Thread for Thought

Dorothy dress at auction, 2011

As you may or may not be aware, the auction of Debbie Reynolds’ extensive Hollywood costume collection was (not surprisingly) a smashing success, in that it set new new highs for what collectors would pay for literal fabric of Hollywood history. Items that have been reported on most have included:

• $4.6 million for Marilyn Monroe’s white subway dress from The Seven Year Itch (1955; costumes by Travilla):

Marilyn Monroe Seven Year Itch subway dress

• $3.7 million for Audrey Hepburn’s Ascot race dress in My Fair Lady (1964; costumes by Cecil Beaton):

Ascot dress from My Fair Lady

• $910,000 for Judy Garland’s Dorothy screen test dress from The Wizard of Oz (1939; costumes by Adrian):

Wizard of Oz Dorothy Dress

• $50K for Judy Garland’s Dorothy ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz (these actually look like the shoes as worn by the Wicked Witch of the East, and not Dorothy, to me):

Wizard of Oz Ruby Slippers

• $100K for Elizabeth Taylor’s headdress from Cleopatra (1963; costumes by Vittorio Nino Novarese and Renié):

Cleopatra headdress

Some items that were not so popular were some pantaloons from Mutiny on the Bounty (1962; costumes by Moss Mabry) and a lock of Mary Pickford’s hair (this is indicative of the under-valued silent screen era, I think– Ms. Pickford was one of the most popular actors of the silent era, though few remember her name now, even as a founder of United Artists Pictures production company). Predictably, few articles about the auction results even mentioned these low-sellers.

An interesting peculiarity about costumes is that they are generally made in multiples, as they experience accelerated wear-and-tear from being changed into and out of, often hurriedly between scenes. This sets it apart from most art forms (excepting photography and screen-painted pop art, for example) which prize the uniqueness of The Single Object.

San Giorno Maggiore at Dusk, Monet, 1908

People often conflate worth and importance with monetary value, a result of America’s aggressive capitalistic leanings. One of my favorite moments in The Thomas Crown Affair remake (1999) was during the opening museum sequence where a teacher is desperately trying to wrangle the attention of her disinterested class; after unsuccessfully trying to impress them with historical details about Monet’s San Giorno Maggiore at Dusk (1908) she finally says (I’m paraphrasing): “Get this: it’s worth a million bucks.” Her young audience snaps to attention at the mention of money, and collectively gasps, their attention suddenly focused. They have been brought up in a culture that values money above all else — including personal preference, historical import, quality or craftsmanship. If some wealthy patron is willing to blow a wad of bills on some painting, the press attention it receives increases exponentially, as does the public opinion of the work. Money subjugates all other artistic criteria.

Valerie Steele, in a NYTmes article from earlier this year which explored the rather tiresome question of whether fashion objects are museum-worthy, astutely noted:

“Most museum administrators are not particularly keen on fashion because it is not generally considered art, and these shows do take place at art museums…. Of course we realize that art is commercial, but it has a reputation for transcending that, whereas clothing does not” (my emphasis).

This commercialism is precisely the value system that leads to “fast fashion” — if a temporarily trendy skirt costs only $15 at (non-Unionized) Target, it’s easier to discard it after a season or two because the buyer doesn’t feel she’s throwing very much money away. This kind of monetary thinking omits the ecological impact of this careless behavior (an estimated 9.8 million tons of textiles were generated in 2001), and subjugates personal preference and individual style to fashion runway schedules and retail seasons which all promote planned obsolescence. But I digress….

I suppose what irritates me about this whole costume auction business is not that these garments do not deserve the press attention, or to be preserved or collected in the first place, but that it is only newsworthy if there is an impressive price tag to report on — articles almost always omit costume designer, technological film context, world politics of the day (which always imposes interesting constrictions on fabric availability, sexual mores, etc.), in favor of attributing all “worth” to the famous bodies these items hung on in one of the last stages of a costume’s long life. In the most basic, visceral sense, isn’t it utterly disconcerting to see the Dorothy dress divorced from its film environment? Compare the flattened, empty dress in the first photo of this post to the dress on Judy Garland’s body, within the Wizard of Oz environment:

Wizard of Oz poster

For me, the Dorothy dress is significant as an iconic piece of a film with breakthrough technology (color and black-and-white film in 1939); not to mention its powerful juxtaposition of the harsh Great Depression reality (Dorothy on her Kansas farm, portraying the devastating Dust Bowl that swept American and Canadian plains in the ’30s) with the fantasy dream world of ultimately rewarded optimistic aspirations. It differed from most ’30s Hollywood films where the Great Depression was completely omitted and a wealthy and/or comedic alternative reality was portrayed in lighthearted slapstick comedies and musicals. Dorothy’s gingham dress signified her farm heritage and her youth, while the ruby slippers were, in addition to being sparkly and fancy, were heeled, hinting at Dorothy’s needing to grow up. The literal contrast of texture and color between the blue cotton dress and spangly heels echoed the uneasy transition from innocent immaturity to worldly, grateful young woman. (Says me.)

Few articles have bothered mentioning the designer of auctioned costumes. It is extremely possible that many familiar with the “Marilyn Monroe dress” don’t even know it was worn in The Seven Year Itch (1955). The photos we see of this dress most often are actually from saucy publicity shots of Marilyn ineffectually hiding her panties while standing over a wind turbine-equipped subway grate, eclipsing the film itself — in which she was only filmed from the thighs down briefly (no underwear shot at all), and mostly from the waist up, due to censorship issues (as Elvis Presley’s gyrating hips were similarly cropped out of a ’50s performance).

Film posters had fewer restrictions, and so could get away with posters like this:

Marilyn Monroe publicity shot for The Seven Year Itch

Though I admittedly haven’t gone too deep into the histories of these garments, I have not even found an attempt to deepen the public’s understanding or appreciation of costumes in any article about these costume auctions, and once again, I feel that fashion has been given short shrift as an effective cultural educating tool, relegated instead to the realm of quaint prettiness, and graded by money spent to own it.

It was excitement and ultimate delight that I attended (and presented at) Yale’s “The Urban Catwalk” conference this past weekend. Though ostensibly the theme was street fashion, as with most conferences, this topic was expounded upon by a wide range of scholars from vastly different fields (performance studies, French history, literature, communications, etc.). More even than “street” or even “public space,” the concepts of “authenticity” and “identity” surfaced again and again in these lectures, and interestingly with vastly different implications.

April Calahan spoke about the French penchant for increasingly towering, sculptural hats during the WWII German occupation. While strict rationing of traditional fabric and leather limited fashions at first, soon tailors and cobblers began experimenting with non-traditional materials like cardboard, ribbons, fake food, etc. to create increasingly flamboyant and odd accessories. With gasoline shortages, bicycle culture rose steeply and clothes that facilitated athletic movement gained popularity, but as clothes became more practical, hats became less so. Though she focused on a large group– the French– Calahan emphasized that the often bizarre, towering hats of this period silently but obviously defied the Germans with a quintessential French industry– flamboyant fashion– to assert French collective identity against oppressive invaders.

French hats of '40s

Along similar lines of collective opposition, Jessica Metcalfe gave a fascinating talk about Native American resistance in contemporary streetwear. She pointed to the 19th century assimilation efforts of placing of Native American children in English/American-style boarding schools and that those children were ritualistically stripped of their native clothes and re-dressed in Western styles. (This very much reminded me of Marie Antoinette’s ritual stripping of her Austrian clothes and re-dressing in her adopted French styles.) Metcalfe showed many examples of current, young Native American graphic artists who screenprint familiar Native American motifs (blankets designs, Sitting Bull, buffalo) on modern Western clothes items (hoodies and T-shirts) as Native American activism. Christopher Columbus and 1492 are recurring references (“Fuck Christopher Columbus”) as a key moment of the marginalization of Native Americans. Metcalfe pointed out that there are many tribes all over America, but Native American activist organizations have consciously appropriated pan-Native American motifs, counting on their generic recognizable symbolism to communicate. For example, a feathered headdress– which is only actually worn by chiefs in the plains– to symbolize Native American strength, power, and a position of authority. This kind of “authentic” protest is especially important as Hipsters and stylists adopt sexified trendy Native American styles like fringed moccasins, “Navajo” print jackets, and headdresses.

Several people discussed the relationship between hip hop music, fashion, culture and black identity, and though I think this is a rich course of study, I also think it’s difficult to say anything new about it. Matthew D. Morrison spoke about sagging pants and the so-called relationship to criminality; this reminded several audience members (and me) of the recent French ban of veils, and I wished Morrison had spent a little more time dissecting how / why government attempts to combat cultural blight like criminal violence, oppressive misogyny, etc., by banning clothes associated as the result (or perhaps the precursor?) to these injustices. (See my earlier post on Innerwear as Outerwear.)

