Collections A/W 2013

Collections Fashion exhibitions, museum archives and private collections 198 x 279 mm 132 pages Issue 1, A/W 2013

“Any designer who holds a mirror up to their time is desirable for a museum or collector.�

Hamish Bowles

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The Clothworkers’ Centre, V&A, Blythe House.

Dear Reader, This inaugural issue, Collections A/W 2013, is devoted to the people who encapsulate this season’s love of documenting, collecting, exhibiting and archiving fashion in museums and private collections. The magazine celebrates their obsessions, professional work and passionate dedication to preserving our cultural heritage. The delight of past, current and future fashions are presented through insightful conversations and photography. Collections A/W 2013 wishes to be your personal companion into the wonderful world of fashion exhibitions, museum archives and private collections.

Only the most exceptional objects are granted the privilege of being in the eternal and devoted care of museums and private collectors. The objects are transformed once acquired, catalogued, conserved, researched and eventually put on display for the public to inspect and admire. The dress will never be worn again, but its history will live forever.

Part 1: International curators, historians, designers and the volunteer of the year documents ‘Nine things they thought you should know’ about their upcoming exhibition, book or recent projects. The MoMu team invite us inside to have a closer look at their office desks.

Part 2: Hamish Bowles talks about his recent acquisitions and extraordinary collection of more than 3,000 rare haute couture pieces. The desire to collect is further unveiled by artist Katerina Jebb, watch collector Alfredo Paramico, perfumer Patricia de Nicolaï and gallerist Etheleen Staley.

Part 3: Curator Maria Luisa Frisa reveals her upcoming exhibition and book on the mesmerizing Manuela Pavesi. The V&A’s Senior Curator of Textiles and Fashion, Claire Wilcox gives exclusive access to the planning and construction of the V&A’s permanent Fashion Gallery, which reopened in May 2013.

Part 4: Archiving memories: tailoress Joan Brown shares her unique life story working for the house of Hardy Amies, while Carolyn Denham, of Merchant & Mills, picks nine linens to keep you warm this Autumn.

Louise Rytter.

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Collections A/W 13 Editor in Chief: Louise Rytter.

Art direction:

Rikke Holst and Louise Rytter.

All text and visuals by Louise Rytter unless stated otherwise.

Thanks to all contributors.

Special thanks to: Penny Martin,

Veronica Ditting, Oriole Cullen, Claire Wilcox, Kate Bethune,

Maria Luisa Frisa, Hywel Davies, Iain R. Webb, Kay Barron,

Martin Andersen

and Elisabeth Bisley. ..................................

Collections A/W 2013, is published

twice a year by Collections Publishing, 90 Columbia Road, E2 7QB London, UK. Š 2013 Collections Magazine and the contributors. All rights reserved.

Reproduction of any part of this

publication is strictly prohibited without prior permission by the publisher.

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Contents ........................

Part 1 Documenting Nine things you should know: Vanessa Friedman 10 Pierre Bergé 11 Caroline Evans 12 Lisa Immordino Vreeland 13 Oriole Cullen 14 Sue Clark 15 René Le Prou 16 Judith Clark 17 Alexandra Palmer 18 Kerry Taylor 19 Anna Reynolds 20 Caroline de Guitaut 21 Kirsten Toftegaard 22 Claire Malcolm 23 Denis Bruna 24 Claire Wilcox 25 Timothy Long 26 Dilys Blum 27 MoMu: Office Desks 28 ........................

Part 2 Collecting The Conversations: A. Katerina Jebb 44 B. Alfredo Paramico 46 C. Patricia de Nicolaï 48 D. Etheleen Staley 50 E. Hamish Bowles 65 ........................

Part 3 Exhibiting Modarama: Manuela Pavesi 76 V&A: Gallery 40 85 ........................

Part 4 Archiving The House of Hardy Amies: Joan Brown 108

His Private Wardrobe 116

Nine Gorgeous Linens 118

The Clothworkers’ Centre 130 Stockists 132

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Title

Documenting

Issue No.

Subject

Part

1

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Date

1/4

A/W 2013

Signature

9 - 39

Document 1/18

Communicating

Nine things I thought you should know about:

Page

Truths about getting dressed.

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Person of Issue

Vanessa Friedman.

Occupation

Fashion Editor, Financial Times.

Description

1. Everyone who gets dressed thinks about fashion.

2. For a long time it was viewed as embarrassing to admit this, and superficial, but that does not mean it was not true.

3. People who say they do not think about fashion are lying.

Even nudists think about fashion (rejection is a form of recognition).

4. If you want to convince someone of this, use the word “clothes” instead of “fashion,” but understand you are talking about the same thing: fashion is just clothing at a specific time.

5. Clothes are the front line of communication; they are a crucial part of identity, political, cultural and social; 6. Why do you think uniforms were invented?

7. Clothing forms the basis of other people’s first judgements about you.

8. This has always been true, but it is only going to get more acute thanks to pintrest and mobile technology, which means photographs and visual aids are our primary instant means of communication. What’s the first thing you see when you see someone in a photograph? What they are wearing.

9. We now use other words to refer to the same thing, in order to confer legitimacy on something we used to dismiss. Do not be fooled. When you hear the word “image,” what the speaker really means is clothes.

Document 2/18

Promoting

Nine things I thought you should know about:

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The Fondation Pierre Bergé – Yves Saint Laurent.

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Person of Issue

Pierre Bergé.

Occupation

President of the Fondation Pierre Bergé – Yves Saint Laurent.

Introduction

The Fondation Pierre Bergé – Yves Saint Laurent is the accomplishment of forty years of creation. Its objectives include the conservation of a unique heritage of 5,000 Haute Couture garments, 15,000 accessories, more then 50,000 drawings and related objects preserved in museum conditions, the organization of exhibitions dedicated to fashion, painting, photography and decorative arts, and the sponsorship of cultural and educational institutions.

How viewed

Fondation Pierre Bergé – Yves Saint Laurent, 5 Avenue Marceau, 75116 Paris, FR.

Description

1. The Foundation arranges guided tours for the public of the Foundation’s Reception Salons, Yves Saint Laurent’s Studio and the current temporary exhibition. These guided tours are available in French, English or Spanish.

2. Since 1978, the company “Yves Saint Laurent”, and later the Foundation, have supported the Festival d’Automne in Paris.

Today the Foundation sponsors the festival, including financial support and aid for stage productions with Robert Wilson, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Chen Shi-Zheng, Anselm Kiefer, Jenny Holzer and Michel Foucault among others.

3. The Foundation has offered young artists the opportunity to display their work in the public spaces of Palais de Tokyo since 2010 as part of a program called, Modules-Fondation Pierre Bergé - Yves Saint Laurent. Five projects are displayed for two months.

4. The Foundation supports and promotes promising young designers in France and abroad through its sponsorship of the French Institute of Fashion (IFM) and the National Association for the Development of Fashion Arts (ANDAM).

5. The Foundation awards the following annual literary prizes: the Prix Marguerite Duras and the Prix Jean Giono.

6. The Foundation also supports the Médiathèque Musicale Mahler in Paris, which makes exceptional collections of classical music accessible to professionals as well as students.

7. The Foundation donated an outstanding collection of 2,800 drawings, letters and samples from the Madame Grès studio to the Musée Galliera. The original drawings date from the opening of Madame Grès’ boutique, Alix, in 1935 to the closing of the Maison Grès in 1988, embodying sixty years of creative vision.

In 2011, the exhibition, Madame Grès, La couture à l’ œuvre, at the Bourdelle Museum in Paris exhibited a selection of these unseen drawings.

8. The Foundation has supported the Musée du Quai Branly by making possible the conservation and restoration of two rare pre-Columbian ponchos from ancient Peru. The plumed garments with figurative and abstract patterns are now on display in the space dedicated to pre-Columbian Andes.

9. The Jardin Majorelle (The Majorelle Garden) in Marrakech is part of the heritage of the Foundation, receiving more than 600,000 visitors each year. The Berber Museum opened in the heart of the garden in 2011, exhibiting the Berber culture in a panorama of over 600 items.

Document 3/18

Gazing

Nine things I thought you should know about:

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Early fashion show audiences.

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Person of Issue

Caroline Evans.

Occupation

Professor of Fashion History and Theory, Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design.

Introduction

In the early and separate and everyone according to

How aquired

The Mechanical Smile, to be published by Yale University Press.

Description

1. The Model: The model cultivated a bored or indifferent gaze.

She looked right through the spectators as if they weren’t there.

20th century there were trade shows for buyers shows for private clients. Audiences were varied cultivated a different gaze, or way of looking, their role in the fashion show.

2. The Couturier: The couturier had to look calm and in control, even when secretly anxious about the success of the collection.

3. The Maker/Seamstress: At Chanel and Jean Patou all the workers from the atelier would be allowed to attend the dress rehearsal. For the first time they saw the dresses they made on living models, and they watched with interest.

4. The Saleswoman: The saleswoman had a gimlet gaze. She watched out for anyone sketching or taking too many notes who might be a fashion pirate.

5. Private clients: Private clients were rich women with a discerning gaze. They were very often knowledgeable about textiles and how they moved on the body. Sometimes they were accompanied by a male companion, and these men were often criticised for ogling the beautiful models.

6. Overseas buyers: Overseas buyers were both male and female.

They had a commercial gaze as they had to evaluate which dresses would sell well in the shops at home. The fashion buyer couldn’t make any mistakes as their career was dependent on the choices they made.

7. The Pirate: The pirate was paid by rival houses to steal fashion designs. They had to cultivate both a strong visual memory and an inconspicuous gaze in order to avoid being recognised and thrown out. The American designer Elizabeth Hawes worked as a fashion pirate in Paris in the mid-1920s. She recalled that at Chanel if you were seen sketching, an arm would come over your shoulder and snatch your notebook.

8. The Physiognomist: Jean Patou employed a “physiognomist” who could remember the faces of pirates who had been thrown out of shows in previous seasons.

9. French buyers: French department store buyers were originally excluded from the shows; after the 1940s they were allowed in if they paid for a droit de vision (right to look) for design inspiration, but they were not allowed to buy.

Document 4/18

Curating

Nine things I thought you should know about:

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Diana Vreeland.

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Person of Issue

Lisa Immordino Vreeland.

Occupation

Film Director and Author.

How viewed

Diana Vreeland: The Eye has to Travel, film available via www.dianavreeland-film.com, and book published by Abrams Books.

Description

1. Before becoming a fashion editor, Diana had a lingerie shop in London. Legend has it that Wallis Simpson seduced Edward, then Prince of Wales, while wearing one of Diana’s nightgowns.

“Mom’s store brought down the British throne”, her son Frederick once joked. She often had her own nightgowns tailored, with up to three fittings on a single one.

2. The pillows in her home were infused with perfume via hypodermic needles.

3. She always had her dollar bills and her tissues ironed before putting them in her handbag, she felt they would take up less space that way.

4. She ate the same lunch every day: a whole-wheat peanutbutter-and-marmalade sandwich, washed down with scotch. “Peanut butter is the greatest invention since Christianity”, she said.

5. The only thing Diana loved more than fashion was reading, and her favorite book was Moby-Dick. “My life has been more influenced by books than by any other one thing”, she said.

6. Diana’s real education was dance. Her academic training ended at a young age, dance would play a predominant role in her life.

7. Diana’s signature colour was red, but she never found the perfect shade, which was, according to her, “the colour of a child’s cap in any Renaissance portrait”.

8. She had her custom-made shoes shined for years before she ever started wearing them. And once they entered her rotation, she had the leather and the soles shined every day.

9. Diana’s Kabuki-like blush was a signature that not everyone understood. A kindy flight attendant once offered, “Here, honey, let me rub in your rouge for you”.

Document 5/18

Nine things I thought you should know about: Curating

Fashion in Motion.

Person of Issue

Oriole Cullen.

Occupation

Curator of Modern Textiles and Fashion, V&A.

Introduction

Since its foundation as the ‘Museum of Manufactures’ in the mid-19th century, the remit of the V&A has been to work closely with the creative industries. In May 1999 Claire Wilcox created the Fashion in Motion programme with the idea of bringing movement into the clothing displayed in the Museum, and as a way of collaborating with contemporary designers to showcase their work.

How viewed

19th July, Jenny Packham. V&A, Cromwell Road, London SW7 2RL, UK.

Description

1. The and to happen it was unless picked

idea was to dress models in the work of a chosen designer allow them to wander around the galleries for visitors to upon and enjoy as a moving, living exhibit. At the time rare to have access to fashion shows or presentations one worked in the fashion industry so the event quickly up a strong following.

2. The first show was staged with two models and six Phillip Treacy hats which they variously wore between them. Flyers were handed out at South Kensington tube station to encourage an audience.

3. The programme was very ambitious and whilst it was being overseen by curator Andrew Bolton, there was one show a month, with participants ranging from Alexander McQueen to Matthew Williamson to Louis Vuitton.

4. By October 2001 the event had become so popular that a show of the collaborative work of Alexander McQueen and Shaune Leane caused a rush of crowding in the museum, preventing the models from being able to make their way freely around the space. As a result, the decision was made to house the event in a gallery.

5. Since 2003 Fashion in Motion has been held in the Museum’s largest space, the Raphael Gallery, which houses the surviving designs (known as cartoons) painted by Raphael for tapestries commissioned in Rome in 1515 by Pope Leo X. Designers are invited to come to the Museum and contemplate the space to decide the type of show they would like to stage. We always request that the show is unique and never just a rerun of a recent collection.

6. Working in a listed space, surrounded by priceless works of art, makes the show unique but also presents interesting challenges for designers and producers. For instance, music must be kept below 80 decibels to avoid vibrations (which could cause gilt to flake from painting frames) and nothing can be affixed to walls or ceilings.

7. The whole event, from set build to the four shows, to the deinstallation, takes place over 24 hours with a team of about 100 people involved.

8. We work closely with designers to try to achieve their vision. This often involves our producers in a range of pursuits not usually associated with museums, such as trekking through a forest to chose specific trees to be felled for props, searching out pink roof felting, or hunting down a last minute totem pole.

9. We have always recorded the events on film and we livestream the shows online but ultimately, Fashion in Motion is an ephemeral thing. It is about the unique experience of being in the Museum and seeing great examples of design in a way that they have never been shown before or will be again.

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Document 6/18

Conserving

Nine things I thought you should know about:

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Storing garments and accessories in museums.

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Person of Issue

Sue Clark.

Occupation

Volunteer of the Year, national winner of the Marsh Volunteers for Museum Learning, 2012.

Introduction

Sue Clark has since 1989 devoted her time to cataloguing, rehanging garments and assisting fashion and textile curators in the Museum of London, V&A and Wardown Park Museum. Her knowledge of everyday clothes, social history and the construction of haute couture makes her invaluable for storing garments and accessories in museums.

Description

1. Every single piece in the collection must be handled with absolute care and respect. Every garment is different and should be closely examined to evaluate if it should hang on a padded coat hanger, be put in an acid-free card box or in a calicolined tray. The garment’s material, shoulder seam and waistline will decide its destiny for storage in the museum archive.

2. The wonderful thing about volunteering is seeing all these beautiful garments up close, and being able to inspect the meticulous craftsmanship of a dress; the very fine details of hooks, seems, eyes, zips and hemlines. The pattern cutting and construction of a couture garment is complex, and it’s always interesting to measure the waistline of a dress.

3. Tyvek bags are essential for storing and protecting hanging objects from dust, light and abrasion from other garments.

Individual garment bags are necessary in the case of storing dresses by Elsa Schiaparelli, where beaded and fragile satin dresses hang side by side.

4. Padding a hanger correctly will help support the shape and strength of the garment. Hangers should be padded so that the corner angle slopes with the shoulders of the garment, and reaches just beyond the sleeve seam.

5. Cotton tape can be used to avoid creases and hang heavy skirts straight on hangers. An ensemble consisting of a skirt and bodice should hang individually with cotton tape to support.

The craftsmanship of garments made between the two World Wars is intriguing, especially the ones with built-in foundations.

I’ve come across a few Pierre Balmain pieces with inbuilt bra, corset, suspenders and stockings that support the female silhouette and shape the garment.

6. I often come across dresses that I would like to sew a hem back in, but garments in museums need to remain how they were when they arrived to the museum.

7. Paul Poiret’s famous Sorbet dress from 1912 was made of a combination of silk and tin, which was very popular in the early 20th century, but will rust and disintegrate over the years. The Sorbet dress was originally stored in a drawer, but a custom-made bag was made using cortex as the base with wadding covered with calico and a tyvek bag to preserve its extraordinary shape. The tyvek bag was made in such a way that curators are able to look at the dress without touching it.

8. Hats and bonnets should be stored in their original box in a closed cabinet. The curator at Luton, Veronica Maine, got funding to create a new store for their wonderful collection of 750 hats. Some of the hats had been quite badly kept, and new boxes were acquired to store them correctly.

9. Brims, neck shields and crowns on hats should be supported and Styrofoam is a great material for this. Unbuffered archival tissue can be used to prevent bows and feathers on the hats from loosing their shape.

Document 7/18

Observing

Nine things I thought you should know about:

Page

Exhibition exercises.

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Person of Issue

René Le Prou.

Occupation

Architect.

Description

1. Admiring: The extraordinary experience of entering a museum and its exhibition space requires appreciation time.

While doing so, your neck, mouth and jaws can be stimulated too.

Open mouth wide and fling head back gently, moving your gaze from the floor to the ceiling. Open and close mouth moving the back teeth. Open and close 10 times, then bring head forward and back in position.

2. Reflecting: A dress and the way it’s displayed can be jawdroppingly exciting and a joyous moment for exercising your mouth, cheeks and eye area. Open mouth wide as if screaming, open eyes wide and keep your gaze fixed on the display. Count to three and repeat at least 10 times throughout the exhibition.

3. Understanding: Simply everything lies in the detail of a dress. Have a closer look while exercising your balance and posture. Stand firm and keep your back straight. Use your calf muscles, slowly raising your heels, transferring weight to the balls of your feet along their inner margin. Enthralled by the dress, hold buttock muscles and those of the inner thighs. Count to six, release, repeat three times and rest. Now raise all toes straight upward. Count to six, release, repeat three times and rest.

4. Conversing: Aim to engage and converse while exercising your neck control. Stand between two people, keep shoulders relaxed, back straight, neck stretched high. Without moving your torso, turn chin slowly over each shoulder to converse.

Repeat five times, and practise throughout the exhibition.

5. Illustrating: A notebook and pencil keep your hands distracted from touching objects and your mind focussed.

Exercise your wrists by making huge lines to illustrate the imaginative movement of the dress. Keep the hand relaxed, but not absolutely limp. Move the pencil from the bottom left corner of the page to its top right corner. Repeat these graceful gestures 10 times.

6. Relaxing: A rest is needed to soak in exhilarating exhibitions. Find a bench to rest your feet, or exercise your posture and arm muscles with chair lifting. Sit in an L-shape, palms flat on the seat and arms straight. Now lift buttocks and thighs off the chair, feet off the floor. Count to six, relax to the count of three, and repeat 10 times.

7. Convincing: There is nothing more disappointing than closing time, but be nice to the warders and they might let you stay another five minutes. Clench fist tightly; hold a second and then throw fingers forward and as wide as possible. The “five minute” gesture will make your hands more flexible and aid circulation.

8. Buying: The museum shop offers a chance to bring home a piece of the exhibition and exercise your posture and arm muscles.

Keep your back straight and reach for a three lb book on the highest shelf. Grasp it firmly keeping your elbow close to your head. Bend elbow and lower weight backwards to touch the back of the opposite shoulder. Raise arm up and repeat five times. When finished, place the exhibition catalogue on your head, keep your back straight and walk steadily towards the till.

9. Waving: Don’t forget to wave farewell to the warders when leaving the exhibition, which will aid circulation in your hands. Lift arm, fingers pressed tightly against each other.

Nowthrust fingers apart, opening to as wide a separation as possible and twist from side to side to wave. Repeat six times.

