Fashion and/as Art History
What are examples of disciplines that intersect with fashion studies / fashion history?
- art history, anthropology, political science, literature, chemistry, psychology, gender studies, law, business
How did Impressionism get its name?
- upon viewing the 1874 Societe Anonyme exhibition (those artists interested in painting modern scenes who were rejected from the "official" Salon), a critic disparagingly wrote about Monet's work Impression, Sunrise, effectively saying the painting looked unfinished, or like a mere impression of something
What were the primary building materials used in the construction of Le Bon Marché? Briefly describe the interior view depicted by Frederic Lix.
- Iron and glass
- massive three-tiered staircase (perhaps modeled on the Palais Garnier opera house) with sweeping balconies that would allow for shoppers to see and be seen
What is one way that Paul Poiret changed women's fashion?
He liberated women from corsets and very much freed the upper body. He also eventually designed culottes and harem pants for women.
What are the "arcades" or "passages?"
- essentially shopping streets composed of many small shops, cafes, and entertainment venues that were centralized and enclosed under one glass ceiling.
- fashion is ever-changing and cyclical; it thrives on novelty (think about how fashion changes from season to season)
- style is a more personal; it's more linked to an individual's personal expression of identity
What was one result of Haussmanization and why was Baron Georges Haussmann nicknamed The Demolisher?
- wider boulevards leading up to specific monuments, clear borders defining the city, Paris divided into districts (arrondissements)
- nicknamed the Demolisher because in order to reconstruct the city, he had to destroy older neighborhoods. He demolished 100,000 apartment units in some 20,000 buildings, thus displacing thousands of people
Why were modern department stores called “cathedrals of consumption?”
They were physically huge (taking up large swaths of real estate) and sold an extraordinarily large variety of goods
What was the sculpture at the top of the entryway to the 1900 World’s Fair? What did it symbolize and why was it significant?
It is significant that this is not a depiction of Marianne (the symbol of French liberty, equality, and brotherhood), but rather is a contemporary woman, an embodiment of La Parisienne. It also proudly declares that fashion and couture are inextricable from Paris/France.
Pierre-August Renoir said, “What seems most significant to me about our movement is that we have freed painting from the importance of the subject. I am at liberty to paint flowers and call them flowers, without their needing to tell a story.” What artistic movement is he referring to and what does he mean by this statement?
- Impressionism
- Impressionism is not mimetic in that the goal is not to exactly replicate what we see in nature; rather, Impressionism offers an abstracted or more emotional and atmospheric idea of reality
Why were art historians outraged by the Cecil Beaton photographs of models standing in front of Jackson Pollock paintings, calling them "nightmarish" and the "bad dream of modernism?"
- Pollock, arguably the most celebrated American painter, became the backdrop/wallpaper to fashion
- the models literally have their backs turned toward the art, which we "should" be gazing at with awe
According to Baudelaire, what is the flaneur and his relationship to the crowd?
- the "passionate spectator" and observer of the modern city streets
- "To be away from home and yet to feel oneself everywhere at home; to see the world, to be at the center of the world, and yet to remain hidden from the world"
Why was the Bon Marché revolutionary in terms of its internal organization?
- given the massive amount and rapid turnover of inventory in the store, the Bon Marché had to develop a complex and thorough workflow/organizational structure. (Intent in how certain employees report to managers, etc.)
In basic terms, how were aniline dyes discovered by accident? Why were they significant?
- a chemist who was trying to cure malaria accidentally created a powdery purple residue that ultimately was a synthetic dye
- many colors, particularly purple, were challenging to produce because they came from specific species of snails or bugs, so making them synthetically was much more cost-effective
- these dyes were vibrant in hue and fade resistant
How does Caillebotte's painting Paris Street, Rainy Day (1877) illustrate aspects of modern Paris?
- harsh geometry of the modern boulevard (the endless cobblestones and identical apartment facades)
- uniformity of the people, all dressed in dark colors with their identical umbrellas
- we see individuals as well as people coupled off, but we don't necessarily know the relationship between those people
What is the mind/body metaphor that Agnes Rocamora uses to describe the relationship between Paris and the provinces? What is the problem with that metaphor?