Siobhan Carter-David cataloged every Essence Magazine in the ’80s and early ’90s and made the interesting discovery that though no issue in the ’80s ever championed or even portrayed urban black style (layered doorknocker earrings, for example), in the ’90s they did retrospectives on the importance of hip hop fashions. Very interesting that showed how even the black community has been slow to acknowledge hip hop as a relevant style worthy of emulation (this reticence speaks to the strength of associations between hip hop fashion and urban criminality or other undesirable qualities).

In spite of my general boredom of things relating to hipsters, Heidi Khaled linked modern-day hipsters to their historical counterparts. From bohemian artists of the 19th century to the beatniks (apparently formerly known as “hipsters”), to the “hippies” of the ’70s, she traced the lingering associations between these arty types and elite liberalism, to the contemporary concept of consuming cool in today’s hipsters. By pointing out the fine line between earlier artists who were caught between the desire to create “authentic” art and the need to please their patrons, she indicates a puzzling disconnect between today’s aspiring artsy hipsters and true individualistic “authenticity.”

hipster with ironic glasses and mustache

Though he was not the only Performance Studies scholar, Kalle Westerling was the only presenter who incorporated performance into his discussion of performance, which I appreciated conceptually and thoroughly enjoyed. He opened by enacting a kind of poem, enunciating click sounds of lipstick and glosses and glitter as he applied the products to his lips, just before running this video in its entirety:

First: I want Erickatoure’s first ensemble for my own. Second, I loved the connection between Westerling’s lipstick clicks to the shoe clicks used as percussion in the video. He went on to discuss the intimate relationship between drag queens and their clothes– their shoes especially– in forming their identities which are sometimes separated from their drag characters and sometimes not. Performance pervades this relationship, whether on a stage or on a sidewalk.

Daphne Carr presented part of her book on Hot Topic stores and the irony of the existence of a serialized box-store that caters to supposed sub-cultures like Goth, Emo, Grindcore, etc. She has done exhaustive research on the Hot Topic store chain and it’s even more contradictory off-shot C28, the Evangelical Christian spin-off that uses the same “alternative” aesthetic in store decor and merchandise to sell Christian paraphernalia. What does it mean when “alternative,” “individualistic” visuals become corporate and even conservative religious, and why don’t consumers seem to find this contradiction problematic?

C28 T-shirt

Both Lauren Walsh and Pia Sahni spoke about the non-existence or exoticization of ethnic minorities, especially Indians. Though I certainly agree that there is undoubtedly pervasive white-ness to fashion spreads and fashion runways, and a simultaneous fetishization of those excluded “exotic” people, Walsh and Sahni used the word “authentic” to indicate there was a lack of authenticity in these slanted shows and ads– as though an “authentic” advertisement is possible or exists somewhere else.

Keynote speak Caroline Weber (author of the outstanding book What Marie Antoinette Wore to the Revolution) also touched upon “authenticity” and “identity.” In her history of the dress form and mannequin, or “Pandora,” in Paris, she said a major downfall of Marie Antoinette was that she allowed a lifelike, life-size mannequin of herself to be created, to be dressed in her fashions and shipping all over Europe. Though ostensibly used to disseminate the queen’s style for imitation, the inanimate mannequin was greeted by cheering crowds who treated it as a stand-in for the queen herself. While charming, this nonetheless conditioned people to view the mannequin as a live person, and conversely to view the live queen as an inanimate thing to the point that, when the French Revolution rolled around, she had already been literally dehumanized and it wasn’t so shocking to dismember / behead her. In fact, part of the outrage the French people directed at the throne was due to Antoinette’s mannequin, which they now claimed sexualized and debased their monarchy by allowing commoner’s hands to paw the likeness of the queen. The royal authenticity of the queen had been questioned after her mannequin double was accepted as her; I imagine allowing copies of her royal wardrobe was a similar offense as revolution rumbled, even though the same people had clamored for those very knock-offs.

Not so very much has changed in subsequent centuries: don’t we love the supposed originality of new design collections, don’t we crave affordable knock-offs immediately, and then don’t we discard them when they are so affordable they’re pervasive and we no longer appear “individual” or “authentic?” My question is, does authenticity exist at all?

I met this perfectly lovely — and dapper (he often wears a hat) — young man about a year ago at one of our favorite galleries, Chair and the Maiden. With more than a whiff of Helmut Newton, Sebastian Smith has managed to make a career of his passion: fashion photography. I picked his brain on balancing his career with his aesthetics, and his thoughts on the fashion industry:

Tove: What drew you to commercial fashion photography, as opposed to more conceptual visual arts?

Sebastian: When I first started shooting, I shot everything under the sun.  I really threw myself out there and tried to shoot whatever I could to see what appealed to me the most.  In the end I found that fashion appealed to me the most because it allowed me to use my background in advertising to create conceptual fashion images that are both creative and relevant in defining our culture.

Marie Antoinette series

Figure Study series

SWF series

Le Femme Nikita series

Once Upon a Time series

Greatest Show on Earth series

Sebastian: I follow my friend Samantha Swetra’s blog. I also follow Purple Diary, Fashionising and of course Thread for Thought.  (My guilty pleasure blog is Dlisted). Sites that I would recommend are my blog:  

Marie Antoinette series

Graffiti makeup bag, Marc by Marc Jacobs

Coming from an Art History background with all its unfortunate snooty and consumerist associations (fashion shares these themes, I’m afraid), I’ve recently become obsessed with its subculture offshoot, the publicly accessible graffiti (or “street art”) movement. Long fascinated by graffiti, I’ve recently gone on a binge, going out of my way to walk around Pilsen while visiting my friend in Chicago (it’s known for its street art; you can see my photos here), thumbing through my Banksy book, and watching documentaries like Exit Through the Gift Shop (2010) and Beautiful Losers (2008). I was especially captivated by the “Underbelly Project,” a unidentified underground “gallery” created in an abandoned New York subway station whose “curators” asked dozens of guest graffiti artists to creatively deface walls. You’ll thank me for recommending the slideshow of this installation-specific “exhibit.”

Most graffiti is site-specific, incorporating unique aspects of a location right into the art; this lends it to the use of trompe l’oeil, blurring the lines of the environment and the art (Marcel Duchamp, of course, pioneered this technique in the early 20th century). Graffiti artist Banksy in particular employs trompe l’oeil in many of his works. For example, the maid below is “sweeping” on a chalky wall in Chalk Farm (a London neighborhood, not an actual chalk farm), riffing on the location in multiple ways:

Chalk Farm, London, 2006

And the following, more bitterly ironic example, painted directly onto the wall built by Israel which separates the occupied Palestine territories from Israel (see more of Banksy’s Palestine wall murals here), drawing attention to the oppressive concrete barrier but also hinting at the potential for its destruction:

Bethlehem, 2005

The Ancient Greeks, and painters in the Baroque and Renaissance periods also loved to trick viewers, and they often incorporated “fabric” into part of the illusion:

trompe l'oeil letterboard by Cornelis Gijbrechts, 17th c

Elsa Schiaparelli famously adopted the trompe l’oeil technique and created optical illusions of fashion embellishments, without actually attaching embellishments, as in this knit sweater with “bow” and “cuffs”:

trompe l'oeil bow sweater by Elsa Schiaparelli, 1927

This is comically jarring — we often take our expectations for granted (in this case, we expect multiple layers of different materials) — and we only realize we had assumptions when they prove to be inaccurate. In most cases of trompe l’oeil this is meant to be an amusing realization, but much graffiti art is designed to be more confrontational. As the antithesis of “high art” — produced for wealthy private and corporate patrons — graffiti bears distinctly seedier, subversive connotations. It’s frequently associated with (and often indistinguishable from) out-and-out vandalism, gang tags, and is often linked in people’s minds to the perpetuation of a cycle of low-income and high-crime neighborhoods.

These sinister connotations are conveyed in Alexander McQueen’s Spring/Summer 1999 fashion show, in which a windswept and vulnerable Shalom Harlow is seemingly attacked by mechanical spraypaint robots. Oh yeah.