Document 8/18

Curating

Nine things I thought you should know about:

Page

The Simone Handbag Museum.

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Person of Issue

Judith Clark.

Occupation

Professor of Fashion and Museology, London College of Fashion.

How viewed

The Simone Handbag Museum, 17 Dosan-Daero 13 Gills, Gangnam-gu, Seoul, 135-889, KR.

Description

1. The Museum was set up in Gangnam (as in ‘Oppa Gangnam Style’) the same week the song was released by PSY. 2. The grey colour of the walls was inspired by Gerhard Richter’s definition of grey. It is now the grey that I use as a backdrop to all current projects – all blanks, all spaces in between statements. Perhaps it is a way of addressing every inch of the space and acknowledging where “no statement” is being made. Perhaps it is my association with museum rooms: you can turn a gallery space into that of the museum by darkening the walls.

“Grey. It makes no statement whatever; it evokes neither feelings nor associations: it is really neither visible nor invisible. Its inconspicuousness gives it the capacity to mediate, to make visible, in a positively illusionistic way, like a photograph. It has the capacity that no other colour has, to make ‘nothing’ visible. To me, grey is the welcome and only possible equivalent for indifference, non-commitment, absence of opinion, absence of shape...”

Gerhard Richter: from a letter to Edy de Wilde, 23 February 1975.

3. We replaced the original Maison Martin Margiela Glove purse with the reproduction from H&M last November. It is no longer clear which is the most significant object.

4. A wooden bag from 1800 is thought to be the rarest in the Museum. [SHM.2010.L28] 5. The crocheted sleeve fragment that decorates the 1900s mannequin was inspired by a dress that is held in the Kyoto Costume Institute [AC5680. 87-36-1]. The dress, from c. 1908 of white cotton Irish crochet, is decorated with the 3-d motifs of flowers, dragonflies, lilies and grapes popular in the Art Nouveau style. It was intended to create the best backdrop to the sinuous lines of the tiny purse it is “holding”.

6. All of the Museum’s mannequin wigs were made by Angelo Seminara in-situ in Gangnam.

7. 2011 will always exist on the majority of accession numbers and will hold the memory of the original collection however much it grows in the future. The V&A’s fashion collection is populated with the year 1974, the year hundreds of objects were donated to the collection in the wake of Cecil Beaton’s ‘Anthology of Fashion’ exhibition in 1971.

8. Late 1840s engravings by satirist Grandville, Les Fleurs Animées, inspired the design for the terrace mannequins outside the third floor gallery. These stand as epigrams to the installations and to the Museum design as a whole. I gave Stephen Jones the image (which he of course already knew and loved) and he reproduced the flower-figure in calico to look as though the mannequin had metamorphosed. Angelo Seminara matched the “calico” hair.

9. The whole collection of handbags was housed at Martin Speed art storage in London for a year, being documented before being transferred to Seoul, only weeks before installation.

Document 9/18

Curating

Nine things I thought you should know about:

Page

‘BIG’.

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Person of Issue

Alexandra Palmer.

Occupation

Senior Curator, Nora E. Vaughan Fashion Costume Curatorship, Royal Ontario Museum.

How viewed

Autumn 2013. Royal Ontario Museum, 100 Queens Park, Toronto, CA.

Description

1. The Patricia Harris Gallery of Textiles & Costume, Royal Ontario Museum, is located on C4 in the Michael Lee-Chin Crystal designed by Daniel Libeskind – a BIG $270 million expansion project that opened in June 2007.

2. BIG is the current exhibit in the Patricia Harris Gallery of Textiles & Costume, Royal Ontario Museum. Magnets are used throughout the gallery to “hang” the textiles and costumes.

3. BIG features recent acquisitions and many never-displayed items from the ROM’s permanent collection of textiles andcostume.

Textiles used for fashion, furnishings and gifts play a BIG and compelling role in our lives. Creating and acquiring cloth has driven people to travel extreme distances and expend extraordinary efforts in new technological, artistic, and cultural discoveries that were also BIG-ticket items.

LESS CAN BE MORE. Even the smallest textile can have a BIG personal, social, and cultural value that shifts according to context.

4. BIG EVENT: worn after surgery as cool, loose, and easy to slip on. Dress by Maison Martin Margiela, Oversized Collection Fall 2000 Paris, France (2012.36.6 Gift of Ms. Marlene Mock).

5. BIG VALUE: smell of wax is one way to judge a superior piece.

Ceremonial batik wrapper (dodot), 20th-century Java, Indonesia (2011.73.8 Gift of Rudolf G. Smend).

6. BIG TIME: low maintenance – no ironing - and ideal for the “servantless” needs of postwar housewives.

‘Abstract Fiberglas’ furnishing textile by Owens-Corning for Co-FabCo, c. 1950-54 USA (2001.122.1 This acquisition was made possible by the generous support of the Textile Endowment Fund).

7. BIG SIZE: over 8 feet long (250 cm). Woven to be wrapped twice around the waist, tied, hanging fringes.

Ceinture fléchée perlée, finger-woven, plaited and beaded sash, Huron, 1825 – 1875, Quebec, Canada (967.148 Gift of Mr. J. Harold Crang).

8. BIG NAME: Christian Dior, John Galliano.

Coat-dress and belt, haute couture collection / Spring 2011Dior by John Galliano, Paris, France (2012.22.1.1-2 This acquisition was made possible with the generous support of the Louise Hawley Stone Charitable Trust).

9. BIG IMPACT: explosive silk, seen in lining. Over time, weighted silks degrade and shatter posing a real threat to the survival of many fashions from this period as the tin that weights them bonds to the fibres and cannot be reversed.

Late afternoon dress by Jean-Philippe Worth, c. 1905 Paris, France (961.92).

Document 10/18

Acquiring

Nine things I thought you should know about:

Page

Buying and selling at auctions.

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Person of Issue

Kerry Taylor.

Occupation

Auctioneer and founder of Kerry Taylor Auctions.

How acquired

2 July, Passion for Fashion. Kerry Taylor Auctions Ltd, 249-253 Long Lane, Bermondsey, London SE1 4PR, UK.

Description

1. Buying fashion from an auction house tends to be a lot cheaper than buying in a vintage shop. It’s very affordable and great value for money. Things in the past were terribly well made, unlike most of the rubbish mass-produced in the world today.

2. We sell antique costume through to 20th century street fashion and haute couture. Our sales include accessories, luggage, costume jewellery, fashion illustrations, literature, and photographs, fabric swatch books, Oriental and European textiles, quilts, samplers, needlework, linen and lace.

3. More than 10,000 people are registered in our database and receive our saleroom alerts. Our buyers range from museums, dealers, collectors, fashion designers, to young men and women who buy to wear.

4. Always ask the auction house to provide you with a condition report, especially if you are nervous about buying or not sure you can judge the condition yourself. Every single piece in my auctions has a condition report, and good auction houses should be able to provide you with one. If you are buying for investment, make sure that the dress hasn’t been altered. If hems or seams have been cut, it radically reduces the value.

It’s not too bad if something needs a bit of stitching along the seam, but if it’s got holes and splits then don’t go there.

5. Make sure the label is contemporary with the dress and sewn into the right place. There’s a lot of label dancing at the moment, and a label can add a zero to the price. If a dress is without a label, I try to find archive images of it to verify its maker and value. I’ve been surprised by the number of people trying to sell fake Hermès bags, punk pieces from Vivienne Westwood and 1920s dresses with wrong labels. There’s always someone trying to fake something, and it disappoints me that there are so many dishonest people.

6. People email, send photographs and I sometimes go out on valuation visits. We research and photograph everything for the condition reports, our website and printed catalogue. I think we will give up printing the catalogue in a few years, because the online version gives more detailed information. The sellers love the printed catalogues as a record of their piece.

7. When leaving your bid bear in mind that a 20% buyer’s premium will be applied to it. Christie’s charges 25%. The premium is subject to VAT at the prevailing rate.

8. People selling at my auctions have peace of mind knowing that their dress has made its best price. We had a fake fur coat in an auction a few weeks ago, and it would normally make £200, but made £20,000 for no other reason than two people wanted it on that particular day. We also sold a very rare Madeleine Vionnet piece in the last Fine sale for £50,000, and it had an estimate of £8000-10,000.

9. I would like the fabulous black skeleton dress by Elsa Schiaparelli to come up for auction soon. The dress combines art with fashion, and really shows that she was ahead of her time.

Document 11/18

Curating

Nine things I thought you should know about:

Page

‘In Fine Style: the Art of Tudor and Stuart Fashion’.

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Person of Issue

Anna Reynolds.

Occupation

Curator of Paintings, The Royal Collection.

How viewed

10 May - 6 October 2013. The Royal Collection, The Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace, London SW1A 1AA, UK.

Description

1. For the Tudor and Stuart elite, luxurious clothing was an essential component of court life. Garments and accessories – and the way in which they were worn – conveyed important messages about wealth, gender, age, social position, marital status and religion.

2. Both Henry VIII and Elizabeth I enforced laws dictating the fabrics, colours and types of garment that could be worn at each level of society. “Cloth of gold” (which incorporated goldwrapped thread), crimson-dyed fabrics and certain types of fur were reserved for those of the highest status.

3. The word “finery” was first used during the 1670s as a descriptive term for elaborate and showy dress.

4. Costume and paintings were frequently commissioned to mark important events, such as elevation to a knightly order, marriage or a little boy’s transition from skirts to breeches at the onset of adulthood.

5. The clothes worn in paintings were often more expensive than the paintings themselves. In 1632, Charles I paid the leading court artist Sir Anthony van Dyck £100 for a portrait of the royal family, while spending £5,000 a year on clothing (more than £400,000 today).

6. Monarchs and their court were admired for their fashion sense and innovative style. In 1666 Charles II introduced the precursor of the three-piece suit – a long vest worn under a coat instead of a short doublet and cloak. The fashion spread so quickly that three weeks later the diarist Samuel Pepys recorded wearing his own version.

7. Male fashions matched those of women in the luxuriousness of materials and complexity of design, and elements of masculine dress were adopted by women. By 1620 the matter of women wearing doublet-style bodices, hats and male hairstyles was of sufficient concern to be raised in church sermons under the express wishes of James VI and I. 8. Artists sometimes played the role of stylists. The painter Sir Peter Lely modified the dress of his sitters to suit his own artistic sensibilities. Lely’s portraits show female courtiers, such as Frances Teresa Stuart (c.1662), wearing the artist’s own interpretation of fashionable clothing, which resembles unstructured lengths of shimmering silk fabric over a white linen shift.

9. Portraits of the Tudor and Stuart elite often deliberately depicted conspicuous consumption through their clothing, to demonstrate a sitter’s wealth. The cartwheel ruff, worn by Elizabeth I in a miniature by Nicholas Hilliard (c.1595-1600), featured frequently in contemporary portraiture. It was made up of a complex arrangement of layers and pleats which required weekly setting with hot pokers and starch.

Document 12/18

Curating

Nine things I thought you should know about:

Page

‘The Queen’s Coronation, 1953’.

21

Person of Issue

Caroline de Guitaut.

Occupation

Curator of Decorative Arts, The Royal Collection.

How viewed

27 July - 29 September. The Royal Collection, The State Rooms, Buckingham Palace, London SW1A 1AA, UK.

Description

1. The Queen acceded to the throne on 6 February 1952 and was crowned at Westminster Abbey the following year, on 2 June 1953.

2. The Coronation is a state occasion that has remained essentially unchanged for 1,000 years.

3. The dress, robes and uniforms worn by the principal royal party have not been brought together since 2 June 1953. ‘The Queen’s Coronation: 1953’, at Buckingham Palace, will be the largest-ever exhibition about the Coronation.

4. The Queen’s white satin Coronation Dress was created by the British couturier Norman Hartnell (1901-79). The design incorporates an iconographic scheme of embroidered national and Commonwealth floral emblems in gold, silver and pastel-coloured silks, encrusted with pearls, crystals and sequins.

5. The Queen’s Robe of Estate, worn when Her Majesty departed from Westminster Abbey for the Palace, is made of English purple silk-velvet and is more than 6.5 metres long from the shoulder to the tip of the train. It is exquisitely embroidered with wheat ears and olive branches, representing peace and prosperity, and terminates in The Queen’s crowned cypher. The embroidery was designed and executed by the Royal School of Needlework, a task that took 3,500 hours to complete between March and June 1953.

6. On 2 June 1953, hundreds of thousands of well-wishers lined the Mall and filled the specially-constructed stands around the Victoria Monument in front of the Palace to witness the carriage processions of Members of the Royal Family, foreign Heads of State and Commonwealth Prime Ministers. The processions culminated with The Queen and HRH The Duke of Edinburgh leaving the Palace in the Gold State Coach, drawn by eight Windsor greys with coachmen in full State Livery.

7. The Queen wore the Diamond Diadem for the journey from Buckingham Palace to Westminster Abbey. The Diadem was designed and made for George IV to wear at his Coronation in 1821 by the royal jewellers and goldsmiths, Rundell, Bridge and Rundell and is one of the most recognisable of The Queen’s jewels – she is shown wearing it on postage stamps and some issues of banknotes.

8. The designer and society photographer Cecil Beaton (190480) took his famous Coronation portraits of The Queen in the Green Drawing Room of Buckingham Palace, using his signature theatrical backdrops to recreate the inside of Westminster Abbey.

9. Prince Charles, who was four at the time of the Coronation, wore a cream silk shirt with a lace jabot and lace-trimmed cuffs, cream woollen trousers and black patent shoes with buckles. Princess Anne, who was two, wore a dress of cream silk and lace with a silk sash and silk-covered buttons, with matching cream, silk ballet pumps. Their outfits were supplied by the children’s outfitter Miss Hodgson, of 33 Sloane Street, London, who was a regular supplier to the Royal Family at the time.

Document 13/18

Collecting

Nine things I thought you should know about:

Page

Designmuseum Danmark’s fashion and textile collection.

22

Person of Issue

Kirsten Toftegaard.

Occupation

Curator of Fashion and Textiles, Designmuseum Danmark.

How Viewed

Designmuseum Danmark, Bredgade 68, 1260 Copenhagen, DK.

Description

1. Designmuseum Danmark has the world’s biggest collection (90 pieces) of 1980s and 1990s haute couture by the Danish couturier Erik Mortensen (1926-1998). Mortensen arrived in Paris in 1948 and in 1950 he became the right-hand designer of the French couturier Pierre Balmain (1914-1982). In 1982, at the death of Balmain, Erik Mortensen inherited the Parisian fashion house and was appointed directeur artistique. From 1992 until 1994 he worked as chief designer at another Parisian fashion house, Jean-Louis Scherrer.

2. The fashion and dress collection contains a dress from 2007 made of preserved seaweed, designed by the Danish fashion designer Laura Baruël (b. 1975).

3. The collection’s latest most valuable purchase, acquired in 2012, is a 1768 bridal dress which belonged to the young Bolette Marie Lindencrone, born Harboe (1750-1800). The gown is a sack dress, the French ‘Robe à la francaise’, together with a matching petticoat. The gown and petticoat are made of eggshell white satin woven silk fabric with floral silk embroidery, made in China.

4. The overall collecting strategy is a combination of form, function, material and manufacture, whether collecting a fashionable dress or a piece of furniture.

5. Two masterpieces of modern French tapestry Polynésie – La Mer and Polynésia – Le Ciel were bought by Designmuseum Danmark (former Kunstindustrimuseet) in 1952 and 1954. The two tapestries were designed by Henri Matisse (1869-1954) in 1946 and woven at the Beauvais workshop in Paris from 1950-1951. In drawing up the cartoons for the two tapestries, Matisse used the technique of paper-cut. The colours turquoise and navy blue were inspired by Islamic art.

6. In 2005, a small collection of dresses, trouser suits and jackets designed by the French couturier André Courrèges (b.

1923) were donated to the museum. André Courrèges introduced the mini skirt in France. In 1964, he launched his famous ‘Space Age’ collection.

7. One of the main focuses for Designmuseum Danmark’s collection of fashion and dress is the combination of cut/silhouette and fabric.

8. The biggest part of the fashion and textile collection in Designmuseum Danmark is a collection of modern Danish textile design from the 20th century. This collection includes not only workshop-made or industrially-produced fabrics sold by the meter but also, from the 1950s onwards, a type of clothing made from printed or woven fabrics and recorded as ‘Craftsmen’s dress’.

These Danish dresses were the first contemporary dresses bought for the collection. A common feature of all of these dresses is that the textiles were in most cases manufactured as unique specimens and often based on an integrated working relationship between a clothing designer and a textile designer. In Denmark, the craftsmen’s dress became highly popular in the 1960s and onwards through the 1970s.

9. ‘The Golden Age of Couture’ in Denmark was from the 1930s until the 1960s, represented by the so-called ‘Danish Three Bs’ – Holger Blom (1906-1965), Preben Birck (1906-1992) and Uffe Brydegaard (1901-1962).

Document 14/18

Designing

Nine things I thought you should know about:

Page

Hardy Amies.

23

Person of Issue

Claire Malcolm.

Occupation

Creative Director, Hardy Amies.

How acquired

Hardy Amies, 14 Savile Row, London W1S 3JN, UK.

Description

1. A gentleman has a certain formula with a certain look. The challenge of the brand is to understand that you are getting a gentleman with a modern twist. I want to make clothes that people want to wear. I like the idea that you buy something and cherish it and look after it.

2. Savile Row is the heart of Hardy Amies. I like to think that Savile Row is about maintaining rules, and fashion is about breaking rules. It’s oil in water, and a very interesting tension.

3. I worked on Savile Row before I came to Hardy Amies, and used to walk past the building and think that it looked really grand.

I knew that Hardy had dressed The Queen, and predominantly just that fact. It was a no brainer when an opportunity came to work for the house, and I realized I had stumbled upon a goldmine of history and heritage for a brand to get inspired by. The house has the most fashion-based history on the street. There are about 30 people in the house now, and there used to be over 100 at one point.

4. A suit is really something, and an easy way to dress. It makes you look good and it enhances your features and hides other ones. David Bailey once said, “If something is old fashioned, it was never good in the first place”. The work of Michelangelo is not old-fashioned. If something works, it works.

5. If you can afford bespoke suits, why not always have a bespoke suit. Bespoke is usually driven by the fact that others don’t know what brand you are wearing. The tailors hide the label inside the jacket and make it very difficult to see. This is almost the complete opposite of how most brands work today.

6. Hardy achieved so many things in his life and he was actually an amazing guy. He partied, travelled around Europe and spoke six languages. I’ve heard from people who have met him, that he had quite a sharp sense of humour. He was a larger than life sort of person.

7. Hardy’s most prominent era for menswear was in the 1960s.

I’m not interested in what Hardy designed for an era. I’m inspired by Hardy’s personality because that for me is a timeless quality and can apply to every season.

8. Hardy wrote The ABC of Men’s Fashion in 1964. We wanted to make it relevant for today by asking men about their style rules. The modern world is more about the individual and we got these really in-depth and diverse comments. It’s not just a London thing. It can be applied to New York, Tokyo or Milan.

It’s global, and a quite interesting study.

9. Austin Petti-Mewes, the curator in charge of the Hardy Amies archive, once told me that Hardy had said that in his opinion Coco Chanel was great, but she could never be brilliant because she was a woman designing for women. She couldn’t have an objective view. Maybe there is an advantage of the designer and client not being the same sex?

Document 15/18

Curating

Nine things I thought you should know about:

Page

‘Behind the Seams: an Indiscreet Look at the Mechanics of Fashion’.

24

Person of Issue

Denis Bruna.

Occupation

Curator of Pre–19th Century Collections, Les Arts Décoratifs.

Introduction

Although forms have evolved and techniques have developed throughout fashion history, the purposes of the mechanical undergarment have remained constant: flattening the stomach, compressing the waist, maintaining the bust, raising or sometimes flattening the breasts and rounding the hips.

