Analogue Chic

Archive for the ‘Costume’ Category

Check out these fashion and textiles exhibits on the West Coast!

At the DeYoung Museum of Fine Arts

To Dye For

July 31, 2010 – January 9, 2011

Textiles and apparel featuring all types of resist-dyeing methods, from ancient to modern.

 

 

At the Museum of Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising

The Art of Television and Costume Design

July 27, 2010 – September 4, 2010

Emmy-award winning costumes and a Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland special exhibit.

Also check out The Annette Green Perfume Museum on the 2nd Floor

 

Via CANBlog

 

Also be sure to check out my other list of fashion exhibits in the US and Europe this summer, here! 

Have you visited any of these exhibits? Tell us what you thought and send in your photos!  Leave a comment below, or email me, Allie {at} AnalogueChic {dot} com.

 

{apologies in advance for poor quality phone-photos – a.c.}

Yesterday, slapped myself out of a heat wave-induced stupor to head to Hartford for the afternoon.  Husband and I had tickets to Cirque du Soleil Ovo, and we stopped at the Wadsworth Atheneum before heading to the big tent off I-91.

In an ideal world, I would have the status where I could command a private viewing of any museum I chose to visit, with perhaps just a few other, quiet, appreciative patrons, if they could be found.  In real life, construction was being done to the Wadsworth, making it really difficult to focus in the Sol Lewitt exhibit. Oh, and best of all, a group of 11 year olds being shepherded around by 1 blessed docent (poor thing). 

The highlight of my visit was the 19th century costumes, Part I of a 3-part special exhibit the Wadsworth is putting on this year.

While the costume and textile galleries are unavailable during building renovations, the 1870s Goodwin Parlor of the Wadsworth Atheneum offers an excellent opportunity to explore these and other themes of Victorian fashion, including the parallels between interior decorating styles and costume design.

The costume and textile exhibits have been hidden away, for one reason or another, every single time I’ve visited the Wadsworth.  But they chose a great setting to display the half-dozen gowns from the 1870s– the prevailing Victorian penchant for embellishment is clear in the dresses and the furnishings.  This is one of my favorite periods of Western costume history, as fashion starts to get sexy again – love the bustle.

Costumes and textiles are notoriously difficult to display in a way that is remotely interesting.  I will regret to my dying day that I missed the Dangerous Liaisons exhibit at the Met, because that, to me, is the ideal.  I’m always interested to see what museums do with their mannequins from the neck, up.  Very often they are headless.  I like how the Wadsworth has replicated period hairstyles with white ribbon.

The exhibit is titled "The Upholstered Woman", after this Mark Twain quote:

When the visitors swept into the drawing-room they filled the place with a suffocating sweetness procured at the perfumer’s. Their costumes, as to architecture, were the latest fashions intensified; they were rainbow-hued; they were hung with jewels—chiefly diamonds. It would have been plain to any eye that it had cost something to upholster these women.
- Mark Twain, The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (1874)

You can see another take on this concept of fashion as social marker in an earlier post I wrote, here.

Also, check out my list of other fashion-related exhibits around the US and the world, here.

The Upholstered Woman: Women’s Fashions of the 1870s and 1880s

Part III: Women’s Fashions of 1885-1890
April 13 – September 4, 2011

The Wadsworth Atheneum

600 Main Street, Hartford, CT

Interesting article on a job we didn’t even know existed: costumer for military training games.

As in New York, where the denizens of Bedford Avenue are clad in American Apparel, as if in uniforms, while Park Avenue wears Pucci, each Afghan or Iraqi social stratum has its own particular dress. Mr. Tabbert studies images on the Internet to determine, for example, the exact embroidery on the epaulet of an opposition leader’s military uniform, and provides some actors with wristwatches to signify the wealthier townspeople.

Read the full article here.

Hello there,

‘Twas just a garden in the rain…

A misty-moisty morning to visit the wedding dress exhibit and flower show at the Danbury Museum on Saturday.  Lovely plants and beautiful dresses, unfortunately served to highlight how badly the Museum needs better exhibit space.  So donate generously!

You can read my write-up, with photos, over at The Mercurial.

[Updated June 15]

It’s more than just "here’s a bunch of clothing from our collection"– it’s a really illustrative survey of what women from this little part of Connecticut were wearing on their wedding day.

I’ve been informed by Museum staff that, with the Flower Show completed, some dresses will be coming out of the glass cases and onto dress forms, with some other items also going on display.  I was just cringing looking at some of those heavy dresses on hangers, and the trains folded up in the case.  It will be great for visitors to get a little closer to the details.

Having been involved with several small museums in Connecticut, I completely understand the limitations of funding on everything from roof repairs to paperclips.  The Museum is quite proud of the recent renovations to the central building, Huntington Hall.  I’m sure it’s a vast improvement on its previous setting.  On a personal note, I just have to say the style of the building is quite a visual jolt when you see it surrounded by the historical buildings and garden.  A building with flexible exhibit space, with climate control and adaptable lighting, on one floor, and offices, etc. on a separate floor, in a more harmonious style on the exterior, would be an ideal starting point for tours of the rest of the buildings.

So again, visit often, and donate generously!

If you’re traveling this summer, check out one of these fashion-related exhibits in the US and Europe.  If you know of any others, drop me a line, and I’ll add them here.  [Updated 6/6; 6/17; 7/12]

NYC

Metropolitan Museum, Costume Institute

May 5, 2010–August 15, 2010

American Woman: Fashioning a National Identity

[...] the first Costume Institute exhibition drawn from the newly established Brooklyn Museum Costume Collection at the Met. It explores developing perceptions of the modern American woman from 1890 to 1940 and how they have affected the way American women are seen today. Focusing on archetypes of American femininity through dress, the exhibition reveals how the American woman initiated style revolutions that mirrored her social, political, and sexual emancipation. "Gibson Girls," "Bohemians," and "Screen Sirens," among others, helped lay the foundation for today’s American woman.