Like trompe l’oeil that brings to light one’s own unconscious expectations, the negative and violent connotations of graffiti are exposed when you simply modify the vocabulary: call a graffitied wall a “mural,” and the sinister overtones are eradicated, but why? Because murals are legal? What, besides red tape, is the difference between graffiti and murals? Perhaps to combat the negative stereotypes (perhaps not),  “graffiti” is increasingly dubbed “street art” which not only makes it more palatable for general consumption (“street art” is actually appearing in some galleries now), but it more easily encompasses spray painting and wall collage, such as Shepard Fairey creates. Fairey has had a significant hand in “legitimizing” graffiti as he mimics political propaganda posters in a Dada-esque manner, with trompe l’oeil layers of “torn” “posters,” some of which are modeled on actual posters he has already created as solo pieces. Indeed, most of his graffiti is overtly political (as is Banksy’s), urging citizen activism, and inherent in his chosen medium, civil disobedience. (He is perhaps best known these days for his iconic “Hope” Obama posters; but this has not shielded him from vandalism convictions.) In the snapshot below, Fairey’s familiar Andre the Giant “Obey” posters appear to be under / over other crumbling posters and wallpaper / textile illusions, the “layers” drawing attention to the mutable impermanence of his own art (and by extension, political regimes):

Shepard Fairey, Spring St

Part of what many graffiti artists are commenting on with their acts of guerrilla public art is the lack of choice the population has in ingesting the images that bombard our senses. Billboards on the roads, commercials in elevators, propaganda posters along sidewalks, these all assault us in public places legally, though their purpose is not the egalitarian sharing of public art so much as it is to compel us to consume products for someone else’s personal/ corporate profit. Many graffiti artists question authority at large, and the commercial art scene. Transgressive in its subversive messages and technical vandalism, most graffiti artists produce works of art at their own expense for free public enjoyment, or perhaps public awareness of social issues. The NYTimes article on the Underbelly Project points out that if the artists had been caught, they could’ve be charged with trespassing and possibly terrorism. Workhorse, one of the project organizers said, “There is a certain type of person that the urban art movement has bred that enjoys the adventure as much as the art. Where else do you see a creative person risking themselves legally, financially, physically and creatively?” And often knowing the fruits of their risky labor will be removed / painted over! You gotta respect the commitment.

I thoroughly enjoy the temporary nature of graffiti. Anything that can be painted can be painted over — and if its message is provocative and in an especially visible locale, it’s especially likely to be speedily removed. Something that’s fun about Banksy’s book Wall and Piece is that there are multiple photos of the same wall with timestamps. Bansky favors this approach with projects in which his graffiti invites more graffiti, as with this faux-official stamp that subverts the very concept that graffiti is illegal by making it appear legally sanctioned:

close-up

Here is one of the walls with this stencil, on Day 1, Day 9, and Day 15:

Banksy Designated Graffiti Site timeline

Graffiti walls have limited shelf lives, being exposed to the harsh natural elements and graffiti-removal campaigns. This mimics the impermanent nature of fabric which, textile conservators will tell you, is startlingly fragile. The conceptual fashion house Maison Martin Margiela is known for embracing fabric decay, exaggerating the telltale signs of the passage of time rather than suppressing them. Many of their pieces are painted white: this isn’t traditional “whitewashing” to cover up imperfections, but rather to emphasize the wrinkle fault lines and chips of exposed contrasting color underneath, as the items are broken in. The example below is painted dark, but achieves the same aging effect:

painted pants, Martin Margiela Men Fall/Winter 04

Here’s a closeup of the pants where the belt and knees have already worn away some of the dark paint:

There has been increasing cross-over between fashion and graffiti in the last couple of decades. New York graffiti artist Erni Vales collaborated on the design of limited-edition handbags for Aleya NY. And Apparel Search noted “…[Marc] Ecko won a court battle with New York City when he set out to launch a graffiti fest in New York City several years ago. Ecko, who built a successful apparel company that was founded in 1993, began with just six t-shirts and a can of spray paint. His empire now has approximately six brands under its fashion umbrella, and includes a range of fashions from contemporary styles to t-shirts, denim, fleece, and beyond.”

Marc Ecko graffiti sneakers

And I recently stumbled upon this Protacico bespoke hand painted graffiti suit that I rather fancy:

It reminds me just a little of that admittedly terrible Mentos commercial from the ’90s… (you know you want to watch it again):

The haphazard, distinctly urban effect of the neon graffiti print belies the demure cut of this Moschino summer dress in an interesting contradiction:

Graffiti print dress by Moschino

Jay-Z was recently on The Daily Show wearing a more restrained Marc Jacobs‘ painted mohair sweater:

Jay-Z on The Daily Show, December 2010

I love the single stripe that wraps around the back, as though it were a drive-by person-painting:

And speaking of person-painting, take a gander at the Louis Vuitton ad from a couple years ago….

Marc Jacobs posing for Stephen Sprouse "Graffiti" collection, 2008

If you look at the bag itself (ignore the smiling naked man for a sec), it’s more in the style of graffiti tagging, where the artist writes his name (in this case, Stephen Sprouse’s sponsoring company’s name) over and over. While I myself don’t care for this product, I appreciate the translation of a sprayed tag indicating turf property, and painted (albeit designer) moniker indicating product design property:

Louis Vuitton monogram "Graffiti" bag

As graffiti is adopted by the commercial world, it is slowly gaining (corporate) credibility, which has pros and cons for a subversive movement. Distinctly mainstream Women’s Wear Daily informed me that Dude’s Factory in Berlin “asks a different artist or artistic team to redesign the streetwear brands’ entire visuals for its collection of T-shirts, sweaters and hoodies” each month, incorporating site-specific graffiti art to create a backdrop for items for sale.

Dudes Factory mural, Berlin

If you can’t tell, I have mixed feelings about the appropriation of graffiti by corporate ventures: on one hand, I genuinely like the graphic style of street art, so products incorporating it appeal to me; on the other hand, it seems antithetical to the free, urban art movement to participate in collaborations with high end designers and boutiques. But an inherent trait of graffiti that I think will preserve its subversive, edgy, anti-consumerist roots is that it will remain a DIY art that anyone with a sharpie / paint can / printer / glue could imitate. I just might paint my own damn clothes Mr. Jacobs, thank you very much!

For excellent DIY fashion blogs, check these out (and share, if you know some more!):

• OutsaPop Trashion
• A Pair and a Spare
• P.S. I Made This
• (In)Decorous Taste

Marilyn Monroe by Richard Avedon, 1957

I have had Marilyn Monroe on the brain recently due to two rather under-publicized tidbits:

1. Michelle Williams (1980 – ) will be playing Marilyn in an upcoming movie My Week With Marilyn, about the tense filming of The Prince and the Showgirl (1957) with Laurence Olivier; and
2. WWD recently informed me that Authentic Brands Group, LLC has bought the “intellectual property” of Marilyn Monroe — that is, the rights to use her name and image for advertising any product they see fit.

Now I understand that celebrities have been an integral part of marketing products they may or may not actually use themselves for decades, if not hundreds of years. But the Marilyn obsession, like Cleopatra, has been particularly enduring. Droves of women, beautiful in their own rights, have latched onto literal comparisons between themselves and Marilyn. Madonna (1958 – ) was particularly Marilyn-like in her late ’80s, early ’90s incarnations of herself:

Madonna vs Marilyn Monroe in white dress

And she created a video homage to Ms. Monroe by recreating her own version of “Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend” from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953):

in her “Material Girl” (1985) video:

Madonna’s video not only aped the pink evening gown and the dancing chorus boys, but also addressed the same stereotype of beautiful women assumed to be gold diggers — though both blondes are singing about wanting money with their men, in fact their characters are both invested in love. And the public loves to believe stunningly gorgeous women are really down to earth, don’t we?

Lindsay Lohan (1986 – ) and photographer Bert Stern (1929 – ) likewise recreated the famous “Last Sitting” photo shoot Stern himself took of Marilyn just weeks before Marilyn’s premature death, practically shot-for-shot for 2008 New York Magazine (see all photos here):

Lindsay Lohan for New York Magazine, 2008

Compare to the original:

Marilyn Monroe shot by Bert Stern in Last Sitting, 1962

I find the following photo from the Lohan shoot especially interesting, in that she is looking at herself in the process of being made to resemble a dead woman idolized for her body and face, who turned to alcohol and pills to cope with the pressure of being the woman “every woman wants to be and every man wants.” This might be especially poignant for Lohan, as another young pop culture figure whose substance abuse was probably fueled and certainly facilitated by her celebrity. Lohan so identifies with Marilyn that her clothing line 6126 (best known for its leggings) references Marilyn’s birth date.

Lindsay Lohan being made up as Marilyn Monroe, shot by Bert Stern, 2008

It’s become a familiar formula that women assume Marilyn’s iconic style, implicitly comparing themselves to her: attempting to appropriate her beauty, her sexual power, and perhaps her emotional vulnerability in an attempt to capture for themselves some of the public’s adoration. It’s also interesting that for all Marilyn’s legendary beauty, almost no one remembers who helped create her image. Her trademark sleepy bedroom-eyes was in great part due to winged liquid liner and false eyelashes that drooped down rather than fanning upwards — Kevyn Aucoin proved in his book Making Faces that someone as dissimilar-looking as Lisa Marie Presley…

Lisa Marie Presley

…could look exactly like Marilyn.  Shocking, right??