Modelling the body sometimes to extremes, these “mechanical garments” enabled the wearer to artificially attain the ideal beauty of the time.

How viewed

4 July – 24 November. Les Arts Décoratifs, 107 Rue de Rivoli, 75001 Paris, FR.

Description

1. 14th century: The famous doublet of Charles de Blois from the Musée des Tissus de Lyon. This piece is exceptional because of its cut and padding, which mark a very early apparition of mechanical underwear.

2. 16th century: Trunkhoses with cod-piece from 1552-1555, Dresden Museum. These hose point to a link between clothes and virility.

3. 16th century: Metallic corsets, which are kind of a unicorn in the history of fashion, since only 12 or 13 survive from 16th to the 19th centuries. The corsets underline the social norms behind ideas of beauty.

4. 17th century: Very rare spanish doublet, 1590-1610, lined with different layers of heavy canvas. The doublet highlights the role of lining in constructing clothes.

5. 18th century: Very large selection of corsets from our collection showing the evolution of the shape of female bodies.

We are also displaying a pair of calf enhancers for men. This kind of male accessory is now barely known, but shows how the silhouette has been transformed in the most extreme manner.

6. 19th century: Romantic corsets, crinolines and bustles all form part of a very wide display of 19th-century structuring underwear. We are also showing sleeve enhancers, which are quite rare. They were placed under the fabric of the sleeve, just below the shoulder seam, and gave the huge sleeve volume that we can see in Achille Deveria’s Heures de la Parisienne (1840).

7. 19th century: The 19th century presents a wide array of different types of corsets. We are displaying a lot of these, insisting that corsets create the shape of the body. We are trying to show, as clearly as possible, the fluctuation of the ideal body across the century.

8. 20th century: This part of the exhibition focuses on new ideas about feminity and virility, and how these changed during the 20th century, from giving up the very restrictive corset, to flapper fashions in the 20s, to the apparition of the push-up bra for women. We are also dealing with new male underwear such as the jockstrap and the male push-up.

9. 21st century: We are displaying several striking pieces by contemporary creators such as Thierry Mugler, and looking at how they reinterpreted the idea of body transformed.

Document 16/18

Curating

Nine things I thought you should know about:

Page

‘From Club to Catwalk: London Fashion in the 1980s’.

25

Person of Issue

Claire Wilcox.

Occupation

Senior Curator of Textile and Fashion, V&A.

Introduction

In 1986, Blitz magazine commissioned a group of 22 London-based designers to customise denim jackets provided by Levi Strauss & Co. The jackets were exhibited at the V&A and auctioned in aid of the Prince’s Trust on 10 July 1986. The V&A now has nine of these jackets in its collection.

How viewed

9 July 2013 - 16 February 2014. V&A, Cromwell Road, London SW7 2RL, UK.

Description

1. Jacques Azagury: “My design shows that a Levi’s jacket must be one of the most adaptable items of clothing in the world today.”

This is one of the quietest, most feminine jackets in the group.

The blue lace inset into the denim is subtle, but the closer you look, the more beautiful it is.

2. Richmond/Cornejo: “Destroy. Disorientate. Disorder.”

This was John Richmond’s mantra.

3. Vivienne Westwood: “I like to take traditional things and push them into the future....”

We can’t have the original LED lights on for the display – Health & Safety – so are trying to find another way to illuminate the jacket.

4. Leigh Bowery: “Golden hairgrips form a continuous all-over fringe. Lined in turquoise satin with sequin detail....”

Sue Tilley mentioned this jacket in her book about Leigh Bowery, which makes it even more special. It took 10 hours for the Museum’s Conservation Department to straighten out all the hairgrips for the display. Every time we move the jacket, they get all jumbled up again.

5. Culture Shock: “Classic meets Classic – the Levi’s denim jacket meets Worcester wool suiting in Prince of Wales check.”

This was the jacket the V&A bid for at the Blitz Designer Collection auction in 1986, paying £173.91 plus VAT. Of the group, it is the least recognizable as a Levi’s denim jacket.

The white tacking stitches and tape measure edging are a brilliant touch.

6. Stephen Linard: “A ‘camping’ jacket for use in the bustle of Fulham Road, Sloane Street and Bond Street... or indeed a week in the country....”

Stephen Linard was highly respected by many of his contemporaries; quite a few talented designers from the 80s didn’t find lasting success, for various reasons. Others died too young, such as John Flett.

7. Bernstock & Speirs: “The denim jacket is a throwaway classic.

We’ve turned it into something very special, almost haute couture in its splendour.”

The blue raffia bristles and shines, but feels quite soft to the touch.

8. John Galliano: “The Queen of Hearts...Once upon a time there was a brave little jacket who was lost and lonely; we met each other one morning and I gave it a multi-coloured magic coat....”

This jacket is still lost. We would like to find it for the exhibition. The associated drawing is wonderful, and has tarot cards attached to it.

9. Stephen Jones: “The pockets have become earflaps, a whisper of satin is tucked into the top cravat-style and, hey presto, Biker’s Delight!”

This is the only non-jacket in the collection. We are going to team it up with Culture Shock.

Document 17/18

Curating

Nine things I thought you should know about:

Page

Extremely rare survival of sailor’s shirt and breeches. [ID no: 53.101/1a & 1b]

26

Person of Issue

Timothy Long.

Occupation

Curator of Fashion and Decorative Arts, Museum of London.

How viewed

Museum of London, 150 London Wall, London EC2Y 5HN, UK.

Description

1. Description: Two-piece ensemble with a hip-length, loose shirt with full gathered sleeves and loose breeches heavily pleated into a wide waistband secured with one button.

2. Materials: The shirt is made of three different weights of linen for the main body, sleeves and collar. The breeches are made of coarse linen with various sized cotton, linen and leather patches. The button on the breeches is made of bone.

3. Date: While the exact date of this ensemble is unknown, research has shown that it could date from the late-16th century to the mid-18th century.

4. Stains and repairs: Without any reliable information about its provenance, it may at first seem difficult to understand the ensemble’s original function. However, across the front of the shirt are dark brown stains, which have been identified as tar. This observation offers some clues as to the origin of the ensemble. While the shirt is heavily stained with few repairs, the breeches show signs of continued use through hard work with numerous repairs on top of repairs.

5. Comparative analysis: When this ensemble is compared to an illustration in a book on 16th-century fashion by Vecellio, a striking resemblance can be seen; the title of this xylography

by Vecellio is British Sailor, 1598.

6. Speculation 1: With the previous clues, it is possible to speculate that this ensemble is what would have been known as ‘sailor slops’, a recognisable combination of shirt and breeches worn by British sailors from the 16th to the 18th centuries.

During this period, tar was used as a waterproofing agent for hemp ropes. Constantly handling the ropes would have transferred the tar to the sailor’s shirt.

7. Speculation 2: The meticulous repair built on top of earlier repairs strongly indicates that the ensemble was very dear to its owner; perhaps the sailor’s only pair! The crude and rough quality of the repairs may even suggest they were done by the sailor himself, perhaps aboard the ship.

8. Rarity: While most museums around the globe collect the garments of royal families or those produced by the skilled hand of high fashion designers, few institutions hold everyday items from such early periods. Unfortunately, the clothes of the working class very rarely survive, as they were usually either turned into rags or worn to threads. Its uniqueness makes the sailor slops one of the most historically valuable and rare items in the fashion collection of the Museum of London.

9. Scientific analysis: Advancements in the scientific analysis of historic clothing may one day enable this ensemble to be accurately dated. Until then, its exact date remains uncertain.

Document 18/18

Knitting

Nine things I thought you should know about:

Page

Elsa Schiaparelli’s bowknot sweater.

27

Person of Issue

Dilys Blum.

Occupation

Senior Curator of Costume and Textiles, Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Introduction

The eponymous fashion house of Madame Elsa Schiaparelli is to relaunch, and what better way to wait than by knitting your own version of Schiaparelli’s signature bowknot sweater.

How made

Enclosed poster with knitting pattern and instructions.

Description

1. Schiaparelli’s iconic trompe l’oeil bowknot sweater was included in the designer’s fourth collection, shown in August 1927. This collection also featured sweaters with modernist skyscraper patterns.

2. Sweaters had been included in Schiaparelli’s collections since the launch of her couture house in January 1927. Two sweaters from her first collection appeared in the February 1927 issue of French Vogue.

3. According to Schiaparelli, the bowknot sweater was inspired by one a friend was wearing, a plain sweater with “a steady look”. The sweater had been knitted by an Armenian refugee who produced knitted goods for the wholesale trade with her brother.

Schiaparelli commissioned her to make a range of similar sweaters.

4. The sweaters were distinguished by the tweed-like effect of the knit, which was created by using the woven intarsia knitting technique. Although this technique is often referred to as Armenian it is used in many cultures. The Armenian label is more than likely a reference to the knitters who first produced the sweaters for Schiaparelli.

5. Schiaparelli experimented with several versions of a trompe l’oeil bow tied in a knot around the neck. From period photographs used to register the designs, none were as elegant as the one celebrated today as the bowknot sweater.

6. In November 1927 the American sportswear wholesaler William H. Davidow Sons became the sole distributer for Schiaparelli sweaters in the United States. He offered the bowknot sweater in black and white as well as several other color combinations such as lavender and purple for those less inclined to “chic melancholy”.

7. Vogue’s fictional “First Lady of Fashion” Viola Paris (a creation of novelist Michael Arlen) described as “The Most Chic Woman in the World”, prepared for the cold Paris winter of 1927-28 with a wardrobe in black and white that included Schiaparelli’s bowknot sweater. Vogue described the sweater as “an artistic masterpiece”, and the perfect choice for Viola, who collected Picassos, Modiglianis, Utrillos, and Matisses.

8. The bowknot sweater was widely copied for the mass market.

American department stores sold hand-knitted versions made in Vienna for half the cost of the original.

9. A year after it was first shown in Schiaparelli’s collection The Ladies’ Home Journal, an American women’s magazine, provided its readers with a knitting pattern titled ‘The Chic Bowknot Sweater’. The design had become so ubiquitous that Schiaparelli’s name was not even mentioned.

MoMu: Office Desks.

Photography: Eduardo Rossi & Jack Davey.

MoMu, the Fashion Museum, Province of Antwerp, has since its opening in 2002 fuelled the creativity of Belgian fashion and new museum displays. Located in the heart of the city, the Museum is housed in ModeNatie, the impressive 19th-century building renovated by architect Marie-José Van Hee. The architecture reflects the Museum’s curatorial vision of dynamic exhibition displays, welcoming research facilities and dedicated collaborations with the international fashion industry.

The MoMu team is the core to it all, and their individual office desks are the epicentre of the Museum’s expertise and originality.

MoMu’s Curator of Collections, Wim Mertens is responsible for managing the fashion and textile collection of more than 25,000 objects. She deals with new acquisitions, donations, loans, publications, lectures, requests and conservation issues. The Collection Department has its own separate office next to the storage rooms where the collection is kept in paper boxes on shelves, on hangers in wardrobes and on paper rolls. Wim Mertens spends the majority of her time behind her desk and in the storage rooms, which “really is an extension of my desk”. At the end of the day, she turns off her computer and activates the alarm.

MoMu’s Librarian Birgit Ansoms manages the Museum’s collection of more than 15,000 books, archive documents, audiovisuals and hundreds of historic and contemporary magazines. Her office desk is placed strategically between the public library and the depot, so that she can keep an eye on the collection, help visitors in the reading room and do research for the curators. The most important objects on her desk are her preservation tool kit, a book cushion, and gloves for working with vulnerable books.

She is currently reorganizing the entire depot to ensure that the collection is safely stored, and that archive boxes and books are neatly arranged.

MoMu’s Director Kaat Debo is the driving force behind the success of the Museum. She is responsible for the Museum’s overall vision, new exhibitions, publications, acquisitions, loans, partners, staff and budgets. She is also an important key consultant to Belgian fashion designers. Her spacious office is located on the left side of the building when entering the offices on the fourth floor. She here enjoys the beautiful view of Nationalestraat.

Her L-shaped office desk is neatly organised with the basic essentials, such as her telephone, address book, computer and exhibition catalogues. Her door is always open, welcoming staff, students, partners and designers for a chat over the desk.

MoMu’s Curator of Exhibitions Karen Van Godtsenhoven decorates her office desk with postcards and invitations from international fashion exhibitions. Her desk acts as a “writing table, archive, telephone, central meeting place and a mnemonic device”.

She organises her desk so that writing utensils and projects that need to be read, written or

reviewed are placed on the right.

On the left side of the desk are DVDs and admin documents such as insurance, loans and contracts.

Her desk is currently packed with books about MoMu’s current exhibition on the Abraham Textile Archive and MoMu’s two upcoming exhibitions on the Antwerp performance art scene and on feathers.

MoMu’s Head of PR, David Flamee is responsible for press, social media, special projects and partnerships. He deals with up to 150 emails a day and 250 press requests per exhibition.

He updates the MoMu blog regularly and deals with visual communication of the exhibitions.

Keeping himself on top of it all are his colourful to-do lists and post-it notes. He once tried making an electronic list, but missed the satisfaction of crossing things out and throwing the lists in the dustbin. He uses his Pentax camera to document daily life at MoMu and couldn’t live without his MacBook which functions as his mobile office desk.

MoMu’s Conservator Erwina Sleutel starts the day by checking the agenda, going through urgent emails while enjoying a nice cup of coffee. Her huge desk space in the Museum workshop functions as a blank canvas where she dresses mannequins, conserves garments, writes condition reports and packs objects going on loan. Essential

everyday tools include needles, pins, scissors, yarn, cotton fabrics, synthetic cotton-wool and reference images for achieving the intended silhouette of a dress. At the end of the day, she makes sure everything is safe, switches off the lights and activates the alarm.

40

Title

Collecting

Issue No.

Subject

Part

1

-----Pages

Date

2/4

A/W 2013

Signature

41-73

42

The Conversations:

A.

Katerina Jebb, The Artist.

C.

Patricia de Nicola誰, The Perfumer.

Illustrations: Rie Maktabi Grue.

B.

Alfredo Paramico, The Watch Collector.

D.

Etheleen Staley, The Gallerist.

43

A. Katerina Jebb.

British artist Katerina Jebb employs a high-resolution scanner to document objects and humans.The scanner produces an exact facsimile of its subject, which is life-size and can be further enlarged. The process that Jebb has developed and refined over the years has become a highly visible new medium in the world of art and visual communication. Jebb has spent a considerable amount of time reproducing documents and costumes in the archives of the Musée Galliera Paris. Her output challenges the medium of traditional photography, dispensing with the formal set-up of the photographic studio.

Her work is at once stark and truthful. When practised in the confines of a museum, the results are efficient and revealing.

Are you a collector?

Yes. I have a collection of clothes and rare books. The urge to own something I desire is stronger than my will to resist it. Collecting beautiful things is inspiring and gives me pleasure.

What exactly do you collect?

I have quite eclectic things from Kansai Yamamoto to Chanel suits from the 1950s; dresses from the 18th century which would fall apart in your arms; and a dress made entirely from a scarf fabric

by Elsa Schiaparelli.

My collection is whimsical and full of ideas. I also have a lot of strange objects, which I like because they look improbable and I think I will use them for my work. I have a lot of books from the 1970s on biology, fossils, anthropology, and a German pop art book which comes apart so that the works inside can be framed.

My favourite book ever is Transition, an experimental literary journal published by Eugene Jolas from 1927 until 1938. The essays are superb and illustrate linguistic innovation, with Jolas notably publishing James Joyce’s Fragments from Work in Progress, which eventually became Finnegan’s Wake.

44

What interests you about fashion and costumes in museums?

I like the removedness of the space. There is a sense of peace and blankness and everything is concealed. I am attracted to the order and reverence, which is far away from neon lights, logos and people shouting. I am interested in my own emotional response, as the museum has an effect on one’s senses. I think it proposes a subconscious time frame, planting the idea that we are here so fleetingly and inviting the question of what is left behind after our own demise. For me it’s a much larger subject than simply looking at clothes.

How would you define your curatorial approach to documenting museum objects?

I try to interact with the objects, which I respond to immediately regardless of their previous owner or maker. I work instinctively and follow my intuition. My imagination may play a role, but I think there is something very primal about working with clothing and historical artefacts. I believe it’s a kind of predilection, a particular characteristic, which some people have, and others don’t.

Which objects from Musée Galliera’s collection did you choose for the film?

I intentionally did not want to reproduce what the performance would be. I tried to choreograph the film around the physical space of the Museum’s archives.

It is austere, industrial, quite a brutal looking place. I showed Tilda walking through the corridors and the deep underground car park, which is quite a visual paradox to decorative costumes.

The pieces in the film are purposefully spare and in contrast to the ceremonial parade of the performance. My film shows the Napoleon’s coat, a jacket by Comme des Garcons and a corsage that belonged to Cléo de Mérode.

Why was Tilda Swinton cast for the lead role?

Tilda is a close friend of mine and the role was naturally made for her. There is no other living woman who could have regenerated the medium of clothing in quite the way that she did.

What was your favourite garment and scene in the film?

The brief moment where Tilda is holding Napoleon’s coat to her face and she looks straight into the camera.

Could you say that you are breathing life into the garments?

I am positioning the garments and I sometimes pretend that there is a body in them. I place the garment on the scanner until it looks like there is an inert power somewhere inside it. The garments are inanimate objects but I believe our imagination is quite fluid when looking at things. I illustrate the form, but ultimately the life comes from the viewer.

Was there an element of evoking the senses and redefining the visitor experience in museums?

Any live performance or film projection should hopefully stimulate the viewer’s senses.

The visitor expects changes in their own temperament when visiting a cultural institution.

This was amplified when Tilda performed on stage and on the screen. She is a sort of medium, and so many people project a kind of devoted desire onto her being.

Why was The Impossible Wardrobe, the film and live performance with Musée Galliera, an “improbable concept”?

It was improbable because a living body will never inhabit the clothing again. It was a reminder of this fact.

The film uses nostalgia in an alluring way. Was the concept of The Impossible Wardrobe sad?

Yes, possibly. One recalls memories, which can incite feelings of melancholia.

The concept of your collaboration with Acne for their A/W 2013 collection was to make “the invisible visible and the unwearable wearable”. How did you approach and prepare for the project?

I documented objects from the dress collection which I found appealing, and which I could envisualize reproducing well onto textiles.

How important was the social identity and cultural history of the museum objects to your creative work with The Impossible Wardrobe and Acne’s A/W 2013?

After spending a couple of years working in a museum archive, which is like a mausoleum, you start to question the throw-away society in which we now exist. The pervading atmosphere is a bit difficult, not comfortable, no daylight, cold and isolated. The creativity is in the holding back, just repeatedly scanning an object as it lies.

Creatively there are limits, as the impossibility of wearing the clothes ostensibly means you have to master the art of the still life. I predominantly documented 18th-century men’s costumes. The construction and detail on the garments is impeccable, made by hand and dictates what follows.

In this sense, my work with the garments was about exposing the object entirely, because of their rarity and obsolescence.

of their own. With certain pieces of clothing you can feel something permeating.

What is your next museum-related project?

I will start a project about the painter Balthus for an exhibition in Japan. I have already documented some of his possessions and will continue to catalogue the objects in his studio, which has been left intact since his death in 2001. It’s an amazing place to be.

“I work instinctively and follow my intuition.”

What has surprised you the most about working with museum objects?

The interesting thing about making still lives in a museum is that it is a strange place to inhabit, further intensified by the fact that I work with machines so I am in a suspended reality.

What part of Musée Galliera would you like to explore further and create new work for?

There are three objects that I will document which have importance to me. Their previous owners were subjected to terrible situations in revolutionary movements, which were no fault Interview by Louise Rytter.

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B. Alfredo Paramico.

