political activist, wearing her armloads of African bangles  (below). It also seems that Ray had a thing for the Chanel bracelets, above. He photographed both Suzy Solidor, and Jacqueline Goddard wearing the same ones.

Nancy Cunard, 1926

Madonna was arm partying back in the 80s (link) …

Indian women have been at it for

thousands of years.

Shy Bride

Nautch Girl

A Damsel Bedecked in Jewelry

In South Africa, arm partying is not

just for women …

Guys arm party too (as I hear they are 

starting to do in the US, as well).

These young men of the Ndebele tribe 

engage in serious partying

on their initiation day.

While the current incarnation of the timeless trend, was popularized last summer by the blogging Man Repeller, Leandra Medine (who also coined the phrase), the party apparently continues to be going strong.

Megan, of New York Diaries instructs:

Put as many bracelets on your wrist as you desire…throw in a watch (or two)…the more the merrier! And don’t worry about matching…that’s the fun part!

And then there was this item on WSJ.com:

Q: I notice that lots of women who are into fashion have these stacks of bracelets, sometimes with watches. They go way up their arms sometimes. This is a new trend that I want to start trying. How can I get the right mix of bracelets, and can I wear them on both arms at the same ... (To continue reading, subscribe.)

Now did someone actually write to the WSJ asking for fashion advice--would someone really do that? Or did the Journal invent this question--would they really do that? I’m still trying to figure out which of these alternatives is more disturbing.

Sorry to be such a party pooper …

Man Ray photos via auction sites.

Black and white Ndebele photos by Constance Stuart Larrabee photos via Smithsonian .