Lisa Marie Presley as Marilyn Monroe, makeup by Kevyn Aucoin

All you need is obscene amounts of makeup and step-by-step instructions:

In the introduction, Aucoin writes that he threw out all the rules of makeup — don’t lipstick outside your natural lip lines, for example. Looking back on his radical technique now, I realize he was doing precisely what the makeup artists and wardrobe stylists of the Hollywood studios were doing in the early 20th century: taking a slightly better-than-average-looking woman and turning her into a star (see this website for some fun before-and-afters of stars who went through this process). It was no secret Marilyn was not a natural blonde, but when she went from “Norma Jean Baker” to “Marilyn Monroe,” she lost the wide-eyed innocent look with freckles too, which makes her look like a completely different person:

Norma Jean Baker

I don’t know who was responsible for the original transformation, but Travilla (a.k.a. William Travilla, 1920 – 1990) dressed Marilyn in eight of her most well-known films including Gentlemen Prefer Blondes,

How to Marry a Millionaire (1953),

and The Seven Year Itch (1955) with its iconic white pleated halter dress and subway grate scene (which, by the by, you see far more of — that is, far more leg — in the publicity photos than you do in the movie). (Amazing photo stills of many other test costume shots here.)

It was a challenge to design clothes that showcased Marilyn’s bitchin’ bod while conforming to the highly restrictive Hays Production Code that strictly defined and prohibited obscenity in films for the greater part of the 20th century (as opposed to the more mysterious current system of film rating with anonymous rule-makers… but that’s another story). Travilla dressed Marilyn off-screen as well, yet so dazzled are we by the myth we’ve built up about Marilyn that most people are unaware of Travilla’s significant contribution to the creation of her public image, which rode the line between glamorous and down-to-earth, slinky but covered up (hello illusion netting!), unselfconscious but vulnerable. You can see how this image is twisted in the hands of, say Britney Spears (1981 – ) who posed for an Esquire cover reminiscent of Marilyn’s subway vent breeze:

Britney Spears for Esquire cover, 2003

Compare to this more playful sweater pic of Marilyn, with less skin exposed and bare feet,

or to this racier “Lolita” sweater clip from Let’s Make Love (1960):

What this very long series of examples serves to demonstrate is there is no end to the appropriation of Marilyn Monroe’s style by celebrities already, to glom onto her success, her beauty, her adoration, and perhaps also the infamy of her tragic demise — which, I might point out, was in large part due to the pressure exerted by an over-enthusiastic public that pinned unrealistic expectations of smoldering looks and bubbly personality on a woman who struggled to maintain relationships and was terrified of aging. Marilyn died almost 50 years ago now (in 1962), and yet “Over the past 20 years, 1,975 deals for Marilyn Monroe have been signed, ranging from intimate apparel to wine, and, in the past year alone, some 140 deals have been signed.” Gina Bellefante wrote of Lindsay Lohan’s “Last Sitting” redux, “No matter Ms. Lohan’s protestations, the pictures ask viewers to engage in a kind of mock necrophilia. They are sexual, funereal images.” I couldn’t agree more. Other living celebrities who were just as famous in their heydays — Elizabeth Taylor, “the most beautiful woman in the world” comes to mind — have not lasted in the public image as Marilyn or James Dean have. America just loves a beautiful train wreck.

To return (at long last) to the Authentic Brands Group marketing deal, “there will be three ways in which Marilyn Monroe licensing will operate: One is to borrow the name and likeness for ad campaigns; the second is to use the Marilyn Monroe likeness, via computer-generated technology, in films, and the third is through traditional licensing.” With so many wanna-be Marilyns flooding the celeb rags already with their transparent aspirations and insecurities, we really need her virtual likeness to be inserted into whatever games or movies a corporation deems profitable?? It’s just too much for me. With increasingly brief expiration dates on celebrity longevity, it’s somewhat ironic that people — celebrities and corporations alike — want to cling ever-harder to what was actually a very brief life (Monroe died at age 36) by recycling those finite original images and duplicating them almost verbatim with new people styled to look exactly like Marilyn, with little-to-no commentary. Hoping that by comparing themselves to Marilyn, their fame will have the same endurance, but for me, the comparisons inevitably fall flat.

Paris Hilton for 2008 premiere

I had the last minute opportunity to visit DC last week and since I hadn’t been there since my 6th grade field trip, I thought it was high time I checked out the capital again. Perhaps I was not walking in the right neighborhoods, but I was pretty disappointed with street life and the lack of indie bookstores, vintage shops and the whatnot. However, the museums were fantastic, and I hit between one and three a day. While on my way from the fabulous,  Guggenheim-esqe Hirshhorn Museum to the spectacular Renwick Gallery, I happened to pass a sign with the now iconic white Michelle Obama inauguration gown advertising “The First Ladies At the Smithsonian” exhibition at the National Museum of American History. Good fortune with me, I realized that I was only about 50 feet away from the entrance, so I popped in for a quickie.

The Smithsonian started informally but systematically collecting First Ladies’ gowns (ultimately only inaugural ball gowns) in 1912, reaching back to the early days of United States history. While the garments were originally donated informally, it has since become a media event publicizing the First Ladies and the museum, heightening the import of choosing the right gown with the right message in the first place.

SPARKLES AND THE MEDIA

I noticed that promptly in the 20th century, sparkles were incorporated into the First Ladies’ gowns. Starting with Helen Taft, rhinestones and then crystals became common embellishment on the inaugural gowns:

Helen Taft's inaugural gown, 1909

Mamie Eisenhower’s dress had 2,000+ rhinestones,

Mamie Eisenhower in inaugural gown, 1953

Jackie Kennedy’s bodice was embroidered with reflective silver thread and crystals,

John F and Jackie Kennedy, and dress detail, 1961

and Pat Nixon’s was similarly (but somehow less understated) embroidered in gold and silver and encrusted with Austrian crystals:

Pat Nixon inauguration gown and detail, 1969

I was interested to note that Betty Ford’s dress was one of the only dresses with a plunging neckline (albeit a narrow and still relatively modest one)– unwittingly foreshadowing her later public battle with breast cancer. Hers also had a racy visible front zipper (impossible to see from the photo, unfortunately) that reminded me of Schiaparelli’s playful (and saucy!) dress zippers:

Betty Ford's state dinner dress and sequins detail, 1975

Even pant-suited Hillary Clinton loaded up on glitz,

Hillary and Bill Clinton at inauguration and detail, 1993

As did Laura Bush:

Laura and George W Bush at inauguration, with gown detail, 2001

Point made, right? Like stage and burlesque performers before them, the First Ladies figured out that as images of the inaugural events were broadcast in more venues like newspapers, TV, and now blogs, standing out in a crowd is essential, and sparkles do the trick nicely. While nary a First Lady had rhinestones (much less Swarovski crystals) pre-20th century, nearly every one after 1900 did– and lots of ‘em.

NANCY vs. MICHELLE: UNLIKELY TWINS

Not necessarily related to spangles (though they are present), I noticed an odd similarity between Nancy Reagan’s and Michelle Obama’s inauguration dresses. Reagan was known as a glamorous Hollywood hostess, and was the first First Lady to sport a daring one-strapped dress (risqué in tame political circles):

Nancy and Ronald Reagan before inauguration ball, 1981

Michelle Obama chose a white one-shouldered number (with crystal embellishment) as well:

Michelle and Barak Obama at inaugural ball, and dress detail, 2009

In my musing about this seemingly unlikely coincidence– that staunchly Democratic Michelle would want to emulate or imitate in any ceremonial, highly public way hard-core Republican Nancy, it occurred to me that conscious or not, these women’s husbands’ presidential terms immediately followed presidents of the extreme opposite political and social persuasions. Conservative Ronald Reagan succeeded liberal Jimmy Carter, and progressive Barak succeeded right-wing G.W. The one-shoulder strap detail is less significant here than the white, I think, as the color of truces, peaceful intents, and fresh starts. While it would might be overkill if Ronald or Barak went the full white dinner jacket route to express white knight optimism and change–

Humphrey Bogart

wives can make a bolder fashion statement on their husbands’ behalf.

RE-USING GOWNS

The final subject of the exhibition that was more subtle but nonetheless struck me as significant, was the concept of recycling gowns. The brief wall text mentioned that Rosalynn Carter wore the same dress for Jimmy’s 1977 presidential inauguration balls as she did when he was elected the the Governor of Georgia in 1971– and she got considerable flack for doing so. She was accused of failing to support American designers (still very much a touchy subject), and though America was in an economic slump of the time and her choice was a brave and poignant reflection of that, Americans nonetheless desire and expect glamorous First Ladies.