Alfredo Paramico is one of the world’s top luxury watch collectors. The charismatic Milan-based banker has, since the 1980s, passionately collected the most sophisticated and complex mechanical movements, namely those produced by the Swiss luxury manufacturer Patek Philippe. The core of his collection its 10 rare white Patek Philippe watches produced between the 1930s and late 1950s, worth 20 million Euros. Paramico is also Fund Manager of Precious Time, the first and only fund to invest in collectible vintage watches. What began as a childhood obssesion has transformed into a successful business career, and Paramico is today considered one of the industry’s most knowledgable an admired collectors.

Are you always punctual?

Always. Punctuality is a matter of respect and I’m always on time. It’s difficult to believe since I’m from Naples. Neapolitan people, for reason unknown to me, have always been considered unable to be on time. Imagine how many issues I’ve had with my girlfriends in the past. Try to accuse a woman of being late.

I read that you always carry a watch in your pocket?

This is not exactly true. What is true is that I on very rare occasions wear a wristwatch.

I don’t feel the need to wear it. I need to know I have it, which is different and the reason why I sometimes carry a watch in my pocket. It makes me feel more comfortable and gives me a boost of self-esteem.

What do you consider when choosing which watch to wear or put in your pocket?

I’m passionate about white watches, which are cased in stainless steel, white gold or platinum. They are definitely the most stylish choice. It’s quite easy for us businessmen to choose what to wear during the week.

We just need a nice suit, a high quality shirt with close-fitted stripes and a perfectly associated tie. It’s much more difficult to choose during the weekend, when 46

a more relaxed sportswear style is required.

How did you become interested in collecting watches?

Investors ask me this very often.

I have a photograph of my sister and I, when we were around five or six. I am proudly showing her my wristwatch, which in fact was my mother’s steel Zenith watch, worth almost nothing. I remember my mother getting tired of my continuous requests to wear her watch and eventually she gave in.

That’s when it all started.

What is the current value of your collection?

Gianni Agnelli, one of the most charismatic figures in Italian history, once said that no man should ever define himself.

I would say the same applies to my collection, but of course I have to face a market sentiment and for this reason I would range the value of my top Patek Philippe collection at 18 to 20 million Euro.

What makes Patek Philippe watches so desirable?

History, tradition, quality, value and rarity. Patek Philippe advertising is based on the concept that you never own a watch but you look after it for the next generation. My Patek Philippe’s are all cased in steel, platinum or white gold, ranging from the late 1920s to the late 1950s.

The decades between the two world wars were pioneering for watch-making.

What is your most extravagant buy?

The last one. I bought what could be considered in my humble and honest opinion “The Watch”. It’s a one of a kind J.B. Champion platinum Observatory Chronometer, considered one of the most sought after and valuable Patek Philippes in private hands.

What makes it “The Watch”?

It’s the only one made in platinum, and specially made for J.B. Champion: one of the most successful criminal defense attorneys of his time, and an

astute collector of Patek and Acherons. J.B. Champion chose his case, reference 2458, which was in platinum and modified to fit this movement. Champion ordered a special dial, complete with “Made Especially for J.B. Champion” at 6 o’clock and a secondary “tuxedo dial” with diamond hour markers.

The particular movement came third place at the Concourse de Chronometry competition in 1948.

It features a large brass/invar Guillaume balance, mounted by a blued steel Brogue spiral, and stamped twice with the Geneva seal. It is the highest calibre movement Patek ever put into a wristwatch case.

You own the largest collection of Longines in the world. What is unique about a Longines watch?

Longines produced the 13ZN and 30CH chronographs from the 1930s to the late 1950s. They are second to none. They are in my opinion better than the Patek Philippe Valjoux 23, the caliber modified to equip the most important chronograph. Longines watches have an incredible variety of dials and their large cases make them attractive and very valuable.

Personally, I prefer the extremely rare wristwatch version of the Siderograph.

Precious Time owns several Rolex Daytona Paul Newman models.

What was Paul Newman’s relation to Rolex?

The Daytona Paul Newman is an iconic piece and what I like to call “the universal watch”.

Paul Newman was very interested in watches and used to wear the Daytona during his races in California. I strongly believe the Daytona, and particularly the Paul Newman versions, still have huge potential of value growth.

How important is the original wearer of the watch to its value?

It is essential. A few years ago the gold-filled Longines watch owned by Albert Einstein was sold for almost 700.000 USD, although its intrinsic value was well below 1,000 USD. Same for the Zenith pocket watch owned

by Mahatma Gandhi. I personally prefer watches owned by people such as Duke Ellington, or Briggs Cunningham, who had two of the coolest Patek Philippe watches ever made: a stunning split second ‘S’ chronograph watch with a water resistant case, Breguet numerals on the dial and the unique perpetual calendar ref. 1526 cased in steel.

How has the market changed since you started out?

The market is now much more mature than when I started out. When the financial crisis began in 2007, Christie’s’ total sales were USD 70,000,000. Today, after five years of deep crisis, the number is USD 130,000,000 with fewer watches in the catalogues.

Everyday style: Suit: My tailor, Biagio Mazzuoccolo from Naples. When I have to wear black tie I prefer Gianni Campagna.

Shirt: Luigi Borrelli from Naples, Finollo from Genova and if I have to wear cufflinks I choose a shirt from Turnbull & Asser of London.

Tie: Patrizio Cappelli, Maurizio Marinella and Hermès.

Shoes: John Lobb’s, Edward Green and Crockett & Jones.

Socks: Gallo.

Transport: I drive a Ferrari 599 GTB, a Terra Modena supermotard motorbike and a Trek Madone 5.9 racing bike. But I prefer to walk.

Preferred communication device(Blackberry, Iphone, Ipad): All of them!

“Vintage production is where the real value is.”

How do you stay informed about new contemporary pieces and vintage pieces?

I am informed of any rare bird or true gem appearing in the world. Honestly, I don’t find contemporary production that interesting. I strongly think that vintage production is where the real value is. I am in daily contact with collectors, investors and dealers from Europe, US, Japan, Australia, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore. But there is nothing more enjoyable than catching up with Aurel Bacs, the International Co-Head of Watches at Christie’s in Geneva.

Is there a watch you don’t currently possess, but would like too?

Can I choose two? I would like the Patek Philippe white gold, two crowns, enamel dial, world time wristwatch and the unique 18K 1526 in stainless steel. They are both in the Patek Philippe Museum in Geneva.

Interview by Louise Rytter.

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C. Patricia de Nicolaï.

The world of fragrances has few faces, but the one of perfumer Patricia de Nicolaï deserves to be recognized. De Nicolaï was born into the world of scents, being the great-granddaughter of Pierre Guerlain and therefore heir to the expertise of the house. She is today Director of her own luxury perfume brand ‘NICOLAï, Créateur de Parfum’ and President of the Osmothèque in Versailles, the only olfactory museum and conservatory in the world. De Nicolaï was, in 1988, the first woman to be awarded the International Prize for Young Perfumers and in 2008 received the Legion of Honour.

Being a fervent defender of the art of perfumery, she is seen as one of the greatest perfumers of our time.

How did you get this refined nose?

All talent needs education to flourish. I worked hard to become a skilled perfumer. The nose is very hard to educate, and not a given for everyone. The art of perfumery is a constant discovery and a quest to find the ideal scent.

The profession does not seem to have many female perfumers?

Actually the industry has more and more women perfumers, on the contrary! But it is true that this has not always been the case. I was pushed to the commercial side of the industry when I started working as a perfumer, and it took me a long time to establish myself in what was a male-dominated industry. It is different today where the profession is very much feminized. Women and men have different olfactory intuitions, working in a team in big companies gives good results.

What is a good perfumer?

A good perfumer is a craftsman who adapts to high-level perfumery.

Some scents have marked a turning point in the profession, and every good perfumer must know them, analyze and understand their olfactory values ​​ as they pave the way to new creations. A good perfumer should also be able to put his technical knowledge aside and rely on his intuition. When 48

you look at paintings by great masters, you recognise specific color themes, forms and signature lines. The same applies for the perfumer, who signs his work with raw materials that he has spent years investigating. The work of a perfumer is in fact more recognisable than you might think.

longer available. The Museum does not own or sell the perfumes, but instead treats them as historical treasures. Developing perfumes has always been very artisanal, but the discovery of synthetic molecules in the 19th century changed the production and marketing of perfumes.

How do you perceive Guerlain’s olfactory legacy today?

Many people recognize the notes of Guerlain. My uncle JeanPaul Guerlain taught me that the quality of raw materials is very important. I am fortunate to have started my own company and to have kept this working philosophy. I can allow myself to create fragrances at a higher cost because, unlike other houses, I do not buy the essence of raw materials to shape my perfumes, I make this essence myself. One can sometimes be very attracted to specific raw materials, but I believe it is something that can change from one period to another.

Personally, I was very attracted by cedar essence for a period.

A life-time would not be enough to discover the ideal scent.

That is what is so challenging and exciting about this craft.

Is preserving a perfume almost like keeping a work of art?

Yes. Perfume is a work of art that evokes the senses. The conservation of a perfume is extremely delicate, fragile and requires the uttermost precision.

A fragrance is ephemeral and evaporates. The practise of conserving perfumes is relatively new, and we are still not sure how long we are able to keep them intact, which is why it’s important to keep the formulas as well. We have seen good results with scents we conserved 20 years ago. Unfortunately, preserving perfume formulas hasn’t been a priority for many fashion houses, which today makes it difficult to reproduce and restore certain perfumes.

What are your signature raw materials?

Patchouli, rose and geranium are often used in my perfumes.

Conserving perfumes is a very recent initiative. The Osmothèque formalized its activity in 1990, while the wealth of fragrances goes centuries back.

The Osmothèque plays an important role in the perfume industry, preserving the best fragrances and re-weighting their formula.

Our collection includes perfumes

by Paul Poiret, François Coty, Lanvin, Roman fragrances from the 1st century. It’s a meticulous archival work to collect the formulas and preserve the fragrances. The Osmothèque have 3000 perfumes, and so far only 170 formulas are recorded. The Osmothèque safeguard the perfumes and ingredients, which might otherwise have been lost or no

In technical terms, how do you preserve a perfume?

Preserving a perfume is a real euphoria. A fragrance is ephemeral. The very nature of a perfume resides in that it evaporates. But we can still manage to optimize the preservation of a perfume for a certain period of time in order to keep scents for a few decades. That said, we do not yet have enough perspective to know precisely how long we can keep them. The optimization of conserving a perfume is carried out by avoiding its three enemies: light, temperature and oxidisation.

What is the most recent perfume you have preserved?

We have re-weighted ‘Shocking of Schiaparelli’ (1937), a beautiful “leather chypre”.

What perfume formula has surprised you the most?

‘Iris Gris’, of Jacques Fath 1947,

a masterpiece in the collection.

This one contains a high percentage of pure natural orris, completely impossible today as its price is really too expensive.

“Perfume is a work of art that evokes the senses.”

Unlike the artist, the perfumer is rarely known to the public.

Is it difficult for a perfumer to get recognition for the creative dimension of their work?

Even today, it remains difficult for perfumers to get recognition for their work, aside from its scientific value. We always face legal issues when it comes to getting our creations recognized.

Many fashion brands stick their name on a perfume bottle and hide the work that it really represents. Some perfumers are left in the shadow of a brand’s commercial impact, and it’s one of the few professions where the creator cannot put his name on his own bottles. A fashion designer is associated with the clothes he shapes, but it is very rare to have the image of a perfumer before your eyes, when you buy a perfume. I launched my own brand in 1989 to defend the art of perfume and revive its craft.

I have lately seen small perfume brands emphasise the creativity and individualism of their creations. The Osmothèque strives to educate, and to support those visionary brands which have been important for innovating the art and science of perfume.

How do you feel about perfume’s creative potential in the fashion industry?

Perfume has an enormous potential and the industry is growing rapidly. There is no magic formula to creating the fragrance of the century, but it’s a constant quest for every perfumer.

Interview by Elisabeta Tudor.

Translated by Alienor de Chambrier and Louise Rytter.

L’Osmothèque (In Greek osme means “scent” and theke means “storage space.”

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D. Etheleen Staley.

Etheleen Staley and her friend Takouhy Wise are the creators and curators of the Staley-Wise gallery, Soho, New York.

The gallery opened its doors in 1981 and was the first of its kind - exhibiting and selling fashion photography on a fine art platform. Since then it has become known for its extensive, prestigious collection and archive, predominantly of fashion photography, but also Hollywood portraiture, landscape, still life, nude and journalism photography. Their current show - ‘From the Archive Part II’ showcases work by Louise DahlWolfe, Edward Steichen, Herbert Matter, Patrick Demarchelier, Hoyningen-Huene, Jeanloup Sieff and many others. Staley and Wise met in the late 1970s, while they were both working as stylists at Grey Advertising in New York. The two stayed close friends and in 1980 came together to open what is now the Staley-Wise gallery.

When you opened the Staley-Wise Gallery did you already have photographers in mind to exhibit?

When we opened we had a list of fashion photographers that we wanted to have in the gallery and in those days you could pretty much get anybody you wanted. They were all surprised that anybody wanted to have their pictures in a gallery. For instance we worked directly with Louise DahlWolfe and Helmut Newton. Erwin Blumenfeld was not alive so we worked with his daughter and son.

How would you describe the StaleyWise Gallery?

I think we started something new.

Before us there was no such thing as seriously selling fashion photography. The important thing about Staley-Wise is that we did something that hadn’t been done before.

Describe an average working day at the Staley-Wise gallery.

I spend the morning doing emails at home and arrive at the gallery around noon. The majority of photography requests come in the form of an email, and from 50

all over the world. We send them jpegs and answer their questions, which frequently results in sales. There’s a lot of buying and selling via email and with clients in the gallery. We deal directly with collectors, art consultants and people who come because they really like the photographs on show. And we deal with other galleries and museums. Not that many museums collect fashion photography yet, but they’re starting.

How do you go about acquiring new work?

Each photograph has its own story. Occasionally we do buy at auctions, but usually collectors and photographers or their estates contact us to sell. We sell online but have never purchased work online.

Many of the photos you are showing in ‘From the Archive Part II’ are side projects from fashion photographers. How do you think fashion photography has influenced their personal work?

It all comes from the same source and vision. It comes from the mind of the photographer.

Horst P. Horst was the first photographer you exhibited, how do you think he has influenced fashion photography today?

I am beginning to see more work influenced by Horst. It’s not in fashion right now but his kind of poised and elegant studio photography will come back.

Erwin Blumenfeld was extremely experimental with his fashion photography, often influenced by his fine art background. Is it common for fashion photography and art to overlap?

Blumenfeld was highly inventive and that extended to his fashion photography work. He used fashion to make a living, as did many photographers. Fashion photographers are artists and this was the case with Blumenfeld.

Many of the photographers you exhibit have worked predominantly in black and white why is this?

Many photographers do a tremendous amount of colour work for the magazines but the photographs that they chose to sell are mostly, but not all, black and white.

David LaChapelle’s images are full of colour, extremely witty and always engaging. What was it like working with him?

We worked very closely with him at first and then he moved to Hawaii, so we don’t see him so much anymore. He is larger than life and very special.

What makes a really thoughtprovoking fashion photograph?

The artist’s vision is the source of a thought-provoking fashion photograph. For example, Deborah Turbeville’s assignment was to show some Valentino evening dresses. But she turned the assignment into something cinematic, ambiguous, and visually exciting.

Why do you think there is a growing interest in buying and collecting fashion photography today?

Because the work is beautiful and as complex and compelling as any other genre.

Do you think fashion photography needs further acceptance in the art industry or has it achieved its value?

Every major gallery now shows some form of fashion photography.

I would say it has arrived.

What advice would you give to someone collecting fashion photography?

It depends what your interest is, and if you are collecting for yourself or to invest.

If you want your collection to increase in value, I would get blue chip photographers and have everything either signed, stamped or authenticated.

If you were to give Takouhy a photograph from the collection as a gift, what would you choose?

I would give one of the beautiful Irving Penn fashion photographs we have in the gallery, and I would keep one for myself.

“The artist’s vision is the source of a thought provoking fashion photograph.”

Interview by Suzie Shepherd.

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A. B. C. D.

Katerina Jebb Alfredo Paramico Patricia de Nicola誰 Etheleen Staley

pp pp pp pp

54-57 58-59 60-61 62-63

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A. Š Katerina Jebb, Evening Dress, MusÊe Galliera, Paris.

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A. Š Katerina Jebb, Evening Dress, MusÊe Galliera, Paris.

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A. Š Katerina Jebb, 18th Century Corsage, MusÊe Galliera, Paris.

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A. © Katerina Jebb, 18th Century Man’s Coat, Musée Galliera, Paris.

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B. Patek Philippe, made in 1928. White gold single button. Value: 3,500,000 Euro. © Alfredo Paramico.

B. The most important watch ever made! It’s a 1518 in steel, the Holy Graal of watches!

Value in the region of: 5,000,000 Euro. © Alfredo Paramico.

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B. Patek Philippe. Platinum ref. 2497 with hard enamel. Breguet numerals.

Value: 3,500,000 Euro. © Alfredo Paramico.

B. The unique platinum Patek made for JB Champion. Value: 3,500,000 Euro. © Alfredo Paramico.

B. Alfredo proudly showing his younger sister his first watch.

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C. L’Osmothèque, Versailles, France. © Maris Mezulis.

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C. Working space in L’Osmothèque, Versailles, France. © Maris Mezulis.

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D. Exhibition Invitation, 1993, New York. Š Staley-Wise Gallery.

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D. Exhibition Invitation, 1986, New York. Š Staley-Wise Gallery.

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E.

Hamish Bowles, The Collector of Haute Couture.

Illustrations: Rie Maktabi Grue.

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E. Hamish Bowles.

Vogue’s International Editor at Large, Hamish Bowles possesses one of the world’s most extraordinary private collections of haute couture. Today the collection boasts more than 3,000 rare pieces from 1850 to the present day. A life-long passion for collecting elegant and meticulously constructed frocks has made him an important keeper of fashion history. Bowles began collecting at the age of six, and acquired his first couture piece when he was eleven. His enthusiasm for vintage couture and his adventurous eye have been highly influenced by his upbringing in London, student years at Central Saint Martins, and a life travelling the world as the Style Director of Harpers & Queen magazine and since 1992 as editor of American Vogue. Bowles is a stylish gentleman and charismatic connoisseur, enthralling his readers through the pages of Vogue, his online rubric ‘The Hamishsphere,’ and exhibitions on haute couture, Jacqueline Kennedy and Balenciaga. This year marks an important milestone for his collection, as it becomes a not-for-profit archive. This is the first step in making his collection accessible to students, which has always been the dream for a collection this extraordinary.

How did you become the owner of this extraordinary couture collection?

As a little boy I used to go with my mother shopping in antique and junk shops. I would buy accessories, Victorian purses and slippers that I could afford with my pocket money.

I frequently went to the Costume Court at the Victoria and Albert Museum, and made sure family holidays were arranged around road trips to costume museums, notably the one in Bath that Doris Langley Moore had assembled.

I became really interested in fashion by reading British Vogue in my teenage years.

It was an exciting moment for British fashion, with designers like Ossie Clark, Bill Gibb and Zandra Rhodes establishing themselves.

I thought, maybe I should start collecting fashion rather than general costume. So I began going to the costume and textile sales at Christie’s in South Kensington. I couldn’t really afford things, but it gave me a sense of how the clothes should look, be constructed and fit to the figure. A collection starts out as an accumulation of things you are intrigued by, and suddenly becomes this collection, which needs to be properly managed.

You grew up in a fascinating time, and the V&A has an upcoming exhibition on London fashion in the 1980s and the Met an exhibition about punk. Why are museums interested in these epic London periods now?