Paris is the "brains" / the command center where the government is based. It is also the center of commerce and administration.
The provinces are the "body." They are controlled by Paris and mostly represent the land beyond the city center.
In French, the word "province" is singular, so it implies that there's Paris and then there's everything else. Of course, we know that the many cities beyond Paris are not a monolith and there certainly is activity happening there.
Charles Baudelaire made a distinction between a “man of the world” and an artist. What does that distinction imply about the artist’s role in modern society?
Per Baudelaire, an artist is someone cloistered away in their studio, removed from the realities of everyday life. A "man of the world," in contrast, is someone attuned to and engaged with their present moment
Thinking back to Felix Vallotton's colorful triptych Le Bon Marche (1898), what kind of comment is he making on the department store?
- Offering a spectacular, though not necessarily glorifying, view of the department store, Vallotton suggests that any glamour of the department store––full of surface illusions and glitz––is limited, deceptive, and even promiscuous.
Charles Frederick Worth said, “My work is not only to execute, but above all to invent. Creation is the secret of my success.” What did he mean by that, and what is one example of how he set himself apart from previous dressmakers?
- situating himself as an artist who "creates" his masterpieces, rather than simply a dressmaker who makes dresses according to a client's wishes
Overall, he helped establish the couture industry by:
- presenting a series of models (ensembles) from which a client could select
- A client could select the entire gown or “parts” that would ultimately be made to the proper measurements
- Worth supplied both the design ideas and the fabric selections
- idea of the couture label
What is the significance of the couturier's griffe? How does it relate to Poiret's "discovery" on his trip to American department stores?
Griffe: stamped label sewn inside of a garment, pioneered by Worth. For couturiers passionately arguing that they were artists, the griffe functioned like a signature, signaling authenticity and originality. It also links the name and the brand (think about how the name outlives the actual designer, like Chanel or Yves Saint Laurent)
Poiret was horrified when he traveled to America and saw that there were many dresses labeled as Poiret that had nothing to do with him or his designs. He eventually offered his own reduced-price copies of his dresses, models that he advertised as “genuine reproductions” (which counters his whole ethos as a designer/artist)
The fashion scholar Agnès Rocamora describes Paris as “both a material and discursive reality” whose “creation is a product of these two realities.” What does Rocamora mean by the “material” and “discursive” realities of Paris?
"material" reality = the geography, buildings, infrastructure, and the actual people who live in Paris
"discursive" reality = how Paris is represented in other media (painting, literature, etc.); the myths of Paris
Explain the myth of La Parisienne. How was Berthe Morisot uniquely able to capture the Parisienne in her paintings of women?
The archetype of La Parisienne represents a specific type of fashionable, decidedly urban woman who crafted a seductive self-image through garments and behaviors, in effect making herself into an icon of French urban femininity and modernity.
One critic wrote that in Morisot paintings, "the women are not spectacles but bodily presences in dresses that feel rendered from the inside" -- she has a certain sensitivity to the female experience as well as the lived experience of wearing more luxurious garments that enable her to paint women from a different vantage point than her male counterparts
How did the department store (and Le Bon Marché specifically) function as a pedagogical space?
- through their promotional materials and expertise of the salespeople, the Bon Marché sought to educate its clientele on how to be a "good" bourgeois citizen in modern Paris.
- analogy to the National French Library...the department store was also a place of learning for shoppers and salespeople
How did couturier Paul Poiret understand the term Gesamtkunstwerk?
Gesamtkunstwerk = "total work of art"
Poiret took a comprehensive approach to design that included not just the literal, physical dress he designed, but also encompassed interior decoration, art, perfume, accessories
In short, the environment mattered (remember all of the attention he paid to his couture salon)
How did Poiret circulate his couture designs? How was that different from other types of fashion imagery in magazines?
- collaborated with Paul Iribe (1908) and Georges Lepape (1911) to create exclusive albums depicting his dresses/interiors. These were made using the pochoir stencil/watercolor technique
- can compare these to fashion plates, which are stylized in their own way, but certainly aren't aspiring to be "high art"