Rosalynn Carter's reused inaugural dress, 1977

As a staunch believer in second-hand, thrift, upcycling and refurbishing clothes as an environmental and creative statement, I frankly loved Rosalynn’s restraint and subtle anti-consumer message (though I readily admit she might’ve worn it for strictly sentimental reasons). I don’t actually care for the gown itself, but we’ll let that pass. Ironically, reusing dresses, refurbishing them with updated accessories, manipulating necklines and sleeves as fashions changed, was all standard practice into the early 20th century– even for women of means. One needs look no further than Sarah Polk’s dress, originally worn by her in the late 1840s but remade as an evening gown in the 1880s (the neckline would have been deepened, sleeves shortened and embellished):

Linda Polk dress 1840s, refurbished into evening gown 1880s

Conversely, Mary Lincoln wore this as an evening dress in 1861, and then later that century the original evening bodice (it’s the standard 19th century two pieces) was replaced by the daytime bodice below, made from extra skirt fabric:

Mary Lincoln evening dress 1861, updated to daytime dress

To my knowledge, neither Linda nor Mary were lambasted for their alterations. This kind of manipulation was perfectly typical behavior for pre-20th century women. Fabric was precious, and customized designs and fittings were expensive. Sweatshops and “fast fashion” didn’t exist, so it was not an embarrassment even for the First Lady of the United States to recycle her own wardrobe publicly.

Though I really breezed through the exhibition, I walked away with some interesting discoveries. Though it makes perfect sense given the ever-expanding audience of videos and photos of political events, it hadn’t specifically occurred to me that reflective embroidery and embellishments would increase in political women’s gowns, indicating an understanding of politics as performance as much as substance. This is demonstrated in Michelle and Nancy’s downright symbolic gowns, I think. Lastly, I hope that re-wearing a treasured dress is never fodder for criticism. Though I support and encourage contemporary American designers, I also encourage working with what you have in your closet– and if an old dress makes you feel special, damn it, wear it. Not as if you need an excuse, but we’re kinda in a slumping economy ourselves; consumption reduction shouldn’t be out of place for our leaders to point out.

Further Reading:

• photo gallery
• lookbook with commentary
• fun: first ladies NYTimes quiz

A few months ago I discovered a video of 8 and 9 year-old girls in a national dance contest, athletically gyrating to the Beyoncé hit “Single Ladies” (a.k.a.”Put a Ring on It”). Prepare yourself:

I am anything but a prude, but there was something distinctly unsettling in watching prepubescent girls dance around in fringed burlesque underwear, however talented they are. And I started thinking, as I’m wont to do, about preconceptions of sexuality and age and how our changing concepts on these subjects has affected the clothes we put our children in.

These days there are a number of clothes with sexual connotations marketed towards young people — often girls. Included in the sidelines of a NY Times article about the video above is a NPD Group stat that $1.6 million was spent on thong underwear for tweens (ages 7-12) in 2003. Now thong underwear is a great solution for women who wear slinky, sheer, and/or tight dresses because they’re less likely to show the dreaded Visible Pantie Line — so in this way, they actually preserve modesty — but one must wonder how tight and slinky the clothes are that tweens are wearing, that such protection is required in the first place…. And you might be familiar with Heelarious, a company questionably devoted to supplying babies with “her first high heels,” considerately made of stuffed fabric rather than metal spikes:

Though I myself find these heels ridiculous and mildly upsetting — I certainly condone games of dress-up as an exercise of adulthood, but those role-playing games are to be played by the child, not for parents to impose their own expectations. But I should not be surprised, really; humans have been trying to assign “normal” sexuality and gender roles in children for centuries, often employing sartorial techniques. Glossing over the wonderful ancient and medieval cultures in which men and women wore similar flowing frocks into adulthood, for much of European history, infants and toddlers were dressed in (unisex) dresses. The detail below depicts a child of one or two years whose parents have slapped a rather silly hat on him, most probably to advertise his masculinity in spite of his dress, just as the girl in heels above wears a feminine flower band on her indeterminate-sexed bald head:

detail of The Van Moerkerken Family by Gerard ter Borch, c. 1653-54

The gift of his first pair of pants marked a boy’s transition to manhood. “Breeching” was a milestone on par with bar mitzvahs for 17th century boys between ages 4 and 7; the minimum age decreased with the centuries until dresses were abandoned for boys altogether in the early 20th century. Tweens of the past were dressed as little adults, girls’ ensembles complete with wee little corsets. In the detail below, there is little difference in the appearances of the adults and children, save the miniature scale (it even took me a second look to notice the young man):

detail of The Strong Family by Charles Philips, 1732

During the Age of Enlightenment of the 18th century, ideas of child rearing and youth in general starting changing. Rousseau (1712-1778) encouraged “natural” youth and child rearing which included developmentally appropriate child education. Jay Mechling’s article on the history of child rearing advice and manuals noted:

“[the] conceptualization of childhood [was distinguished] as a distinct and separate stage in life. The material culture of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in the American colonies, for example, supports the account from written evidence of the historical transition from viewing the child as a little adult to the Enlightenment portrait of the child as an innocent creature with unique needs for nurturance and guidance. Children began to have their own rooms in houses, their own dishes and chamber pots, and more durable toys. The invention of childhood in this period in many ways required the parallel invention of motherhood and fatherhood.” [My italics].

The MFA site notes on the Copley family portrait below: “The children wear frocks tied loosely with sashes. Such dresses were not scaled-down versions of adult attire but were designed especially for children, allowing freedom of movement.” [My italics]

The Copley Family, c 1788, by John Singleton Copley

A century later, the works of G. Stanley Hall (1844-1924) swayed the public’s concept of childhood. As an educator and the founder of the American Journal of Psychology, Hall’s work explored the controversial and dubious properties of gender distinctions (also offensive racial eugenics, but that’s another story). Unlike Rousseau, he believed that even as adults humans are not rational, and must be herded by capable leaders. He wrote that gender distinctions were a hallmark of modern Western society and parents should teach their children appropriate gender roles. In spite of his dubious data, parenting publications of the time recommended parents clothe their boy toddlers in pants to help them identify with male adult role models. Hall was a key inventor of the idea of adolescence as a period of life distinct from both childhood and adulthood, as is generally accepted today. He was succeeded by behaviorist John B. Watson and Freud in the 1920s, who preached that the first few years of life are critical in child rearing. These men undoubtedly influenced the eventual abandonment of dressing boys and girls in identical dresses in the early 20th century; children are especially impressionable, and susceptible to gender confusion (which was, and remains, generally undesirable).

Pink and blue experienced gender confusion too. In many Western European countries, pink was the dominant color for swaddling boys (a derivative of bold, virile red), and blue was for girls (the Virgin Mary’s color — no expectation pressure, right?!). The Ladies Home Journal advised mothers of 1918,

“There has been a great diversity of opinion on the subject, but the generally accepted rule is pink for the boy and blue for the girl. The reason is that pink being a more decided and stronger color is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl.”

Below, we see the children of Charles I of England where the girls are swathed in pale blue and the boy in bold pink:

The Children of Charles I by Sir Anthony van Dyck, 1637

It wasn’t until well into the 20th century that the color associations switched. It has been postulated that the Nazi system of badges branding the homosexual population with pink triangles, linking the color pink with (distasteful) effeminacy, contributed to this recasting of gendered colors which occurred around World War II.

Color coding and gender distinction in children’s dress took a brief hiatus in the 1970s. The women’s movement, the back-to-nature aspect of the hippies, and the sexual revolution all contributed to a mini resurgence of unisex children’s clothing, which typically took the form of identical pants for boys and girls:

Simplicity pattern #7629, Toddler Poncho, Pants and Vest, 1976

The 1972 album and accompanying children’s book Free to Be… You and Me challenged gender roles. An afterschool special in 1974 included such skits as “Boy Meets Girl,” in which two identically dressed infant puppets (the distinctive voice of one being Mel Brooks) try to figure out their respective sexes:

I especially enjoyed the fact that they use career aspirations as (ultimately inaccurate) determining sex factors — my own feminist, former hippie mother kept a running baby/childhood book for my sister’s and my youths, and each year we would have to check the boxes next to the careers we wanted, which were presumptuously segregated by sex (I’m sure this was not my mother’s preference). In reviewing my book many years later I noticed with amusement (and not a little pride) that I inevitably chose from both columns: actress, model, mother, teacher, and fireman, astronaut, actor. But I digress….

The sexual fluidity of the ’70s was short lived and today, surprisingly narrow gender constructions exist and are imposed upon children. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s daughter Shiloh has been noticed by the media for wearing “boys” clothes like ties, jackets and hats. Below we see her next to her “girlier” sister Zahara. One has to wonder why this is fodder for the paparazzi at all:

Though I readily admit physical gender and sexuality are two distinct (if related) concepts, I think the impetus of parents and societies at large to advertise genders in infancy indicates our eagerness to assign “normal” gender roles, which is generally limited to patriarchal heterosexual behavior that inevitably subjugates homosexuals and women. Today it is common for parents slap bows around their bald daughter’s head, girlie pink dresses, and (fake) heels to ensure no one <gasp> mistakes her for a boy. What may seem like an innocent game of dress-up for the parent might very well perpetuate gender stereotypes and ultimately gender/sexuality discrimination.