My fashion life began in the 1980s. I am personally appalled by punk, which tore down every wall barrier and convention. The New

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Romantics are much more my cup of tea, and the style of dressing up in fantasy. I had a lot of fun in the 1980s and adored what I was doing at Central Saint Martins, Harpers & Queen, and there were all the clubs: Taboo, Cha Cha and Kinky Gerlinky. I was travelling the world and worked with photographers that I really admired such as Angus McBean, David Seidner, Robert Mapplethorpe and Javier Vallhonrat. I recently went to a presentation of the punk exhibition at the Met, and the curator, Andrew Bolton, made me think about the impact punk fashion has had on so many people and designers. Vivienne Westwood created the costume iconography of punk, and John Galliano was more influenced by her than anyone at the time and has been looking at punk throughout his entire career. I think a lot of young people today are intrigued by this strange and interesting time, which was creative and transformative for fashion.

What about the pieces you wore back then?

Do you still have them?

I kept all my Galliano things. I actually leant some of them to the Met when they did the ‘Men in Skirts’ exhibition.

Mario Testino has mentioned that you were very inspired by Cecil Beaton’s photographic work when you both worked at Harpers & Queen.

I had nostalgia for that period, and for its storytelling through photography. Mario had just arrived in London from a glamorous beach life in Lima. I think the British aristocrats’ crazy traditions and the very different historicism intrigued him. He also had nostalgia for it and I think he wanted to evoke that in his pictures, which were very mannered. Funnily enough, after he worked with me he started working with Carine Roitfield, who was then a freelance stylist.

She questioned Mario’s very stiff and mannered pictures, and told him to capture what his world was about: beach, glam and sex. That is when he really found success. I’m glad to see that he now is going back to these epic and more narrative kinds of pictures. He combines it in a very seductive way with his more recent work.

Is Cecil Beaton someone who still influences your work?

Very much so, when I was 14 I entered the British Vogue Young Talent competition, where you had to write about the person who had influenced you the most. I wrote about Beaton and would say that’s still the same to this day, beyond my immediate family, of course.

I read that you are very interested in the periods of the Belle Époque and the Bright Young Things?

They are two different eras. As a boy I saw this wonderful book, The Diary of a Century with photographs by Lartigue. He was a young man himself, captivated by these extraordinarily dressed women at the races at Val de Boulogne in Paris. Most of them were dressed by the great couturiers of the day, and the pictures seduced me. It was an era Cecil Beaton looked to when he costumed My Fair Lady, which was a seminal moment to me.

The 1920s were such an exciting time socially, because the First World War had destroyed all class barriers and created a new world where culture, fashion and stars could mix together.

I love the literature and aesthetics of the period.

“The New Romantics are much more my cup of tea and the style of dressing up in fantasy.”

Was there a key moment that defined the direction of your collecting?

One of the epiphanies I had was on my first trip to New York, which must have been in the mid-1980s. A friend of mine introduced me to Richard Martin and Harold Koda, who were then the curators of the Fashion Institute of Technology’s collection. They were incredibly generous and showed me the collection, which is very strong in American fashion, but also in European fashion that New York ladies had donated over the years. It was very exciting to see and gave more of a focus to my collecting. The collection was very accessible for scholars of clothing and the fashion industry and I thought, maybe one day I’ll be able to present my collection in this way. I’m creating a not-for-profit archive this year, which is the first step towards making the collection accessible for students and designers. The archive’s first project will be a book about the collection and a travelling exhibition.

How has moving to New York influenced your collection?

I have a lot of American clothes, which I certainly wouldn’t have had because I wouldn’t have been so exposed to it. There are a group of American designers that I admire profoundly. I have a lot of Halston, Norman Norell, Gallinos, Trucker and Mainbocher from his career in Paris. I like the Hollywood designers who had fashion careers outside the Hollywood system, like Adrian, Irene and Howard Greer, Helen Rose, Jean Louis and more recently Geoffrey Beene. I also admire Marc Jacobs and Narciso Rodriguez.

Where is your collection stored?

Everything is now in New York. It was at one point between Paris, London and New York.

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How do you manage the collection?

It’s a headache to manage and I have two incredible research associates helping me. One previously worked at the FIT and the other one at the Costume Institute at the Met. It’s a question of consolidating the collection and making sure all the climate control conditions are in place.

How much do you collaborate with museums?

One of the purposes of the archive is to raise the profile of the collection, so museums understand the scope of what I have. I’ve lent to exhibitions at the FIT, the Met, the Musée de Mode at the Louvre, the Palais Galliera, the Museum of London, the V&A, the de Young in San Francisco, and regional American museums. One of my associates is, as we speak, collecting some Madame Grès and Alix pieces that I lent to the fashion museum in Antwerp.

Some of them were previously displayed in Musée Galliera’s Madame Grès exhibition in Paris. It’s exciting to see how the clothes look when they have been professionally dressed by museum installers, and very much transformed.

What do you look for when adding to your collection?

Any designer who holds a mirror up to their time is desirable for a museum or collector.

A lot of the excitement is finding something that may have lost its label or gone undetected, and finding the documentation for it. I’m excited about all these obscure houses that might not be on every museum’s costume collection checklist. I’ve always been restrained by budget, and the great important Elsa Schiaparelli, the great Paul Poiret and Madeleine Vionnet have always been one step ahead of my financial capability. So I’ve had to either look at other houses that interest me, but are less prized by museums, or find them through unusual channels.

How much time do you spend searching for new finds to add to your collection?

A lot. I mean, I have a very demanding day job. I literally had half an hour in between shows this Sunday and went to the Hammersmith Vintage Fair. I found three incredible pieces by Captain Edward Molyneux, Paquin and Mirande. The Molyneux afternoon dress is from about 1940. Molyneux is a designer I’m particularly interested in and I have many examples of his work. He was one of the very few British couture designers operating in Paris, after the house of Worth and Redfern, and he was certainly the only one in the 1930s. He did very understated, elegant and chic clothes. He was a great friend of the playwright Noël Coward, and dressed a lot of his leading ladies on and off stage. Molyneux famously did the wedding dress for Princess 68

Marina who was the most stylish British royal of her time. Christian Dior admired Molyneux more than any other designer, and Hardy Amies based his aesthetics on Molyneux.

It must be fascinating to connect these historic threads through fashion?

The wonderful thing about fashion is all these extraordinary connections. I also got a really wonderful Paquin evening gown from about 1937, which is a period I love in fashion. The Spanish designer Anna de Pombo ran the house at this time and was inspired by some of the same Spanish references as Balenciaga. I recently spoke to Oscar de la Renta who, as he says, began his career picking up pins from Balenciaga in Madrid.

He knew Anna de Pombo, who had retired from fashion at that point and now was married to Balenciaga’s favourite antique dealer. Anna de Pombo would host these salons and perform flamenco dances in her own designs. Oscar went to some of these salons. It’s fun making that crazy connection, and very exciting to get that dress.

How about the Mirande dress?

It was super exciting, because the label was hidden away and the dealer hadn’t seen it. The dress is very interestingly cut and stylish.

The house of Mirande existed in the late 1920s and closed in the early 1930s. It got a great deal of attention from the glossy magazines, and featured in Vogue and L’Officiel. It’s a significant house, and I’ve never come across another Mirande.

What was the first designer piece you bought?

It was an early 1960s suit by Balenciaga.

I bought it for 50 pence at a jumble sale at the Sadler’s Wells ballet company.

How is Balenciaga represented in your collection?

My collection spans his entire career with some really significant masterworks. The earliest piece I have is a little black dress from his first collection in Paris in 1937.

I found it at Christie’s in South Kensington, and it was very inexpensive. I was very excited to find documentation for it and realise that it was from his first collection.

And I, of course, have pieces from his final collection in 1968. The work he produced at the end of his career was much more imaginative, creative and experimental than anything he did as a young man. Many designers peak young, and continue to reinvent the codes they developed as young designers. Balenciaga was constantly questing and experimenting.

How did your two exhibitions on Balenciaga come about?

Oscar de la Renta invited me to curate an

“The wonderful thing about fashion is all these extraordinary connections.”

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exhibition about the influence of Spanish culture on Balenciaga at the Queen Sofia Institute in New York. It was a steep learning curve, and interesting to learn how Spain on so many levels had influenced Balenciaga’s work. The Director of the de Young Museum in San Francisco, the late John Buchanan, had been speaking to me about curating a show at some point. I called him up and we took the show there after it closed in New York.

How was Balenciaga influenced by his cultural heritage?

Spain was in the middle of civil war in the 1930s, and Balenciaga fled to Paris in 1937.

His romantic partner was French and a lot of Balenciaga’s clients had fled to Paris, so it made sense for him to move there. Balenciaga began as a tailor’s apprentice when he was 13, so he had already had a 20-year career at this point. He knew what he was doing when he opened his own fashion house in Paris.

His early designs had nostalgia for the Spain he had been forced to leave behind, with Spanish flamenco dresses, toledo jackets and regional costumes. He left that behind at the end of his career, when his work became more subliminal, abstract and probably more interesting. But I of course have a soft spot for the Spanish.

How did your exhibition on haute couture in 1995 come about?

The Met did an exhibition called ‘Haute Couture’ with stellar highlights from their collection. I curated an exhibition of images of haute couture installed for one night only at the Met Ball. It included works on paper, photographs and fashion illustrations from the Belle Époque right up to the present day. The exhibition was dismantled after the Met Ball, and reinstalled in the Gagosian Gallery, where we used some wonderful couture examples from the dealer Martin Karma.

How did the exhibition influence your collection?

I think my collection was already very well on the way. I have a number of pieces produced in Paris by the couture houses during the occupation in the 1940s. And of course pieces from Dior’s early collections, showing the 1950s transformation of structure and cut.

The exhibition required a lot of research, primarily from the Condé Nast archive, which wasn’t as organised as it is today. Condé Nast traditionally owned the rights to all of the material that they commissioned, and had this unusual holding. None of this had been catalogued and no one really knew about it.

We discovered outtakes from iconic sittings, like Irving Penn’s sittings book from 1951.

It had little Polaroids of every single image he had taken in the day, with details of the 70

sitter and whether or not the photograph was published. We also found a folder with six photographs, that turned out to be what Cecil Beaton put together in the late 1920s to present to Condé Nast himself. As a result of that he was hired by Vogue and had a career that lasted his entire life, with that unfortunate blip in the late 1930s.

Looking back at these grand couturiers, what is your view on the new creative directors of Dior, Balenciaga and Yves Saint Laurent?

Only Dior is doing haute couture today.

It’s fascinating to see how someone from a different aesthetic place is tackling the couture, the familiar silhouette, fabric and technical approach. It’s interesting to see Raf Simons taking the house of Dior and implying the same house codes that John Galliano, Gianfranco Ferré and Yves Saint Laurent were working with through the decades.

A great admirer of European couture was Jacqueline Kennedy, who you curated an incredibly popular exhibition about in 2001.

How did the exhibition come about?

The Met had a slot, and had been in discussion with the Kennedy family and the Kennedy Museum in Boston to stage the exhibition. The Met invited me to curate the exhibition, which was an extraordinary rollercoaster ride. We didn’t have long to work on the exhibition and it was a new area of research for me. I was plunged into presidential history and world events in the early 1960s. It was very interesting to discover how Mrs. Kennedy saw her role as First Lady, and how she used clothing in the most powerful way. The Kennedys were the first presidential couple to emerge in the age of television and really understood how potent images can be. Her clothing choices were very much part of that pattern and way of thinking.

She remained a very iconic figure globally but especially for Americans, and the exhibition had a focus on that.

What is your view of the current First Lady’s fashion choices?

Michelle Obama has phenomenal style and her fashion level has been profoundly influential as the First Lady. She has shown how you can have fun with clothes by mixing couture, high street, emerging designers and intriguing international designers.

Looking at the London collections this fall, who would you collect?

Well, this season I would love some Christopher Kane, Medhaem Kirchoff, Peter Pilotto and Jonathan Saunders. There are a lot of London designers that I would adore to have in my collection, and hopefully I will one day.

Interview by Louise Rytter.

“There are a lot of London designers that I would adore to have in my collection, and hopefully I will one day.�

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E. 72

Haute Couture labels. Š Louise Rytter.

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Title

Exhibiting

Issue No.

Part

1

3/4

Subject

Pages

Date

A/W 2013

Signature

75-105

MODARAMA: Manuela Pavesi, Encyclopedic Collector.

By Maria Luisa Frisa.

Manuela Pavesi is a leading figure in contemporary fashion: fashion editor, photographer, fashion coordinator of Prada, and encyclopedic collector (as in the dream of Marino Auriti, designer of the unrealizable and utopian Encyclopedic Palace).

Manuela Pavesi is one of the protagonists, behind the wings, of international fashion and its visual culture. An eclectic figure who cuts across disciplinary boundaries, she worked for Vogue Italia as Fashion Editor from 1972, supervising the features of photographers like Helmut Newton and Gian Paolo Barbieri. She then worked as a photographer herself, in particular for L’Uomo Vogue and nowadays with a series of independent magazines like i-D, Ponystep, Purple, Dazed & Confused, Pop, Grey, Tank and Garage. She has assembled her collection of clothes on the basis of a fashion editor’s sensibility, as a procession of dioramas — a mosaic of those themes that have run through and still pervade both western fashion and non-western costume.

Manuela Pavesi’s collection is now no longer just a boundless wardrobe and the place of its conservation, but also a device of the imagination, a deposit, cave and shelter, an engine of dream — it reflects her absolutely unique mode of dress, made up of unheard-of conjunctions and able to set in motion and derail all those imageries that are fashion’s continual source of inspiration. Her eclecticism, her eccentricity and her approach to life in the spirit of art are a confirmation of the fact that fashion today is one of the strongest driving forces in contemporary culture. A culture totally steeped in the circular time of fashion, in which present and past act simultaneously.

From my encounter with the figure of Pavesi (first from a distance and then ever closer up) stems the idea of an exhibition and a book. This project is not so much on her, but focused instead on the modes of designing and defining clothes, accessories and collections, and also those powerful mechanisms that breathe life into the imagery of fashion.

The project is a way, therefore, of reflecting threedimensionally on the creative procedures of fashion and on the living and creative dimension of the archive, as a place of research. In an archive, fashion moves through leaps and unexpected connections between materials; these can be made precisely because objects are available simultaneously in the same space, in archives.

Thus the Pavesi project proves to be the mise-en-scène of an interpretation of fashion, an exploration of the relations between the clothes in her archives and the different ways in which she expresses her highly personal world of fashion.

The gaze of someone who “makes fashion” browses through her archives, constructed on the criterion of free association as a sort of atlas of forms and emotions. Pavesi had no intention of arriving at this point. Compulsive accumulation, with no apparent direction, has over time turned into collection and archive. The motive was the pure desire to be on the inside of fashion and to have at her disposal an infinite and obsessive wardrobe that can never be complete. The archive is a continual adjustment of the way she presents herself to the world.

With an attitude free from any prejudice, Pavesi has behaved like a sort of back-to-front curator, through a collage of materials that “could” not be lumped together in chronological terms, but that share formal and structural similarities.

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Her collection is a reflection on the archives as a place for creation (of the future) and not just for the recording of a past that runs the risk of appearing frozen and a bit dusty.

In the way Pavesi tells it there was no true beginning to her extraordinary life dedicated to fashion. Her passion for the culture of fashion was part of the forming of her character in a home in which the quest for beauty was an integral part of daily life. For her it was imperative to look for objects that could be made to fit with her own vision, in an endless series of successive adjustments.

All these objects then had to find a place with those of the rest of the family. With the clothes of her mother and her eight aunts. A strong and eccentric feminine background, in which the passion for fashion — understood as an aesthetic project pervaded by the ethic of the quest for beauty — was handed down from generation to generation.

“I still have beautiful photos of them from the twenties and thirties, and of how all the women who lived in our big house used to dress. My mother and my eight aunts. Only three of them were married. Nine wardrobes, nine styles, nine ways of interpreting fashion. I knew them when they were old, but I experienced their youth through all their photographs.

Through their stories. One of my aunts, for example, always dressed as a man. For us it was natural and she looked very elegant. My grandmother was so passionate about fashion that even on her deathbed she devoted part of her attention to choosing the shoes she wanted to be buried in.”

It is the obsession with fashion, the love of clothes not just as extraordinary objects in themselves, but as an expression of the cultures that produced them, that leads Pavesi toward the forms that have populated the past, and that renders recognizable the spirit of the time they passed through. Like debris washed up by the currents, they are ready to be chosen to inhabit once again the continuous present of fashion.

Fashion always turns back on itself, but with results that are always unexpected, in a circularity that becomes a modular, repetitive temporality in its adjusting to the form of time.

Pavesi’s obsessive work has entailed collecting the most diverse materials and then continually reorganizing and adjusting them. She speaks of the past with insistence, parades before our eyes pieces of more or less recent history, organizes the present, and makes connections between different creators as well as between anonymous examples of excellence.

She draws conceptual maps and traces constellations. At work in her is a radical imagination, one that does not seek social approval, but on the contrary often wishes to disturb and annoy. Certainly the fact of having lived in a city like Mantua helped her to create a mythology, to cultivate an eccentric and lateral way of thinking.

Exploring this forceful collection means accepting sudden and unexpected apparitions. It means agreeing to follow Manuela Pavesi on a guided tour of her private obsessions. Obsession not just the continual return of the same idea; but in a restless, endless and yet very precise movement in search of completeness. Completing an idea, completing a vision, means 77

Pages from ‘Nobiltà terriera. Eccellenza, lusso. Trani’, photo Manuela Pavesi, in L’Uomo Vogue, n. 290, April 1998.

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Pages from ‘A polite rebellion’, photography Manuela Pavesi, in Grey, n. 6, Spring/Summer 2012.

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accepting its continuous change, its constant reshaping. The collection is always open, and it is an eye-opener for those who look through it. But also, and above all, it is open to the person who has assembled and kept it, going along with the promptings of her imagination. It is possible to find alongside the delicate embroideries that decorate traditional Chinese and Indian costumes a refined and precious jacket designed by Scott Crolla. The uniforms of an austere boarding school are linked with the at once revolutionary and exquisitely bourgeois uniforms and overalls of YSL Rive Gauche. Which in a moment can become explicitly military, or turn into Tyrolean aprons.

And, again, alongside the majestic structures of Balenciaga overcoats the chic snobbery — simple, but never facile — of Chanel coats. Or the disruption of form by Comme des Garçons could be placed next to the primordial couture of Worth.

And the list goes on, in a similar, dizzy vein.

Looking at fashion and its images, interpreting these, coming up with new ones, and following the drift of ideas.

These are operations that imply inventive movements, that go beyond the recognition of those forms and volumes with which we are already familiar. They allow feeling to develop for impossible combinations, enabling one to navigate the intricate morphologies of fashion and clothing. Choosing pieces and collecting them signifies tracing maps and trajectories; it means constructing some of the possible narratives with which we speak of our past, live our present and plan our future.

It means acting like someone who knows how to use fashion to tell stories that are capable of interpreting contemporary existence. These sensibilities, this knowhow and ability to see/sense is proper to the fashion editor. These are the mechanisms — elusive but exact — that animate the sophisticated and profound aesthetics that Pavesi seeks when pursuing her own obsessions.

So the exhibition becomes the act of force of the curator, who on the one hand wants to turn a magnifying glass on the personality and obsessions of the protagonist, and on the other, through her choices, overlay them with a map that is organized around new paths of meaning. The works are arranged and ordered through a sequence of islands that are organized in such a way as to indicate routes, thereby occupying and redesigning, like constellations in the sky, the space where the selected objects have found a temporary home. A map valid for now, but ready to be taken apart and recomposed in another way many more times. It is in this dimension of a continuous present that fashion always asserts itself, changing every season. The exhibition puts on display a series of genealogies that have defined Pavesi’s style, but that at the same time evoke the internal processes of fashion design. In fact, it is imagery today that plays a fundamental role in the creation and the dissemination of fashion. And brand imagery rests on a mythology that feeds on the history and values of the fashion object.

It is no accident that an increasing number of exhibitions are being devoted to the labels that have shaped the history of fashion. They are exhibitions that bring “forgotten” objects back into circulation, as such sparking off new creative directions in fashion design.