Metropolitan Museum, Howard Gilman Gallery

June 8, 2010 – October 17, 2010

Hipsters, Hustlers, and Handball Players: Leon Levinstein’s New York Photographs, 1950–1980

Born in West Virginia in 1910, Levinstein moved to New York in 1946 and spent the next thirty-five years obsessively photographing strangers on the streets of his adopted home. Early in his career, Levinstein was quoted in Photography Annual 1955: "In my photographs I want to look at life—at the commonplace things as if I just turned a corner and ran into them for the first time." With daring and dedication to his subject, Levinstein captured the denizens of New York City at extremely close range. He used his superb sense of composition to frame the faces, flesh, poses, and movements of his fellow city dwellers in their myriad guises: sunbathers, young couples, children, businessmen, beggars, prostitutes, proselytizers, society ladies, and characters of all stripes.

Read the rest of this entry »

You may recall we had a little fashion philanthropy picnic last weekend. 

It was bloody warm, the turnout was a bit disappointing, and everyone but my husband and I was hungry because apparently, they did not read the part of the invitation that said "Please bring your favorite picnic munchies…"

But those who did attend were quite good-looking, and did an awesome job putting together not just fabulous hats, but amazing period-referencing costumes.

It was basically like this:

with less wine and less bicep. Sadly.

But, more croquet!

Read the rest of this entry »

For centuries, it was easy to identify an upper-class woman by the amount of fabric she was wearing– yards and yards of it.  This has implications from art history to the hijab debate in Islam.  Nowadays, the opposite may be true ("It’s better to be cold and stylish, than to be warm and frumpy.").  But there is still a class of women, even in our modern democratic society, whose role it is to be fertile and look attractive for their husbands.  I’m talking about you, Fairfield County.

Here are two artists who deal with women (and men) and fabric. (Also see Shadi Ghadirian.)

Elene Usdin, Femmes d’Interieur series

In this series of pictures on “Femmes d’intérieur”, I want to play with the codes, to re-arrange them, giving a cushion or a chair or a pair of shoes the same attention as the subject. It’s my way of depersonalizing the woman, of turning her into (perhaps what she always was): the object, the woman-object. Upending things in effect poses the question: what is the social status of a woman? The reference to “great classics” of painting is a good way to illustrate how a woman is corseted by her rank and the social position of her husband or her own family.

To speak of just one of these photographs : the portrait of “Georges”, is the one of (Georges) Sand, the writer, who in her own era deconstructed the codes corseting women. I have chosen to repaint the famous portrait of her by Charpentier which shows Sand with an amused smile.
In my vision, she is inviting the viewer to sit down on her, she is the woman-chair. But attention: on the armrest there lurks an aggressive barracuda which reverses the notion of the submissive woman. A kick in the nose to what society once expected of women. And today, is their independence so much more meaningful?

Quotes via Elene Usdin.

Andre Wagner, Black Holes series

I was unable to find any artist statement or curator’s description of this series.  Many different intended meanings could be read into the series title… Optimistically, my interpretation is that this series is a commentary on the tendency of people in the West to view people of other, non-Western cultures, even people of non-European descent living in the West, as one simplified image, identified by their foreign clothing, rather than as individuals.

It appears he has digitally erased the flesh of his subjects as well as the background, leaving disembodied clothing, although you can still see wisps of hair peeking from the pallu of the girl on the left in the first photo.

All images copyright to their respective creators.

Via PSFK.

 {That is the literal translation of the Spanish word for umbrella, sombrilla.}

These parasols from Japan-based DiCesare Designs are killing me right now.

Available from White Rabbit Press.

I love that they are 1) reminiscent of 19th century bonnets; 2) help prevent skin cancer; and 3) they don’t come in ridiculous Hot Topic-esque prints, because they could so easily go in  a very wrong Goth-Lolita direction, but stay sanely within chic-yet-whimsical territory.

Tanning is so overrated.  Oh, and it makes you look older faster.  Oh, and you can get skin cancer.  Last year, I regularly went out into drab downtown Danbury with my pastel painted faux-paper (i.e. polyester) parasol from the amazing Chinese dollar store here. And occasionally wore a hat from my collection.  I think if I owned one of these parasols, I would go out in full My-Fair-Lady-at-Ascot garb all the time…

Read the rest of this entry »

also debuting my new (now 3 weeks old?) haircut. much better.

favorite button down, puff sleeve blouse – Target a couple of years ago

black cotton cardigan – who knows?

charcoal gray organic cotton crop jodhpur slouch pants thingies – Laura Dawson

gray tights – Target

gray pointelle socks – who knows?

black high heel oxfords – Made by Elves (that’s what the label says, seriously) from Urban Outfitters a couple of years ago

what i almost wore today: my circus master costume.

Still don’t have your look down for the Hord Foundation Gala next Saturday?

I will help you look your Roaring ’20s best.  I am a local designer and stylist who specializes in vintage and retro looks.  From the hair to the shoes, I can help you get on the Best Dressed List.

And I will teach you how to dance the Charleston!

• Free consultation. 
• Hourly fee. 
• WesConn students, I will assist you for free!

Whether you still need a dress, or just need help with accessories, I will be your personal shopper or your complete event stylist.

Email Allie {at} AnalogueChic {dot} com to set up your free consultation!

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