Further Reading:

• Brian Palmer’s article for Slate on the history of child rearing

Recommend this Post:

: : : : : : : : : : :

As a young woman who has atypically looked forward to turning shocking silver (I’ve even promised myself to grow my pixie haircut at that time to accentuate it), I’ve read with some curiosity but ultimate skepticism, the rash of articles and blog posts about the supposed trend of women embracing grey hair. The most recent that I read, in UK Telegraph, was one of the more thoughtful ones; it concentrated on 46-year-old ’90s supermodel Kristin McMenamy’s latest photo shoot for Dazed and Confused magazine. Having always been a rather startling-looking woman with Tilda Swinton-like pallor and a broad sneer of a mouth, the shock of flowing, natural grey tresses doesn’t seem so out of place on McMenamy. “You can get older and still be rock’n'roll,” she told the magazine. “I thought all that grey hair would make a beautiful picture.” Below are two photos (neither from the D&C shoot) that exemplify how grey can be romantic…

in Vogue, August 2010

sleek…

in Calvin Klein RTW F2010

or totally fucking fierce:

on the Givenchy runway, S2008

This is not the first time grey hair has been in style; compared to the 18th century, this current fad is a drop in the pan. Men and women alike oiled and powdered their hair shades of grey and white starting in the mid-1700s. Oil was necessary to make the powder stick, and yes, oil and powder was unavoidably shed with movement; you can see Charles-Alexandre de Calonne, below, is leaking powder on his shoulder, like dandruff, where his ponytail rubs:

detail of Charles-Alexandre de Calonne by Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun, 1784

Below Madame Grand (later Madame Talleyrand-Périgord, Princesse de Bénévent) models the bouffant du jour in the late 18th century:

Madame Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, later Princesse de Bénévent, by Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun, 1783

Mature as her dusty locks make her to our 21st century eyes, this is only a 22 year-old woman; you can see her cheeks are still youthfully plump and rosy (though blush undoubtedly assisted). Here is the same woman — approximately 25 years later:

detail of Madame Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, later Princesse de Bénévent by François Gérard, c. 1808

In addition to the change of hair color and style, it is obvious by this comparison that there was a radical change of silhouette in the costume of the mid-late-18th century and that of the early 19th century. As with the turn of the 20th century, a great deal of bulk and fussiness was discarded in favor of a sleeker and ultimately more youthful, modern look in hair and costume. I don’t think it’s the powdered grey hair alone that ages our subject, but rather the compilation of big, fussy, surreal hair with busy bows and lace and volume in the dress and accessories. In my humble opinion, the neo-Classical look of the early 19th century just feels more modern. But I digress.

Marie Antoinette (1755 – 1793) was both early champion and ultimate victim of powdered coiffures. The Flour War of 1775, caused by the de-regulation of wheat prices by the government, lead to hoarding, gouging, and the inability of lower classes to afford simple bread, and was the ominous precursor to the crescendo of the French Revolution. Wig powder, a product of finely ground starch (a.k.a. flour), was used liberally by the naive queen in her legendary towering bouffants, casting her and her fashion statements in a distinctly unflattering, frivolous light.  French historian Caroline Weber observed,

“…although historians have established that Marie Antoinette never uttered the legendary remark “Let them eat cake,” it is not implausible that the lasting association between her callousness and baked edibles in fact originated with her habit of parading her powdered, wedding-cake hairstyles before a bread-starved nation.”

Here is Marie Antoinette in the very year of the Flour War, seemingly flaunting her willful ignorance of the economic struggles of her country, and all to achieve that trendy grey hair:

Marie Antoinette by Jacques-Fabien Gautier D'Agoty, 1775

With no small irony, according to legend, Marie Antoinette’s hair turned grey with stress and fear the night before her execution; grey hair as fashion statement had clearly run its course as it became associated with the demonized, decapitated monarch. Two years later the English government levied a tax on hair powder, the last coffin nail of that grey-haired trend… until today?

Granite hair was on the 2010 runways shows of playful Giles Deacon and goth Gareth Pugh, and the Telegraph article quoted high end hairdressers claiming to have more young clients who want grey, like Peaches Geldof, Kelly Osbourne, Kate Moss and Victoria Beckham. This kind of minimal evidence has prompted sites like trendhunter.com to prematurely declare “For decades men and women have been trying to mask signs of aging, but a new wave fashionable gray hair is reflecting a shifting attitude regarding the physical effects of getting older.” A more tempered NYTimes article quoted colorist Sharon Dorram, “who said that among her downtown New York patrons, it is mostly younger women, renegade types, who request gray. Not lost on Ms. Dorram is the irony that their older, more conventional counterparts spent $1.3 billion to cover their grays last year, according to Nielsen.”

I don’t think gunmetal tresses were a sign of the fetishization, or even simple respect, of mature women in the 18th century, and I don’t think that’s the case in 2010 either. It’s an unusual, edgy color precisely because so many women with natural grey hair darken it, so it really pops when a woman such as Kristin McMenamy rocks it. I think that even if more grey hair dye is being sold, it is unfortunately not a sign that older women — specifically, naturally mature women — are all of a sudden welcomed back into the fold for the general, fashionable, youth-obsessed public. Pixie Geldof, for example, I don’t think could be said to be furthering the cause of women aging gracefully, though her hair is certainly grey:

Pixie Geldof

Along a similar line, premature articles claiming the emergence of older models on runways and magazine spreads as being indicative of older women being accepted as beautiful and sexual are, I think, overlooking that those older models might be over-the-hill 30+, but they are recognizable and have proven themselves exceptionally good at selling products — hence their previous successes. In economically strapped times I think we all return to the familiar, tried-and-true methods of existence, and I believe designers are returning to supermodels of yesteryear because they have the most experience and accomplishments, and fame/notoriety that can only come with age — also, they are still smokin’ hot. Kate Moss is still landing covers at age 36 (which is, by the way, close to the height of a woman’s biological peak of personal sexuality), and 37 year-old Heidi Klum is even modeling in Victoria Secret lingerie shows (after having popped out 4 children). This is evidence that magazines and designers don’t want to take as many risks these days, when merchandise is harder to move off shelves. They know Moss and Klum, they know their scopes, their talent, and the sales they still consistently generate. After all, you don’t hear about a surge of random, unknown older women taking up the runways — that would demonstrate real progress in my eyes.

A TIME article from a few years ago astutely pointed out the frustrating correlation between the success of the feminism movement and women’s increased use of hair dye. The very same Baby Boomers who fought to enter the workplace are the same who feel compelled to color their hair, to appear more youthful, energetic, or conservative (grey-haired women can appear alternative or hippy-like, often to their detriment in the workplace). The TIME article quotes some shocking statistics about female politicians, for whom it could be argued the physical manifestation of age and experience should be an asset:

“…of the 16 female U.S. Senators — the highest number ever — who range in age from 46 to 74, not a single one has visible gray hair. Of the 70 female members of the House, only seven have gray hair. Political professionals say that the double standard is a great unspoken inequity but that candidates and officeholders don’t dare publicly discuss it for fear of seeming trivial. In an interview before her death last year, Ann Richards, the famously white-haired former Governor of Texas, told me, ‘You can’t appear to be too flashy because it will send the wrong message, but at the same time, you need to appear energetic. The issue is much more significant for women because the hurdle is higher in our society. We’re not sure what we want our [female] elected officials to be — mother, mistress or caretaker.’”

female US senators, 2007 -- not a grey hair in the joint

As evidenced by the world’s obsession with Michelle Obama’s style, politicians’ wives face intense scrutiny too, and most of them color their hair. I wonder if Nancy Reagan would have received the same childish sniggering that Barbara Bush endured for supposedly looking so much older than her hubby, if she had not concealed her own grey hair with that frosted brown. It might come as a surprise to learn Barbara and Nancy were the same age — 64 — when their respective husbands became the President, and though I admit that from a distance Babs looks older, I frankly like the luminescent white she has going on, and I don’t think it diminishes her stature or poise:

Ronald and Nancy Reagan, inauguration, 1985

George and Barbara Bush, inauguration, 1989

Lord knows I’m not against experimentation with appearance. But I sincerely hope women start challenging the gender bias we perpetuate against ourselves and fellow women by playing into the same limiting roles we’ve fought so hard to break out of. Going grey naturally may seem like a small step for Feminism (and the closely linked Ageism), but having grown up in Cambridge, MA, where there are many vibrant, intelligent, artistic women who let their grey show, it becomes suspicious and puzzling that other cities that are diverse in many ways, including appearance, are not like that. Let this so-called trend of grey hair chic be inspiration for actual grey-haired women to embrace their ages, their accomplishments, their strengths, and know they can do so stylishly.

May I suggest some role models?