So the project to put Pavesi’s collection on display explores the concept of the atlas and the lineage of themes, as if the aim were to present the serial repetition of obsessions 80

and archetypes that define Pavesi’s style as fashion editor and fashion coordinator. Not an exhibition of individual, outstanding pieces, it looks instead at the accumulative results of collecting families of clothes and accessories on a typological rather than a chronological basis. It is a labyrinth of forms of inspiration and design, both material and immaterial. So there are pajamas, men’s sweaters (in the basic colors of blue, beige, green and gray), sequences of uniforms and outfits of everyday life (from the safari jacket to the nurse’s tunic, the waitress’s apron, the Breton shirt and the shirtwaist), jackets, skirts, coats and suits. Pieces are shown in their original basic form, but also in the infinite and precious versions produced by fashion designers: from Comme des Garçons, Yohji Yamamoto, Junya Watanabe to Marc Jacobs, from Prada to Yves Saint Laurent, from Chanel to Balenciaga, passing through a series of less celebrated authors.

Each family is represented in an apparently chaotic manner through different pieces created by different designers at different times. Each tackles the type that it explores as a reflection on fashion, on its forms, on its evolution.

The exhibition ranges from the basic garment to the sophisticated one, alluding to the endless variety of elements that are taken into consideration each time a garment is made.

These elements setting in motion the complex operation of assembly and stratification that is styling. From constellations of themes to the infinite ways of exploring them: This is a curatorial act that always asserts, obsessively and with delicate obstinacy, the theme of the anti-graceful.

Maria Luisa Frisa: Fashion critic and curator, Director of the Degree Programme in Fashion Design (BA) at Università IUAV di Venezia. She is President of MISA Associazione Italiana degli Studi di Moda (Italian Association for Fashion Studies). She curated, among the others, the exhibitions (and catalogues): Uniform. Order and Disorder (Florence and New York, 2001); Excess. Fashion and the Underground in the 80s (Florence, 2004); Italian Eyes. Fashion Photography from 1951 to Today (Milan, 2005); Lei e le altre. Moda e stili nelle riviste RCS dal 1930 a oggi (Milan, 2011); Diana Vreeland After Diana Vreeland (Venice, 2012); Lucy+Jorge Orta: Fabulae Romanae (Rome, 2012). Her latest book is Italian Fashion Now (Marsilio, 2011). She’s currently working on a book and an exhibition devoted to Manuela Pavesi’s work and private collection, scheduled for spring 2014.

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Pages from ‘Una storia importante’, text by Maria Luisa Frisa, photography and styling Manuela Pavesi, model Alice Furnari, clothes from Manuela Pavesi’s private collection, in Benoît Bèthume, Oh, L’Amour!, vol. 1 of the series Mémoire Universelle (curated by Bèthume), Brussels, Laconti, 2012.

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The following pages present the V&A’s Fashion Gallery in a way it has never been seen before. Claire Wilcox’s design brief, which she refers to as the “curator’s dream”, is printed in its full alongside her initial notes and the architectural drawings of the exhibition’s 17 cases.

The Fashion Gallery has since 1962 been located in the Octagon Court, between the Sculpture Gallery, Asian Galleries and the Raphael Gallery (which three times a year stages the Fashion in Motion event).

The central area and upper level of Gallery 40 is devoted to temporary exhibitions, and also encompasses a shop selling contemporary fashion magazines, accessories and dresses. The permanent display is organized around the outer circle of the gallery, reflecting the wheel of constantly changing fashions. The sensitive nature of textiles is challenging for a permanent display, but mastered by the expert eye of Claire Wilcox and her excellent team of conservators, lighting designers, technicians, curators and exhibition designers. An important curatorial decision was to include furniture and paintings in the display to create scenes from the past, creating a more engaging visitor experience that reflects the historical and social context of dress.

Gallery 40 houses the V&A’s permanent Fashion Gallery, and its new redisplay chronologically shows changes in fashion from the 18th century to the present day. Senior Curator of Textile and Fashion Claire Wilcox, was in 2012 given the responsibility of creating and narrating the history of European fashion from the Museum’s comprehensive collection of dress, one of the largest in the world. More than 500 objects were carefully chosen from the V&A’s collection of more than 100,000 items of fashion and textiles.

V&A: GALLERY 40

V&A: Gallery 40.

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Mannequins: Previous displays in the permanent galley (1983) have utilised realistic mannequins with wigs and make-up; these are beyond the scope of this show. We will predominantly use stockmans; the aim is for them to disappear by being covered

The aim is to provide an engaging and elegant display. Given the time constraints, some of the objects will be drawn from recent exhibitions or tours (such as ‘The Golden Age of Couture’, ‘Surreal Things’, ‘Art Deco’) where the dress is already conserved and mounted; however the display will also include many recent acquisitions which have never been shown before.

The display will show fashionable European women and menswear (about 85:15%) from the mid-18th – 21st century (earlier fashion is on display in Med & Ren and the British Galleries).

The display will focus on key objects and leading fashion designers and explore how fashion was designed, commissioned and worn in the context of wider stylistic change.

The cases will be displayed chronologically, something requested repeatedly by visitors.

A. Central thesis of the display: The display will assemble some of the greatest examples of historical and contemporary fashion from the V&A’s world-class collection together with underwear, accessories and fashion-related textiles. The display will open following the refurbishment of Gallery 40. Fashion is one of the most popular subjects in the V&A and visitors will have high expectations of the display.

1. General Comments.

V&A: GALLERY 40.

Display of the permanent fashion collection.

By Claire Wilcox.

• Explain the meaning of dressmaker, haute couture, bespoke, ready-to-wear, designer and high street fashion.

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––--------C. Key objectives: The aims of the display are to: • Show the development of fashion through chronological display.

• Reflect major stylistic change.

• Show how the ‘fashion system’ originated.

• Feature key objects ‘exploded out’.

• Demonstrate the relationship between fashion and textile design.

• Explore themes such as “at home”, sports wear and tailoring.

• Feature the work of leading designers.

• Provide a “timeline” through accessories, painting, fashion plates and photography.

• Convey a sense of the personalities and lifestyles of the people (some famous) who wore the outfits.

• Reflect on changing patterns of shopping and “choice”.

• Recreate the “atmosphere” of each age.

----------------------------------------------B. Key words: Stylish, arresting, absorbing, elegant, multi-layered, informative, surprising, colourful, a “fresh take”.

in a colour matching the background of the case, thus focusing attention on the garment itself.

However, in the Drakelowe Room we will utilise realistic mannequins for a group of women, one man and one child. Not all the dress will be displayed on mannequins – some can be hung (see Image 1) others hung on padded hangers, draped over chairs or laid flat.

D. Target Audience.

Fashion has immense appeal across the standard age / interests / socio-economic categories: students, the creative industries, the V&A “core audience” (Friends etc.) and also the broad general audience. Awareness of fashion is considerable; Gallery 40 will be the location for a programme of temporary exhibitions and the display of the permanent collection can provide perspective and context for this immensely popular subject.

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monochromatic tendencies of post war design.

The sections should have distinct atmospheres and schemes, but feel united as a whole.

Colour coding each major section could be considered, from the silvered green of the 18thc to the saturated aniline dyes of 19thc dress, the pastel tones of the early 20thc, to the

The atmosphere of the display should complement the elegance of the newly refurbished gallery.

The gallery has striking architectural qualities so the display cases will need to be bold, arresting, theatrical and colourful.

A further 150-200 interspersed objects will include underwear, some children’s wear, accessories, textiles, lace, fans, scarves, jewellery, fashion dolls, photography, paintings, pattern books, designs and prints, mirrors and chairs. The objects have been sourced museum-wide and most have not been shown together before.

The cases will include ‘masterpieces’ of fashion such as an 18thc mantua, Schiaparelli’s ‘Dali’ coat, the Duke of Windsor’s tweed suit, Princess Diana’s ‘Elvis’ dress and outfits from Alexander McQueen’s last collection.

The display will contain around 100 full outfits all from the V&A’s own collections, reflecting the quality and breadth of the fashion and textile collection. The outfits will be displayed mainly on stockmans with just a few shop mannequins. Some of the garments can be shown on padded hangers, folded or draped over furniture.

A. General description: Half of the gallery will be devoted to the 18th and 19thc, the other half to the 20th – 21stc.

2. Content.

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––---------–– B. Exhibition structure: The exhibition will occupy the outer perimeter of the ground floor of the gallery and will comprise 17 cases with possibly some small freestanding cases for dolls (from the Textile Study Rooms).

Inspirations include the V&A’s collections, the 19thc novel, smart antique windows around Sloane Square, the Golden Age of Couture, stage sets and fashion shoots (see images).

Figures: the mannequins should not be positioned in a row but clustered, looking into mirrors or seen from behind, especially the realistic group in the Drakelowe room who will gaze into the landscape. Some chairs will be used in the larger cases. These could be covered in gauze so their original structures can be seen but avoid a “room setting” look.

Screens or flats could provide a means to create sections in the large corner cases (which also have interrupted sight lines), to frame and mirror key objects and provide a structure on which to hang garments, create planes of colour or print contextual images.

A structure is needed that can give coherence throughout and work for both historical and modern dress. It should accommodate small objects at the front that provide a visual counterpoint to the main figures, utilising the depth of the cases to create a layered effect, like a tableau. Some objects should be seen from unexpected angles, eg: a hat placed upside down, an unbuttoned bodice.

All the cases should have interesting contrasts of scale. The arrangement of the objects will be relatively dense, in contrast to the previous display. We want visitors to spend time before each case.

B: Rites of Passage.

19th century wedding and mourning dress.

B: At Home.

18th/19th century informal dress.

The six main sections (A) and 11 subsidiary cases (B) of the exhibition are:

A: At Court.

Formal dress 1750s to 1820s.

Star object: mantua.

Furniture: chair; new screen.

Design notes: “candlelight”, calm, rich, ornate.

Backdrop/screen colour: sage-green.

The exhibition will be arranged in chronological sections, charting the development of fashion through four centuries, from the 1750s to now.

The display area comprises six large cases on the outer wall - four curved corner cases, a straight case on the west side, and a new freestanding case before the Drakelowe fresco on the east side which will be for the main chronologies. A further 11 smaller cases of varying sizes face out from the central area, following the profile of the mezzanine level above, which will be themed. A sense of dialogue between perimeter and inner cases is vital.

The gallery has two ground floor entrances (Raphael and Sculpture); the inner area for temporary displays has an entrance and an exit; the mezzanine above has an entrance from Ironwork, plus stairs and a lift up to it. The display area has multiple points from which it can be viewed and a confusing number of entrances, therefore it must work and be easily navigated at whichever point it is entered.

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B: An Edwardian Lady.

The wardrobe of Heather Firbank.

A: The Modern Woman.

Designer womenswear 1914-39.

Star object: Schiaparelli ‘Dali’ coat.

Furniture: S. Maughan mirrored screen; chair?

Design notes: modern, jazzy.

Backdrop/screen colour: taupe.

A: Dressing for Freedom.

Mid- to late-19th, early-20th century.

Japonisme, Chinoiserie and Artistic dress.

Star object: 19thc kimono.

Furniture: bamboo chair, Liberty magazine rack.

Backdrop/new screen colour: gold.

B: A mid-19th century man’s wardrobe.

Waistcoats, shirts, accessories.

Boating, riding and tennis.

B: Sportswear.

Leisure and sporting wear mid-19thc.

A: The Age of Affluence.

Mid to end of 19th century.

Star object: magenta crinoline.

Furniture: black papier-mâché chair; new screen.

Design notes: rich, vivid, dense.

Backdrop colour: red/blue.

A: The Neo-classical Landscape.

19th century outdoor wear.

Star object: “Darcy” group.

Furniture: bamboo/twig chair;new screen.

Design Notes: Greek influence, “daylight”, “outdoors”.

Screen colour: greys, pale green/yellow.

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––---------Design Notes: The introduction needs to include the title of the gallery, how the display is organised and the main themes. It should explain that the centre and mezzanine are devoted to temporary fashion and textile exhibitions and that early dress can be seen elsewhere in the museum.

A: Radical Fashion.

Fashion in the 21st century.

Star Group: Alexander McQueen ‘Bosch’ dress and ‘Gothic’ dress.

Furniture: Martin Baas mirror tbc/new screen.

Design notes: dramatic, aggressive.

Backdrop/screen colour: black.

B: Black in Fashion.

80s and 90s fashion.

Streetstyle, punk, Westwood and the Japanese revolution.

B: Patterning Fashion. 70s design.

B: Revolution. 60s design.

A: Haute Couture: the pursuit of perfection.

French and Italian design 1945-70.

Star object: Dior’s ‘Zemire’.

Furniture: 18thc chair, new screen.

Design notes: luxury and craft.

Backdrop/screen colour: Dior grey.

B: Tailoring the Figure 1950-60.

British and French tailored clothing.

B: Tailoring the Figure 1940-50.

British and French tailored clothing.

B: Modern Sport.

Sportswear 1900-30.

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––----------– Lighting: • Textiles and costume require low lux levels throughout.

• Jewellery requires focussed bright lighting.

• General effect to seem bright, every detail of the garments visible; a sense of the

tactile and sensual qualities of dress.

• Accessories and smaller objects to glow.

Brief quotes: example “Couture is for the grannies” Brigitte Bardot.

Gallery title.

Gallery introduction.

Section Panels for each case. (17) panel for Drakelowe fresco.

Contextual images: for backdrop and screens.

Labels: tombstones only.

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––---------Graphics: Graphic hierarchy diagram.

Colour coded according to each “quarter” of the gallery (18th, 19th, 20th and late-20th/21st century); could be echoed in backdrop/screen colours and stockmans.

It should reflect on the nature of the V&A’s collection of dress and how it has been acquired.

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101 GA PLAN

12

G40-311

10

G40-312

ZEMIRE

G40-313

1960s

G40-309

15

BE N CH ES

14

16

11

13

G40-308

O TE XT

9

Larg e book print holdelabel INTR r

EXOTICISM 1920s

BRITISH TAILORING

G40-310

G40-314

1970s

G40-314

1980s

THE MODERN WOMAN

FRENCH COUTURE

G40-315

1990s -2000s

ES CH N BE

17

G40-308

(RAPHAEL GALLERY)

ORIENTALISM 1910s

8

G40

y tid to ble d ce Ca ire sour requ wer po

INTR

7

O

TEXT Larg e book print holdelabel r

G40-307

CRINOLINE

2

5

3

CH ES

G40-305

WEDDING

G40-305

MAN

4

G40-304

1830s

G40-302

N

6

DRAKELOWE LABEL

TAKING THE AIR

AGE OF AFFLUENCE G40-306

1

DRAKELOWE PANEL

G40-303 & G40-406

COURT & SOCIETY 2

BE

G40-301

COURT & SOCIETY 1

ES

(SCULPTURE GALLERY)

0-4

CH

G4

N

KET

BE

TIC K

DES

08

Drakelowe Case

DRAWN BY

Victoria and Albert Museum Design Studio South Kensington London SW7 2RL

14.11.11 CS

1:200

G40-101

DRAWING NUMBER

DATE

Layouts updated

101 GA Plan

DRAWING NAME

SCALE

CS

DRAWN DESCRIPTION

Gallery 40 Reinstall

PROJECT NAME

16.12.11

DATE

A

REV

TENDER

C20th & C21st

Early C20th

C19th

C18th & early C19th

NOTES/KEY

All dimensions in mm.

Do not scale off this drawing.

Drawing to be read in conjunction with specifications & scope of work document.

A

REVISION

Contractor to confirm all dimensions on site.

General notes:

T1.1

SHOWCASE PANEL

61-62 651

649 88

648

73

51-52 55-56

51-52 55-56

648 51-52 55-56

T1.2

55-56 51-52 to be replaced

648

649 88

88

All dimensions in mm.

77 78

Showcase panel: by others

Folding Screens: refer to drg. no. G40-404 & Folding Screen Schedule

Tables: refer to drg. no. G40-403 & Table Schedule

Plinths: refer to drg. no. G40-402 & Plinth Schedule

Label holders: refer to drg. no. G40-401 & Label Holder Schedule (on drawing)

Showcase base to be painted to match RAL 6015 Black Olive. Refer to Painting Scheudle

Showcase back & sides to be painted Dulux Trade 10GY 64/065. Refer to Painting Schedule

PLAN

A

s1.1 8 906

T1.3 9

906

8

9

652 T1.4

9 652 T1.4

906 T1.3 9

6

900

P1.1

652 900

652 900

6 30

30

6 30

38 39

38 39

36-37 40

38

36-37 40

38

39

T1.5

39

T1.5

29 653-654

DATE 16.12.11

29 653-654

29

42

A

655 42

655

655 42

655

29

42

REV

654 653 40 41

36 & 37

653 654 40 41

36 & 37

B

1

92

s1.2

T1.6

96-97

CS

Layouts updated

DRAWN DESCRIPTION

s1.2

98 99

NOTES/KEY

73 74

88a-88d

s1.1

FRONT ELEVATION

8 906

30

4

Do not scale off this drawing.

77 78

77 78

73 74

88b88d 88c 88a

6

900

90

Drawing to be read in conjunction with specifications & scope of work document.

74

T1.2

88

77

8

1 66 x1

Contractor to confirm all dimensions on site.

T1.1

648 BACK???

s1.1

1

s1.2

s1.2

98 99

96-97

T1.6

921 96-97

921

98 99

FP 89

661 x1

661

89

DRAWN BY

DATE

904

904

905 x2

904

905 x2

x2

x2

TENDER

661

904

905

905

14.11.11 CS

G40-301

301 Showcase 1

x1

661

89

1:50

DRAWING NUMBER

SCALE

x1 P1.2

REAR

DRAWING NAME

1790s fashion plate

T1.6

98 & 99

89 x1

1790s fashion plate

98 & 99

ELEVATION B

921 96-97

921

Victoria and Albert Museum Design Studio South Kensington London SW7 2RL

Gallery 40 Reinstall

PROJECT NAME

5

General notes:

COURT & SOCIETY 1

61&62 651

61-62 651

61 & 62 651

ELEVATION A

COURT & SOCIETY 1

78

s1.1

x1 90

91

Away from London society – at home and at work – men and women wore practical clothes of wool, linen and cotton.

Printed cottons, with their fast, bright colours, became increasingly popular as new technology made them more affordable.

Designers and weavers in London also produced high quality silks, their exquisite patterns often based on English flowers. Mantua makers (dressmakers) made fashion dolls as a way of spreading information about the latest styles.

Fashion plates were also circulated with depictions of what people were wearing at court.

74

73

73

74 8 64

SHOWCASE PANEL

1 65

FP 89

61& 62

Court fashion in the 18th century was characterised by the use of extravagant and exclusive silk textiles. French silks were highly sought-after until their import to Britain was banned in 1766.

88 5 to 5-56 be 51 rep -52 lac ed T1.2

77 78

73 74

301 SHOWCASE 1 / 18th & EARLY 19th CENTURIES / COURT & SOCIETY 1

96 -97

Court and Country 1750 – 1800.

4 90

SH OW CO CA UR SE T& PA NE SO L CIE TY 1

s 1790 ion fash ate pl

8

66

64

99

6165 62 1

77 78 88 a-8 8d 64 9 88

1 92 -97 96

5155- 52 56

& 98

T1.1

89 x2

5 90 x2

A

REVISION

92

Normally, men wore tailored wool coats and breeches or pantaloons, with a crisply laundered, carefully tied neckcloth. But some royal events still required old fashioned, embroidered court dress, including swords and wigs.

Evening dresses in the 1820s were often made of coloured silk or the newly invented machine-made net. Dresses for grand occasions incorporated trimmings of gold tinsel or embroidery, emphasising the bodice and skirt hem. In times of mourning, women wore dull black silk crepe, but after a few months they could choose velvet trimmed with satin for evening wear.