Susan Songtag, writer

Jamie Lee Curtis, actress

Gloria Steinem, activist writer

Helen Mirren, actress

Annie Leibovitz, photographer

Diane Keaton, actress

Emmylou Harris, singer

Judi Dench

Further Reading:

• Queen of Fashion: What Marie Antoinette Wore to the Revolution, by Caroline Weber

Recommend this Post:

: : : : : : : : : : :

A recent NYTimes article on the latest Levi jeans ad campaign featuring not dead-eyed models in awkward sexualized positions, but real-life residents of Braddock, PA caught my eye. A continuation of last year’s “Go Forth” ad campaign, this one uses actual inhabitants of Braddock to show real workers in their natural habitat: a town that has been particularly hard-hit by the recession. Here’s the accompanying commercial:

Though not all the ads are quite so literal in their depiction of rural workers as the one that heads this post (namely men with heavy tools with expanses of sky and/or land), the campaign appears to be trying to tap into the history of Levi’s as the jeans of 1870s Western frontiersmen and merge it with the tough lives of contemporary men and women who are struggling with their own era’s economic hardships. “People don’t think there are frontiers anymore,” says the young narrator wistfully, “they can’t see how frontiers are all around us.”

While it is true that Levi’s jeans have been a staple of the blue collar working man for more than a century, the idea of capitalizing on the somewhat romanticized images of poverty still strikes me as manipulative in a distinctly American way. Americans in particular, I think, are obsessed with making the casual and ordinary glamorous. Ever since the American Revolution, Americans have reveled in our self-perceived scrappiness, adventurousness, tough sportiness and casualness. Though Hollywood has always proved we can glam it up when we want to, much of the history of American fashion has been just a little more simple, a little more pared down, a little more casual. Consider quintessential American Ben Franklin (1706-1790) who eschewed the powdered wigs far earlier than popular fashion, allowing his own thinning, greyish locks to hang limply:

Benjamin Franklin by Joseph Siffred Duplessis, 1778

Compare to a French contemporary of Ben’s, whose jacket fabric has a sheen suggesting it’s silk, in addition to the meticulously coiffed and powdered wig (he was only 42 at the time of this portrait):

Abbe Charles Bossut by Pierre Pasquier, 1772

John Singleton Copley (1738 – 1815) turned the art world on its head when he painted a formal portrait of Paul Revere, not in a heroic equestrian pose indicative of his famous midnight ride which was just a year earlier, but in the distinctly informal attire of his trade as a silversmith (no jacket!), and complete with his tools and a project. You can see how this is even more dressed-down than Franklin:

Paul Revere by John Singleton Copley, 1776

This very much reminds me of Irving Penn’s series “Small Trades” from the 1950s, where he photographed blue collar men and women dress in their work clothes and usually with a prop to indicate their particular trades. He executed these photos just as he did with so many fashion models and celebrities, in front of his standard mottled backdrop that was particularly striking in that it removed the people from their natural working environments. Suffice it to say, I adore this series. Penn portrays each subject so respectfully, with such dignity — in some cases, downright majestically, as a monarch’s portrait might be taken, and thus elevating their perceived importance. Here are a couple in denim overallls, staple of the laborer:

Lineman by Irving Penn, 1951

Bricklayer by Irving Penn, 1950

Contrast those photos now, to the recent collections of Ralph Lauren and Jean Paul Gaultier. It was obvious that fashion designers were incorporating the “worst recession since the Great Depression” that peppered the news into their Spring 2010 collections. Though I didn’t love the clothes themselves, I thought the ideas presented were interesting. Ralph Lauren regularly taps into Americana tropes and exploits America’s fascination with juxtaposing markers of the working class with upper-end, designer fashion motifs. Below is an ensemble of silk satin that mimics denim in its cut and color; next to it is an interesting metallic satin gown that, from the waist up, resembles overalls, and from the waist down, standard 1930s drapey eveningwear, mashing up the highly functional Great Depression farmers’ “uniform” with the distinctly impractical gowns from the silver screen:

I’ll admit there was some legitimate discomfort at the collection — Robin Givhan wrote “The sight of a freshly scrubbed model sashaying in distressed overalls and glittering evening sandals was akin to watching some indulged young party girl go slumming for the day. It was the kind of ensemble Naomi Campbell might have worn when she was forced to mop floors in jail after an altercation with her housekeeper.”  But there was, of course, the blatant disconnect in Hollywood’s representations of Americans during the original Depression, and while I certainly wouldn’t buy designer jeans and cotton shirts meant to look like they’d been sun-bleached and worn threadbare, I appreciated the commentary on the economic/social gap that still exists in America in supposedly straightened circumstances.  The 1930s were known for their escapist screwball comedies, often featuring impeccably dressed society folks who seemed blissfully untouched by any economical discomfort. Satins and metallics were used liberally in women’s gowns, conveying wealth and glittering brilliantly on the black and white celluloid; stars like Ginger Rogers and Jean Harlow were almost exclusively seen in highly wrinkleable, impractical fabrics and impossibly slinky styles like these below, though almost no one outside Hollywood could afford such luxuries:

Jean Harlow and Clark Gable in Saratoga, 1937

And below you can see how the light reflects off satin in movement — divine! Ginger Rogers’ dress even has a bit of an overall-esque racer back, hinting at a sportiness/athleticism as the Ralph Lauren dress hinted at manual labor:

All this to say, working class attire has been fetishized for centuries. Sometimes for philosophical beliefs, sometimes for political reasons, and sometimes for pure aesthetics. I don’t think Levi’s latest ad campaign is nearly as risky as they thought, but however profitable it turns out to be for them, I hope some money from the ads is circulating in and around Braddock.

Further Reading:

• “Small Trades,” Irving Penn
  

Recommend this Post:

: : : : : : : : : : :

Coney Island by Weegee, 1938

In weather like this (namely, 90+ degrees, little-to-no wind, and me without air conditioning), beachy escapes are on everyone’s mind. Following is a rough timeline of how women have historically bared their flesh — or not — to enjoy the sand and sun.

Classical Times

In Classical antiquity swimming and bathing was most often done nude; only sometimes were there were coverings. Murals at Pompeii and ancient mosaics show women wearing two-piece wrap-around garments that resemble bikinis; these were worn for athletic pursuits as on the woman below, who wears the crown and cradles the frond of athletic victory.

woman in athletic bikini, 4th century CE Roman mosaic

19th century

But alas, western society did not long embrace the celebrated nude of the Greco-Roman era, and for many centuries afterwards, beachwear mimicked streetwear, and submerging oneself in water was generally limited to private experiences. It wasn’t until the middle of the 19th century when water sports, sun bathing, and swimming gained momentum again. Starting around 1830, a series of changes eventually led to the participation of women in sports and in specialized clothing being developed for those sports. The Industrial Revolution hearkened an age of train travel, the invention of the sewing machine and mass-produced fabrics enabled clothing in lower price ranges, and household machines and the development of labor unions gave the working classes more leisure time to indulge in travel, sports, and sun worship in exotic locales. The Dress Reform Movement (see my earlier post on Women, Pants, & Politics) advocated shorter dresses worn over loose harem trousers (the Bloomer Costume) that allowed women greater freedom of movement, as was needed for sports and swimwear. Exercise was increasingly prescribed by doctors and advocated by writers to maintain healthfulness; exercise programs even became an integral part of women’s college curriculums.

The typical 19th century “bather” wore black, knee-length, puffed-sleeve wool dresses, often featuring sailor collars for extra-special nautical costume effect (I say this somewhat facetiously, but it was probably used as a deliberate visual device to distinguish proper day wear from risqué sportswear), and worn over bloomers (derived from the Bloomer Costume) or drawers trimmed with ribbons and bows. Accouterments included long black stockings, lace-up bathing slippers that resembled ballerina slippers, and caps. As the 19th century progressed, bloomers and dress hemlines slowly but surely crept higher. Foundation garments being the basic (however questionable) mark of sartorial respectability, it wasn’t until the 20th century that women stopped wearing corsets underneath their bathing suits. Men had swim suits so closely resembling their undergarments that they made the distinction by wearing either black wool or black-with-stripes. You can see where how term bathing suit applied — the bathing costumes were made up of many layers that were worn as a cohesive ensemble.

Bathing dress, 1858

Beaches typically segregated the sexes, either with portions of the beach or different hours of operation. “Bathing machines” were used for additional modesty: they were dressing rooms on wheels in which women could change into their swimmies, were then wheeled out into the water by horses or people, and then were lifted out into the water to bathe. Below is an amusing cartoon from an 1870 edition of Punch:

Modest Old Gentleman (who has swum out to sea and whose bathing-machine has, in the meanwhile, been walked off by mistake). “Ahem! Pray Excuse me, Madam My Bathing-Machine I think.”