The high-waisted styles inspired by Classical dress remained popular for the first part of the 19th century. Delicate fans were carried as accessories, while woven cashmere shawls in the Indian style were both decorative and practical.

In Society 1810–1830.

All dimensions in mm.

Do not scale off this drawing.

Drawing to be read in conjunction with specifications & scope of work document.

Contractor to confirm all dimensions on site.

General notes:

A

1830s

SHOWCASE PANEL

130 x5

PLAN

664 x5

130 T2.1

x3

Label holders: refer to drg. no. G40-401 & Label Holder Schedule (on drawing)

Showcase base to be painted to match RAL 6015 Black Olive. Refer to Painting Scheudle

Showcase panel: by others

Folding Screens: refer to drg. no. G40-404 & Folding Screen Schedule

Tables: refer to drg. no. G40-403 & Table Schedule

Plinths: refer to drg. no. G40-402 & Plinth Schedule

x6

x6 x5

x3 x6

130 x5

658

153

130 x3

153

658

FRONT ELEVATION

T2.1

664

x3

Showcase back & sides to be painted Dulux Trade 10GY 64/065. Refer to Painting Schedule

NOTES/KEY

2 end

SHOWCASE 2 (end)

ELEVATION A

1830s

SHOWCASE PANEL

302 SHOWCASE 2 / 18th & EARLY 19th CENTURIES / COURT & SOCIETY 2

658 153

658 153

0

154 660

660

154 660

907

to be replaced

154

66

907

to be replaced

154

s2.1

657 664 907

x6

T2.2

s2.1

664 907

657

T2.2

DATE 16.12.11

A

43

P2.1

REV

43 657

43 657

43

656 48

T2.3

26

49-50 84-85

656 48

84 85 656

T2.3

49 & 50

49-50 84-85

656

CS

Layouts updated

DRAWN DESCRIPTION

216

26

85 84

48

49 & 50

216

Victoria and Albert Museum Design Studio South Kensington London SW7 2RL

Gallery 40 Reinstall

PROJECT NAME

COURT & SOCIETY 2

SHOWCASE PANEL

COURT & SOCIETY 2

SHOWCASE PANEL

DRAWN BY

DATE

SCALE

14.11.11 CS

G40-302

302 Showcase 2

1:25

DRAWING NUMBER

DRAWING NAME

TENDER

A

REVISION

93

The same tailors made women’s riding coats or ‘redingotes’. Dressmakers then reinterpreted these garments for women to wear for travelling, walking and visiting. By the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, decorative details included cord, tassels and frogging borrowed from military uniform.

British tailors were known for their skill in cutting cloth to show off a man’s figure to full advantage, emphasising symmetry and proportion. In the early 19th century many tailoring manuals were published, with new measuring systems to improve cutting. The first tape measure for general use had appeared by 1818.

The British aristocracy spent a large part of the year at their country estates. Men needed practical garments for hunting and other outdoor activities: plain wool coats, woollen waistcoats, and wool or leather breeches worn with boots. By the end of the 18th century this characteristically British style was fashionable in Paris.

All dimensions in mm.

Do not scale off this drawing.

Drawing to be read in conjunction with specifications & scope of work document.

Contractor to confirm all dimensions on site.

General notes:

TAKING THE AIR

SHOWCASE PANEL

Showcase panel: by others

Drakelowe label: by others

Barriers: refer to drg. no. G40-407

Label holders: refer to drg. no. G40-401 & Label Holder Schedule (on drawing)

Showcase by others (Click Netherfield): refer to drg. no. G40-406

NOTES/KEY

303 SHOWCASE DRAKELOWE / 18th & EARLY 19th CENTURIES / TAKING THE AIR

PLAN

90-95

107

104

FRONT ELEVATION

90-95

104

REAR

107

110-111 112-113

112 113

90-91 92-95

REAR

104 107

90-91 92-95

110-111 112-113

112-113

110 & 111

104 107

110 & 111

116

116

1002

116 655

DATE 16.12.11

1001

A

1002 1001

1002 1001

REAR 1001

REV

to be replaced

116 655

REAR 1002

to be replaced

655

5 65

Taking the Air 1790 – 1830.

CS

Layouts updated

DRAWN DESCRIPTION

DRAKELOWE LABEL

Victoria and Albert Museum Design Studio South Kensington London SW7 2RL

Gallery 40 Reinstall

PROJECT NAME

DRAWN BY

DATE

SCALE

14.11.11 CS

1:50

DRAWING NUMBER

G40-303

A

REVISION

303 Showcase Drakelowe

DRAWING NAME

TENDER

94

Women’s dress became increasingly voluminous, with balloon-like sleeves and full skirts. Feather-filled sleeve supports and petticoats stiffened with cord or horsehair were used to create the correct silhouette. Whitework pelerines (large collars) were fashionable for indoor wear.

Magazines circulated information about the latest styles from Paris and London.

Fashion plates presented images of the feminine ideal. In contrast, the painting of the artist’s daughters shows a more realistic view of what young women from an industrious middle-class family wore at home.

These were years of great change. The first passenger railway opened in 1830, and in 1833 slavery was abolished in the British Empire. In the textile industry, the jacquard loom reduced labour costs and increased productivity. Innovation in the dyeing and fabric printing industry increased choice for women and speeded up the pace of fashion.

All dimensions in mm.

Do not scale off this drawing.

Drawing to be read in conjunction with specifications & scope of work document.

Contractor to confirm all dimensions on site.

General notes:

PLAN

FRONT ELEVATION

Showcase panel: by others

Folding Screens: refer to drg. no. G40-404 & Folding Screen Schedule

Tables: refer to drg. no. G40-403 & Table Schedule

Plinths: refer to drg. no. G40-402 & Plinth Schedule

Label holders: refer to drg. no. G40-401 & Label Holder Schedule (on drawing)

Showcase base to be painted to match RAL 5004 Black Blue. Refer to Painting Scheudle

Showcase back & sides to be painted Dulux Trade 30YR 83/029. Refer to Painting Schedule

NOTES/KEY

304 SHOWCASE 3 / 19th CENTURY / 1830s

x11

x8-x10

x10

x10 x9

x12

x10 x9

x8 x12

x11

x9

x8 x12

s3.1

x8 x12

x11

x11

s3.1

166 x7

FP1 FP2

142 141

142

DATE 16.12.11

A

142 141

160

161 162

CS

Layouts updated

DRAWN DESCRIPTION

160 161-162

160

P3.1162 161

160 161-162

T3.1

141

x7 141 T3.1

x7

142

REV

166 x7

166

FP1 FP2

166 E3110.1888

E3110.1888

At Home 1830 – 1840.

E1032-1959 E1032-1959

1830s

SHOWCASE PANEL

1830s

SHOWCASE PANEL

Victoria and Albert Museum Design Studio South Kensington London SW7 2RL

Gallery 40 Reinstall

PROJECT NAME

664

x3

DRAWN BY

DATE

SCALE

14.11.11 CS

G40-304

304 Showcase 3

1:25

DRAWING NUMBER

DRAWING NAME

TENDER

A

REVISION

95

By 1840, when Queen Victoria and Prince Albert married, it was customary for a well-to-do bride to wear white silk or fine white muslin. Muslin was also fashionable for summer day wear, but the delicate fabric needed skilful washing to keep it fresh and clean. Lace wedding veils were expensive and often kept as shawls or handed down in the family. The design of this one includes lilies, tulips, anemones and ears of wheat. Wax orange blossom also became popular as a trimming for headdresses and bodices. The most common male wedding garments to survive in museum collections are silk waistcoats. Some incorporate silver-coloured thread. Like white, this was associated with purity.

Others were hand-embroidered. This example worked with forget-me-nots was made by a bride for her groom to celebrate their marriage.

The White Wedding 1840 – 1860.

All dimensions in mm.

147 908

158

158

146

148 148a

146 x16 144-145 149-150

148 148a

T5.2 DELETE TBC

148a

148a DELETE TBC

T5.2

150 149

148

149 150

144 & 145 146 x16 144-145 149-150

148

WEDDING

213

213

210 213

210 213

A

Showcase panel: by others

Tables: refer to drg. no. G40-403 & Table Schedule

Label holders: refer to drg. no. G40-401 & Label Holder Schedule (on drawing)

Showcase base to be painted to match RAL 5004 Black Blue. Refer to Painting Scheudle

Showcase back & sides to be painted Dulux Trade 30YR 83/029. Refer to Painting Schedule

NOTES/KEY

SHOWCASE 5 (Wedding)

PLAN

908

147

Drawing to be read in conjunction with specifications & scope of work document.

Do not scale off this drawing.

158

SHOWCASE 5 (Wedding)

Contractor to confirm all dimensions on site.

General notes:

147 908

FRONT ELEVATION

T5.1

147

908

x16

158

x16

305 SHOWCASES 4 & 5 / 19th CENTURY / MAN / WEDDING

146

As women’s dress became increasingly elaborate, men’s formal clothing became dark and plain. A gentleman could, however, display his individuality and taste with a brightly patterned ‘fancy’ waistcoat, either bought from an outfitter or hand-embroidered by his wife or daughter. But fashion was no longer the prerogative of the upper classes. With the expansion of the ready-made tailoring trade, many more men could buy stylish clothes at competitive prices. The “Wellington Surtout” (a type of overcoat) was recommended “to all who desire a quiet, elegant, gentlemanly appearance”.

City workers attempting to achieve gentility through dress were known as “Gents” or “swells”. They wore frock coats and top hats and carried carefully chosen accessories, such as canes and snuff boxes. Some of the boots and shoes in this display were show models, made for exhibitions and competitions as a demonstration of the shoemaker’s skill.

144 & 145

The Male Wardrobe 1840 – 1860.

SHOWCASE PANEL

DATE 16.12.11

REV A

5 end

SHOWCASE 5 (end)

ELEVATION A

WEDDING

SHOWCASE PANEL

CS

Layouts updated

DRAWN DESCRIPTION

DELETE TBC

914 x15

210 213

914 x15

216 x14

914

211

x14

x14 211 918

211 918

211 918

MAN

DRAWN BY

DATE

14.11.11 CS

1:25

DRAWING NUMBER

SCALE

TENDER

G40-305

305 Showcases 4 & 5

DRAWING NAME

SHOWCASE PANEL

MAN

SHOWCASE PANEL

Victoria and Albert Museum Design Studio South Kensington London SW7 2RL

Gallery 40 Reinstall

PROJECT NAME

Z1 T4.1 x15

SHOWCASE 4 (Man)

PLAN

213

210

216 x14

914

T4.1

x15

SHOWCASE 4 (Man)

210 213

FRONT ELEVATION

213

Z1

The Wellington Surtout 210

A

REVISION

182

T6.1 SHOWCASE PANEL

x22

196-197 185

185 182 x22

196-197 185

T6.2

186

s6.1

186 T6.2

1 to 83& 184 be wit repla h D ce 1 d

Showcase panel: by others

Folding Screens: refer to drg. no. G40-404 & Folding Screen Schedule

Tables: refer to drg. no. G40-403 & Table Schedule

Plinths: refer to drg. no. G40-402 & Plinth Schedule

Label holders: refer to drg. no. G40-401 & Label Holder Schedule (on drawing)

Showcase base to be painted to match RAL 5004 Black Blue. Refer to Painting Scheudle

Showcase back & sides to be painted Dulux Trade 30YR 83/029. Refer to Painting Schedule

PLAN

A

T6.4

204

x24

226

P6.1

x24 204

x24 204

226 187

x23

674

g tbc

x23

oil paintin

187

226 187

674 x23

674 x23

T6.5

P6.2

198-199 191

T6.5

191

198 & 199

198-199 191

191

198 & 199

x27

x27

219

P6.3

T6.6

220 189

x27

T6.6

16.12.11

195 194

DATE

x25 194-195

A

219 x36

x25

B

CS

Layouts updated

DRAWN DESCRIPTION

195 194P6.4

x25 194-195

x36

219 x36

x36

REV

189 x27

220

220 189

189

220

x25

6 -31 315681

All dimensions in mm.

T6.3

FRONT ELEVATION

x24 204 T6.4

187

674

oil painting tbc

315

Do not scale off this drawing.

N3 235

235

NOTES/KEY

186 183-184

N3

235

226

312 9 30

Drawing to be read in conjunction with specifications & scope of work document.

N3

T6.3

to be replaced with D1

N3 235

183&184

186 183-184

183&184

to be replaced with D1

s6.1

9 30

Contractor to confirm all dimensions on site.

General notes:

THE AGE OF AFFLUENCE

182

to be replaced

182 x22

196&197

196&197

x22 185 T6.1

to be replaced

ELEVATION A

THE AGE OF AFFLUENCE

SHOWCASE PANEL

678 299

315-316 681

315 316

300 299

678

s6.2

681

315-316 681

Victoria and Albert Museum Design Studio South Kensington London SW7 2RL

678 299

316 315

DRAWN BY

DATE

14.11.11 CS

1:50

DRAWING NUMBER

SCALE

680 305

TENDER

312 309

302

305 302

302

305 302

G40-306

306 Showcase 6

T6.7

309

312 309

309 680 305

T6.7

312

305 312

680

305

680

DRAWING NAME

681

678 & 299

ELEVATION B

s6.2

Gallery 40 Reinstall

PROJECT NAME

2

96

Visitors to the International Exhibitions in London in 1851 and 1862 could see high quality French luxury goods and fashions.

These were regarded as the height of good taste. By contrast, a French visitor to London found women’s dress “loud and overcharged with ornament”.

Research and development in the chemical industry led to the discovery of artificial dyes. Women’s dresses were the perfect advertisement for these brilliant colours but aniline dyes could be hazardous. In 1869 the British Medical Journal warned of the dangers of arsenic in magenta dye.

It could leak out in washing, rain or perspiration.

In the 19th century fashion benefited from advances in technology. The development of spring steel led to the invention of the ‘cage crinoline’. This frame of light, strong steel wire replaced heavy layers of petticoats, and women’s dress became even more voluminous. Although ridiculed by the press, crinolines were very popular and produced in their thousands.

306 SHOWCASE 6 / 19th CENTURY / AGE OF AFFLUENCE

196 be to

Fashion and Industry 1850 – 1870.

s6 .1 97 ed

&1 lac rep

182 .1

.7 0 68 5 30

T6

T6

7

1

196 -19 185

316

12 5 3

182 x2 2

68

185

N3

235 .3 T6

8 67 9 29

9 30

2

29

N3 23 5

8&

183 186 -18 4

67 0

x2

68

186

.2

T6 .2

s6

SH OW TH E CA AG SE E OF PA NE AF L FLU EN CE

30

5 30 2 30

A

REVISION

97

Artists and dress reformers reacted against the artificiality of fashion.

Instead, they created simpler styles using naturally dyed fabrics and made flexible garments of wool jersey for sports such as tennis. By 1900 these alternative styles had entered mainstream fashion.

Dressmakers and department stores copied the latest fashions. Shopping became an activity enjoyed by people at all levels of society. Many garments could be bought ready-made, including corsets and the different types of bustles required to achieve the fashionable silhouette.

The fashion trade was increasingly international with top couturiers such as Worth and Pingat attracting clients from all over Europe and America. Couture houses produced exquisitely made clothes using superb silks, furs, lace and embroidery. The British company Redfern established an unrivalled reputation for its tailormade suits.

Couture and Commerce 1870 – 1910.

PLAN

x18 bracelet

x19 x20

175

T7.2

175 669

bracelet on wrist

x18 x19 T7.1

FRONT ELEVATION

175 669

All dimensions in mm.

Do not scale off this drawing.

Drawing to be read in conjunction with specifications & scope of work document.

Contractor to confirm all dimensions on site.

General notes:

x19 x20

T7.2

x18 bracelet

x19

bracelet on wrist

175

x18 T7.1

206 990

180

990

206

180

206 990

206 990

164-165 180

164-165 180

173

173

165 4 16

168-172

165 164

168-172

168-172

173

168-172

173

Showcase panel: by others

Folding Screens: refer to drg. no. G40-404 & Folding Screen Schedule

Tables: refer to drg. no. G40-403 & Table Schedule

Label holders: refer to drg. no. G40-401 & Label Holder Schedule (on drawing)

Showcase base to be painted to match RAL 5004 Black Blue. Refer to Painting Scheudle

Showcase back & sides to be painted Dulux Trade 30YR 83/029. Refer to Painting Schedule

NOTES/KEY

669

T7.3

s7.1

T7.3

669

s7.1

307 SHOWCASE 7 / 19th CENTURY / CRINOLINE

123-124 188

x21

123-124 188

x21

T7.4

188

T7.4

x21

188 x21

668 667

668 667

123&124

667

668

123&124

667

668

CRINOLINE

SHOWCASE PANEL

CRINOLINE

SHOWCASE PANEL

DATE 16.12.11

REV A

A

CS

Layouts updated

DRAWN DESCRIPTION

Victoria and Albert Museum Design Studio South Kensington London SW7 2RL

DRAWN BY

DATE

SCALE

TENDER

14.11.11 CS

G40-307

307 Showcase 7

1:25

DRAWING NUMBER

DRAWING NAME

7 end

Gallery 40 Reinstall

PROJECT NAME

ELEVATION A

SHOWCASE 7 (end)

A

REVISION

Fashion in the 1920s was dominated by the garçonne look. Simple, straight and waistless, the style was modern and liberating. Delicate silk and chiffon became popular for underwear, while girdles and bandeaux bras were worn to smooth the figure into the desired boyish shape. Hair was cropped short and closefitting cloche hats became popular.

For dance crazes like the Charleston, couture houses such as Callot Soeurs and Voisin created evening dresses in lightweight fabrics, worn with strings of beads made from new plastics. As skirts became shorter, shoes became a focal point. Silver and gold glacé kid was popular for the evening. The fashion for rich and sensuous detail continued with fringed shawls, dresses embroidered in the Chinese style and evening coats trimmed with fur. The excavation of Tutankhamen’s tomb in 1922 inspired a wave of Egyptianinspired fashions, with ostrich feather fans and accessories adorned with hieroglyphs.

Bright Young Things 1920 – 1930.

By the turn of the 20th century the taste for East Asian art had spread throughout Europe, fuelled by trade and a desire for novelty. Western interpretations of the Japanese kimono were sold in London stores such as Liberty & Co. Antique Chinese brocades and embroideries were cut up to make new garments. Parisian couturiers such as Worth adapted the simple, straight lines of the kimono to create spectacular opera cloaks that enveloped the wearer in swathes of expensive silk.

Often brightly embroidered, they were designed to be viewed from front and back for dramatic effect. Paul Poiret was one of the most innovative couturiers of the time. His distaste for the “decorated bundles” of Edwardian fashion resulted in garments that were revolutionary in their simplicity. He banished corsets and introduced asymmetrical wraps and highwaisted gowns. His designs incorporated tassels, turbans, fans and boldly patterned textiles, all inspired by eastern examples.

The Cult of the Kimono 1905 – 1915.

Do not scale off this drawing.

Drawing to be read in conjunction with specifications & scope of work document.

All dimensions in mm.

276277

910

910 276-277

297 284

297 284

283 N6

297

283 N6

283

687 252

687 252

289

289

B4 x31

283T9.1

Folding Screens: refer to drg. no. G40-404 & Folding Screen Schedule

Tables: refer to drg. no. G40-403 & Table Schedule

Plinths: refer to drg. no. G40-402 & Plinth Schedule

Label holders: refer to drg. no. G40-401 & Label Holder Schedule (on drawing)

Showcase base to be painted to match RAL 8019 Grey Brown. Refer to Painting Scheudle

Showcase panel: by others

x31

to be replaced

B4 x31

to be replaced 252 687

252

7

685

909 685

909 685

68

B4 tbc

289

909

684 N6

s9.1

P9.1

T9.1

684 N6

685

909

Showcase back & sides to be painted Dulux Trade 42YY 87/084. Refer to Painting Schedule

NOTES/KEY

SHOWCASE 9 (Exoticism 1920s)

PLAN

Contractor to confirm all dimensions on site.