And another cartoon from a postcard, closer to the end of the 19th century, showing the hilarious efforts men might exert to catch of glimpse of the women exiting the bathing machine:

1900s

By the turn of the century, bathing suits underwent a revolutionary change in styles as they ceased to be patterned after street wear and began to show a little more of the human form.

bathing costumes c. 1900

bathers by Georges Marchand, published by A. Bettembos, Dieppe, France, 1904

More athletic (and risqué) women pared down the bathing costume to be as form fitting as possible while still covering their bodies. In 1907 the Australian swimmer Annette Kellerman (1887-1975) visited the United States as an “underwater ballerina,” a version of synchronized swimming involving diving into glass tanks. She was arrested in Boston (my hometown is always Puritanical!) for indecent exposure because her swimsuit showed arms, legs and the neck. Kellerman changed the suit to have long arms and legs and a collar, still keeping the close fit that revealed the shapes underneath:

Annette Kellerman in "one piece all-over Black Diving Suit", 1906

Laughable as this costume might be to our unshockable eyes, compare this to the body stockings worn by the prostitutes photographed by E.J. Bellocq (1873 – 1949) in Storyville, New Orleans’ Red Light district circa 1912. It’s hard to see, but this woman is wearing a full white unitard of the variety worn by burlesque performers (it’s important to note that only dark colors were used in early bathing costumes exactly because they were to be visible, and not to even give the illusion of nudity as this one does):

E J Bellocqs Storyville prostitute in body stocking, c 1912

1920s

The swimwear industry took off in the ’20s. As athleticism and slimmer figures gained increasing fashionableness (see my post on Bicycle Chic and Athletic Aesthetic), knitwear companies expanded their market from sweaters and underwear to include swimwear. With its beautiful beaches and warm waters, it’s unsurprising that the West Coast emerged at this time as a hotbed of swimsuit manufacturers with Catlina, Cole of California, and Jantzen all setting up shop there. The West Coast was not coincidentally the home of burgeoning Hollywood, and this proximity led to the early adoption and wide dissemination of new bathing suit styles in popular films and publicity photographs. Mack Sennett (1880-1960) was a slapstick comedy director whose films frequently featured his titillating “Bathing Beauties,” pictured below:

Mack Sennett's Bathing Beauties eating apples, 1922

The boyish figure favored in the 1920s affected the style of the bathings suits, which were shorter and very much mimicked men’s bathing trunks. (Note also how these bathing suits resembled the mod miniskirts of the ’60s, yet to come.) As ever, when hemlines are raised and garments tightened, modesty becomes a priority for moralists. Below is a 1922 photo of Washington policeman Bill Norton measuring the distance between knee and suit at the Tidal Basin bathing beach after Col. Sherrell, Superintendent of Public Buildings and Grounds, issued an order that suits not be over six inches above the knee (it looks like someone might be in trouble!):

1930s

Knit wool swimsuits, though infinitely more practical than the bathing costume of the 19th century, were still imperfect. They became waterlogged, droopy, and heavy when wet, weighing an average of 20 pounds (owning a vintage wool bathing suit, I can attest that the sagginess is both uncomely and uncomfortable). Technology development stepped in, and the elastic rubber fiber Lastex was invented in 1934. This new material, with natural fibers surrounding a rubber core thread, was used in undergarment corsetry and swimsuits.

The close proximity between the swimsuit manufacturers and Hollywood continued to influence each other. As Lizzie writes in her excellent piece on swimsuits, “Stars and Hollywood designers were used to advertise and promote the latest in swimwear.” Below is Carole Lombard, brash comedienne and lucky wife of Clark Gable. You can see the swimsuits are tighter, shorter, and introduce glamor to what had been previously been somewhat clunky sportswear:

Carole Lombard

Though Jean Harlowe’s white number is even skimpier (and plays with the suggestion of nudity with its white fabric on white skin), note that it is only the necklines and silhouettes that are played with — the leg hemlines remain solidly and straightly at crotch level, no higher.

Jean Harlow

1940s:

Esther Williams (1921-), who had made a somewhat oxy-moronic career for herself as a soloist synchronized swimmer in film musicals, signed a modeling contract with Cole of California in 1947 which also included an annual swimsuit design named for her. Here is a nice montage (feel free to turn the sound off) where she actually pretends to be the aforementioned Australian swimmer Annette Kellerman, among others, in The Million Dollar Mermaid (1952).

If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times: war affects fashion. U.S. factories are often commandeered by the military during wars, using their existing facilities to produce supplies for the war effort; this was true of the swimwear industry during World War II, as well. Fabric rationing led to sleeker, more closely tailored silhouettes in day wear, and sanctioned increasingly skimpy swimwear: as Lizzie points out, “The US government actually mandated that bathing suits were to be made with at least 10% less fabric, and so the midsection was eliminated” (keeping that scandalous orifice, the navel covered!). French engineer-turned-swimsuit-designer Louis Reard created the “bikini” in 1946, macabrely named after the concurrent nuclear bomb test site on the Bikini Atoll, though some say it was an allusion to the explosive effect the midriff-baring bikiniwould have on viewers. A year after it was released in France, Reard’s bikini was released in America, though its sales were not so great, and was even outlawed in some states as a result of its scantiness.

Louis Reard's bikini, 1945

More popular in the colonies were slightly more modest bikini tops with shorts, which actually crossed the line into non-swimming casual wear.

two-piece swimsuits, 1945

1950s

Post WWII, there was a so-called return to femininity with Dior’s “New Look,” emphasizing curves with yards of skirt fabric, torpedo bras and stiff bodice corsetry. Swimsuits conformed to this ideal too, often with stiff strapless bodices, cinched waists, and apron-like skirts that fell over an invisible skimpier under-layer. More colors than ever were incorporated into swimwear, too, with the return of all America’s factory and supply resources.

apron style swimsuits of 1950s

On the flip side, pin up girls were regularly drawn and photographed in swimsuits, as cousin of the negligee. Below, Bettie Page models some racier swimwear, always designed by herself:

Bettie Page in animal print bikini

1960s

The 1960s heralded the dawn of the Sexual Revolution, the generation that rejected their parents’ prudish impact in the ’50s (Bettie Page very much excepted). This was the first time the female bathing suit moved its hemline above the crotch to encircle the legs rather than square them off. Bond Girl Ursula Andress became an iconic figure (literally and figuratively) in this bikini from Dr. No (1962):

Ursula Andress in white bikini in Dr No, 1962

Below is the publicity shot for Rudy Gernreich’s infamous topless “monokini:”

Peggy Moffitt in monokini by Rudi Gernreich, 1964

Even as it created a fashion sensation, it’s unclear how many women actually bought and wore this number, scandalous even today. Compare the artsy studio photo above to a photo of a model in public (with a billboard man leering at her no less!):

woman wearing Rudi Gernreich's monokini on beach, by Paul Schutzer for Time magazine, 1964

1970s, ’80s, & ’90s

The 1970s embraced less structured clothes and swimsuits, exchanging the stiff elastic ruching and bullet-bra cones for simpler, softer patterns that conformed to the wearer’s body rather than the other way around. The waistline was lowered to hover at the widest point of the hips, rather than at the thinnest point of the waist. The fabric was often unlined, exposing the outlines of nipples (see this hilarious ad for nipple enhancing bras from that period!), as can be seen in the iconic poster of Farrah Fawcett:

Farrah Fawcett photo by Bruce McBroom, 1976 LIFE photo shoot

The ’80s embraced exaggeration in all fashion: huge shoulders, tiny waists, big hair, polychromatic, etc. Bathing suits took on a distinctly geometric feel, often with strategic cutouts for some interesting looks that must’ve created creative tan lines.

Baywatch reigned the small screen in the 1990s. Everyone remembers the Baywatch babes running in slow motion in their bright red, high-cut, low-cut lifeguard swimsuits:

Pam Anderson and Yasmine Bleeth in Baywatch

1990s to now

Since the 1990s, bathing suits have more or less leveled out. Leg holes have generally lowered to a less crotch-pulling height, but we’re in the throws of a nouveau ’80s, so I’ve seen a resurgence of those cutout bathers.

Bathing suit technology has been in the headlines in the past decade due in great part to the press everything Olympics-related generates. Though it’s too expensive to be used for leisure beach activity, Speedo’s LZR swimsuit, invented in 2008, has caused much ruckus among competitive swimmers in recent years. Its corset-like sleek design (it’s said to necessitate 3 people to help a swimmer get into it!) and lasered seams eliminated so much water drag and shaved precious milliseconds off speeders’ times that it was ultimately banned as a kind of performance enhancer that competitors who had non-Speedo sponsors could not wear.

And on that note, I’m off to my local pool to escape this cursed heat, in my Esther Williams vintage-style swimsuit.

Further Reading:

• The Shifting Tides of Seaside Posdtcards – bathing suits as seen in vintage postcards (you need to scroll halfway down the long page to find the right post)
• The California Swimsuit

Recommend this Post:

: : : : : : : : : : :