General notes:

910 276-277

SHOWCASE 9 (Exoticism 1920s)

FRONT ELEVATION

276 277

910

297

s9.1

308 SHOWCASES 8 & 9 / EARLY 20th CENTURY / ORIENTALISM 1910s / EXOTICISM 1920s

9 x31

B4 tbc

28

EXOTICISM 1920s

SHOWCASE PANEL

EXOTICISM 1920s

SHOWCASE PANEL

682

682

DATE 16.12.11

REV A

CS

P8.1

Layouts updated

236 682

229 683

230

230 227

x29 x30

P8.2

x30

ORIENTALISM 1910s

SHOWCASE PANEL

x30

Victoria and Albert Museum Design Studio South Kensington London SW7 2RL

DRAWN BY

DATE

14.11.11 CS

1:25

DRAWING NUMBER

SCALE

TENDER

G40-308

308 Showcases 8 & 9

DRAWING NAME

ORIENTALISM 1910s

SHOWCASE PANEL

x29 T8.2

227

Gallery 40 Reinstall

PROJECT NAME

SHOWCASE 8 (Orientalism)

683 T8.1

682

236

229

SHOWCASE 8 (Orientalism 1910s)

PLAN

x29 x30

x29 230 227

T8.2 229 683

227

T8.1

236 682

REAR

230

229

682 683

236

FRONT ELEVATION

DRAWN DESCRIPTION

EXOTICISM 1920s

SHOWCASE PANEL

A

REVISION

tbc tbc

325 326

326

tbc tbc

beauty product

T10.1 335

fashion plate tbc

330

s10.1

335

beauty product

T10.1

fashion plate tbc

330

All dimensions in mm.

Do not scale off this drawing.

Drawing to be read in conjunction with specifications & scope of work document.

329 334

330 335

329 334

329

330 335

329

s10.1

331

333 332

PLAN

s10.1

T10.1

FRONT ELEVATION

Showcase panel: by others

Folding Screens: refer to drg. no. G40-404 & Folding Screen Schedule

Tables: refer to drg. no. G40-403 & Table Schedule

Plinths: refer to drg. no. G40-402 & Plinth Schedule

Label holders: refer to drg. no. G40-401 & Label Holder Schedule (on drawing)

Showcase base to be painted to match RAL 8019 Grey Brown. Refer to Painting Scheudle

Showcase back & sides to be painted Dulux Trade 42YY 87/084. Refer to Painting Schedule

NOTES/KEY

331 332-333

331 332-333

331

33 333 2

A

256 257

P10.1

T10.2

257 256

259-260

256 257

B3 262

B3 262

B3

261 263

264 688

B3

264 688

262

261 263

262

257 256 T10.2

259 & 260

259-260

259 & 260

263

s10.2

267 688 266

261

688

261 263

s10.2

258

P10.2

258

258

258

DATE 16.12.11

A

269

REV

269

269

269

s10.3

CS

Layouts updated

DRAWN DESCRIPTION

B

T10.4

8

Contractor to confirm all dimensions on site.

General notes:

1930s

SHOWCASE PANEL

325

ELEVATION A

325 326

326

325

274 8 -27 279

99

The fashionable gamine look of the 1920s matured into the sophisticated glamour of Art Deco, with clinging fulllength dresses cut on the bias for a closer fit. The gleaming satins and silks were reflected in polished metal clutch bags and modern aluminium and mirrored furniture. Hollywood film stars such as Marlene Dietrich perpetuated the siren look.

Designers such as Elsa Schiaparelli challenged the grand couture houses of Paris with her dramatic and witty collections. She made a virtue out of new zip fastenings and introduced a range of perfumes. Other designers also created perfumes to help market their brand.

1930s

332 333

SHOWCASE PANEL

330 32 5

The 1920s and ’30s saw a new freedom for women in dressing for sport and leisure.

Many designers introduced “resort” collections for the smart set, using innovative fabrics such as jersey. Coco Chanel championed the trouser suit and even created a de luxe evening version in shimmering sequins.

32 tbc 7

32 6

32 9 32 32 5 6

309 SHOWCASE 10 / EARLY 20th CENTURY / THE MODERN WOMAN

L

332 33 1 -33 3 32 334 9

1 33 5 334

The Modern Woman 1925 – 1940.

ines

s10.3

s10.3 D13

274

270 D13

279 278 T10.4

Victoria and Albert Museum Design Studio South Kensington London SW7 2RL

272-273

272 & 273

270

274

291 911

274 278-279

291 911

291

274 279-278

291

292 288

292 288

911

911

DRAWN BY

DATE

SCALE

275

275 285

275 285

285

P10.4

TENDER

292 pile magazines 288

pile magazines

288

275 285

14.11.11 CS

1:50

G40-309

309 Showcase 10

292

DRAWING NUMBER

DRAWING NAME

ELEVATION B

279 278

T10.4

272 & 273 272-273

P10.3

270 D13

270

Gallery 40 Reinstall

PROJECT NAME

az mag

8

CA SE 193 PA NE 0s

28

28

OW

2 29 x32

pile

SH

1 29 911

2

7

274 5 28 9 27 278 3 2 70 27 & 272

33 33 0 5

3

be pr au od ty uc t

270 -27 272

29

32

1

33

29 275

911 5 27 5 28

A

REVISION

100

Haute couture was a handcraft industry.

Garments were made in-house by specialist dressmakers and tailors, while embroidery, beading, feather and ribbon work was outsourced from ateliers such as Rébé and Lesage. Increasingly, couture houses opened small boutiques in their foyers offering millinery, underwear, jewellery and perfumes.

The exclusive reputation of haute couture depended on its high quality.

Each garment was ordered and made to measure for individual clients. As Pierre Balmain’s Directrice remarked, “If a seam is not quite right, that is a matter of life and death”. The couture houses were regulated by the Chambre Syndicale de la Couture Parisienne.

Paris was renowned worldwide as the centre for luxurious high fashion. Thousands of people were employed in the trade, and it was a vital part of France’s economy.

After the Second World War, designers such as Christian Dior, Balenciaga and Givenchy became household names. Their collections dictated changes in style.

The Pursuit of Perfection 1947 – 1960.

All dimensions in mm.

Do not scale off this drawing.

Drawing to be read in conjunction with specifications & scope of work document.

Contractor to confirm all dimensions on site.

General notes:

Showcase panel: by others

Folding Screens: refer to drg. no. G40-404 & Folding Screen Schedule

Tables: refer to drg. no. G40-403 & Table Schedule

Label holders: refer to drg. no. G40-401 & Label Holder Schedule (on drawing)

Showcase base to be painted to match RAL 8019 Grey Brown. Refer to Painting Scheudle

Showcase back & sides to be painted Dulux Trade 42YY 87/084. Refer to Painting Schedule

NOTES/KEY

PLAN

384-386 369-370 384-386 B1-B2

369 & 370

369-370 384-386 B1-B2

369 & 370 384-386

s11.1

FRONT ELEVATION

308 SHOWCASE 11 / EARLY 20th CENTURY / BRITISH TAILORING

368 351

357

339-343

DATE 16.12.11

A

361

359

BRITISH TAILORING

SHOWCASE PANEL

BRITISH TAILORING

SHOWCASE PANEL

CS

Layouts updated

DRAWN DESCRIPTION

359

345 & 346

T11.2

361

345 & 346

REV

T11.2

344 353 354

339-343 353-354 345-346 344 361 359

351

357

344

339-343

353 354

339-343 353-354 345-346 344 361 359

351

T11.1

368

T11.1

368

B1 - B2

s11.1

368 351

B1-B2

Victoria and Albert Museum Design Studio South Kensington London SW7 2RL

Gallery 40 Reinstall

PROJECT NAME

DRAWN BY

DATE

SCALE

14.11.11 CS

G40-310

310 Showcase 11

1:25

DRAWING NUMBER

DRAWING NAME

TENDER

A

REVISION

101

Each couture house had its own distinctive woven label. These were sewn inside every garment to identify and validate it as the work of a particular couturier. From the 1950s, some included the date of the collection and the design number.

Handwritten tape labels sometimes have the client’s name or a note about a later alteration.

The success of a design was measured by the number of sales to wealthy private clients who ordered made-to-measure copies. Additionally, wholesalers and department stores bought the rights from couturiers to make “line-for-line” copies from a sketch or calico toile.

Haute couture garments often existed in several versions. The original version would be made to fit the house mannequin and modelled at the seasonal collections.

The largest fashion houses often produced several hundred designs for each collection. Couturiers such as Christian Dior named each design.

The Fashion System 1947 – 1960.

PLAN

All dimensions in mm.

Do not scale off this drawing.

Drawing to be read in conjunction with specifications & scope of work document.

Contractor to confirm all dimensions on site.

General notes:

jewellery

408

442

T12.1

408

442

407 442

407 442

441 x33

408 415

441 x33

415

P12.1

408 415

415

x33

441

Showcase base to be painted to match RAL 8019 Grey Brown. Refer to Painting Scheudle

Showcase panel: by others

Folding Screens: refer to drg. no. G40-404 & Folding Screen Schedule

Tables: refer to drg. no. G40-403 & Table Schedule

Plinths: refer to drg. no. G40-402 & Plinth Schedule

Label holders: refer to drg. no. G40-401 & Label Holder Schedule (on drawing)

441

P12.2

x33

Showcase back & sides to be painted Dulux Trade 42YY 87/084. Refer to Painting Schedule

NOTES/KEY

FRENCH COUTURE

SHOWCASE PANEL

407

407

T12.1

FRONT ELEVATION

FRENCH COUTURE

SHOWCASE PANEL

311 SHOWCASE 12 / EARLY 20th CENTURY / FRENCH COUTURE

416

416

426 428

416 427

426 428

417-418 420

428

417 & 418

417 & 418

428

s12.1

417-418 420

426

427

416 427

426

427

432

B5 tbc

420

DATE 16.12.11

A

T12.3

437-438 B5

CS

432 431

T12.2

431

437-438 B5

Layouts updated

432 431

T12.3

360 430

422

T12.2

431

360 430

422

DRAWN DESCRIPTION

tbc 2 43

REV

4 43 38 7

B5

420

437 438P12.3

s12.1

422 360

421

422 360

421

P12.4

x34 tbc

x34 tbc

399-400 378-379 404 439-440 x35

tbc

Victoria and Albert Museum Design Studio South Kensington London SW7 2RL

DRAWN BY

DATE

SCALE

TENDER

14.11.11 CS

G40-311

311 Showcase 12

1:25

DRAWING NUMBER

DRAWING NAME

404 399-400 378-379 439-440 x35

404 399400 439 440 C2 T12.4 C1

378 & 379

to be replaced

P12.5

Gallery 40 Reinstall

x34

PROJECT NAME

430 421

399 400 439 440 C1 T12.4 C2

404

x35

378 & 379

to be replaced

photo tbc

430 421

x34

photo tbc

A

REVISION

102

of the 1960s.

In the late 1940s the square-shouldered, masculine fashions of the war changed in response to Paris trends. London couturiers favoured two silhouettes: the first narrow-waisted and full-skirted in line with Christian Dior’s New Look, the second with an elegant, streamlined profile that foreshadowed the clean lines

During the war the Board of Trade commissioned INCSOC to design a Utility collection. A selection was mass-produced following the strict clothing regulations. Skirts were limited to knee length, no pleats or folds were allowed and jackets could only have three buttons.

Before the Second World War, bespoke fashion in London was mainly the work of tailors and court dressmakers. The Incorporated Society of London Fashion Designers was formed in 1942. Most of its members were based in Mayfair and Savile Row. They became known for their practical, beautifully made tailoring using the finest tweeds and woollen fabrics from Scotland.

Tailored to Fit 1940 – 1960.

All dimensions in mm.

Do not scale off this drawing.

Drawing to be read in conjunction with specifications & scope of work document.

Contractor to confirm all dimensions on site.

General notes:

PLAN

434 413

434 413

434

tbc 411

413

tbc 411

T13.2

T13.1 413

434

Showcase panel: by others

Tables: refer to drg. no. G40-403 & Table Schedule

Plinths: refer to drg. no. G40-402 & Plinth Schedule

Label holders: refer to drg. no. G40-401 & Label Holder Schedule (on drawing)

Showcase base to be painted to match RAL 8019 Grey Brown. Refer to Painting Scheudle

921a

412 414

T13.2 921a

T13.1

411

412 414

411

P13.1

T13.1

jewellery tbc

Showcase back & sides to be painted Dulux Trade 42YY 87/084. Refer to Painting Schedule

NOTES/KEY

FRONT ELEVATION

312 SHOWCASE 13 / EARLY 20th CENTURY / ZEMIRE

412

T13.3

412

414

912a

409 & 410

414

912a 409 & 410

409-410

409-410

DATE 16.12.11

REV A

CS

Layouts updated

DRAWN DESCRIPTION

A

Existing holder

T13.2

413

409 & 410

912a 434

Victoria and Albert Museum Design Studio South Kensington London SW7 2RL

Gallery 40 Reinstall

PROJECT NAME

ELEVATION A

T13.3

414 412

T13.1

411

DRAWN BY

DATE

SCALE

TENDER

14.11.11 CS

G40-312

312 Showcase 13

1:25

DRAWING NUMBER

DRAWING NAME

P13.1

A

REVISION

103

Italian fashion began to emerge after the war, with designers like Emilio Pucci providing sophisticated clothes for the jet set. Pucci became one of the first designers to use a signature style for high-status fashion licensing. His printed silks for both women and men vividly express the psychedelic mood of the late 1960s and early ’70s.

Many manufacturers and designers experimented with new materials like plastic and paper to create disposable fashions. At the same time, Paris designers such as André Courrèges produced luxury ready-to-wear clothes for the younger market and pushed traditional couture techniques to create clothes for the Space Age.

A new generation of designers brought fresh ideas to the making and selling of clothes. Mary Quant and her contemporaries successfully challenged the dominance of Paris fashion. They opened boutiques selling affordable, youthful fashions.

Their creations became successful exports epitomising ‘Swinging London’.

Revolution 1960 – 1970.

All dimensions in mm.

Do not scale off this drawing.

Drawing to be read in conjunction with specifications & scope of work document.

Contractor to confirm all dimensions on site.

General notes:

479 462

PLAN

479

T14.1

Label holders: refer to drg. no. G40-401 & Label Holder Schedule (on drawing) Showcase panel: by others

478 461

479 462

463 464

478 461

462

463 464 T14.2

Showcase base to be painted to match RAL 3007 Black Red. Refer to Painting Scheudle Tables: refer to drg. no. G40-403 & Table Schedule

463 464

FRONT ELEVATION

T14.1

479

464 462

463

Showcase back & sides to be painted Dulux Trade 30BB 83/001. Refer to Painting Schedule

NOTES/KEY

313 SHOWCASE 14 / 20th & 21st CENTURIES / 1960s

478 461

T14.2

461

478

465 470-474

465 470-474

482 491

482

tbc

450

B6

491 T14.3

482

DATE 16.12.11

REV A

448-449 455 450 459-460

T14.4 450

448 & 449 455

448-449 455 450 459-460

EARLY 60s

SHOWCASE PANEL

1960s

SHOWCASE PANEL

CS

Layouts updated

DRAWN DESCRIPTION

B6

448 & 449

T14.4 460 459

455

470 471 472 473 474

T14.3

491

465

482 491

465

470 471 472 473 474

459 460

Victoria and Albert Museum Design Studio South Kensington London SW7 2RL

Gallery 40 Reinstall

PROJECT NAME

DRAWN BY

DATE

SCALE

14.11.11 CS

1:25

G40-313

313 Showcase 14 DRAWING NUMBER

DRAWING NAME

TENDER

A

REVISION

During the late 1970s, Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren’s shop in King’s Road was at the centre of London’s emerging punk movement. Closely associated with bands such as the Sex Pistols, punk was anti-establishment, androgynous and improvised. Its influence is still felt today, in graphics, music and fashion.

By the early 1980s Westwood was drawing on ethnic and historical influences, with collections such as Pirate and Buffalo.

The British designer John Galliano graduated in 1984 from Central St Martins. His collection, Les Incroyables, was inspired by the French Revolution and later he went on to design for Givenchy and Dior. In the same decade the Japanese designers Yohji Yamamoto and Rei Kawakubo (designing under the name Comme des Garçons) began to show in Paris. Their work challenged conceptions of the fashionable body, with over-sized and asymmetrical designs, often in black.

It caused outrage, but as Kawakubo said, ‘playing it safe is a risky business’.

Deconstructing Fashion 1975–1985.

By the late 1960s, fashion had become increasingly flamboyant. Both women and men wore their hair long. Flared trousers became fashionable and emporiums such as Kensington Market sold colourful hippie clothing, much of it sourced in India.

The London store Biba became a magnet for the young. It sold clothes, make-up, accessories and even household products, all bearing the distinctive gold and black label. Dresses and T-shirts had tight sleeves and earthy colours, while ‘glam’ evening wear drew on 1930s styles.

A new generation of fashion and textile designers emerged from the Royal College of Art. Zandra Rhodes specialised in screenprinted textiles before going on to design her own collections. Bill Gibb was known for his patterned knitwear. Ossie Clark, working in collaboration with textile designer Celia Birtwell, reflected a new romanticism with his delicate chiffon creations.

Patterning Fashion 1970 – 1980.

SHOWCASE 16 (1980s)

PLAN

539&540

Comme des Garcons tbc

All dimensions in mm.

Do not scale off this drawing.

Drawing to be read in conjunction with specifications & scope of work document.

Contractor to confirm all dimensions on site.

539-540 541-545

541-545

SHOWCASE 16 (1980s)

Comme des Garcons tbc545

FRONT ELEVATION

General notes:

539-540 541-545

542 543 seated mannequin 544

539&540

541

562 559

525 524

524

525 poster tbc

525 524

524

poster tbc 525

1980s

SHOWCASE PANEL

1980s

SHOWCASE PANEL

Showcase panel: by others

Folding Screens: refer to drg. no. G40-404 & Folding Screen Schedule

Tables: refer to drg. no. G40-403 & Table Schedule

Plinths: refer to drg. no. G40-402 & Plinth Schedule

Label holders: refer to drg. no. G40-401 & Label Holder Schedule (on drawing)

Showcase base to be painted to match RAL 3007 Black Red. Refer to Painting Scheudle

Showcase back & sides to be painted Dulux Trade 30BB 83/001. Refer to Painting Schedule

NOTES/KEY

559 562 559

557 558

P16.1

tbc

562

560 557-558

s16.1

560 557-558

559

562

560

557 558

560

s16.1

314 SHOWCASES 15 & 16 / 20th & 21st CENTURIES / 1970s / 1980s

509

509

505 506

SHOWCASE 15 (1970s)

PLAN

501 505-506

501

495 482

SHOWCASE 15 (1970s)

FRONT ELEVATION

509

T15.1

509

494

505 506

501 505-506

501

495

T15.1

467

519

T15.2

467

519

519 520

519 520

520

DATE 16.12.11

REV A

496-497 494

1970s

CS

Layouts updated

DRAWN DESCRIPTION

496 & 497

T15.2

496-497 494

496 & 497

520

SHOWCASE PANEL

A

Victoria and Albert Museum Design Studio South Kensington London SW7 2RL

Gallery 40 Reinstall

PROJECT NAME

DRAWN BY

DATE

SCALE

14.11.11 CS

1:25

DRAWING NUMBER

G40-314

A

REVISION

479

314 Showcases 15 & 16

DRAWING NAME

TENDER

15 end SHOWCASE 15 (end)

ELEVATION A

1970s

SHOWCASE PANEL

shoes tbc

571 & 572

T17.1

567-570 571-572

627 629

627 629 567-570 571-572

shoes tbc

627 629

610-613

shoes tbc

T17.1

629

627

610-613

619-626 610-613

619-626 610-613

All dimensions in mm.

Do not scale off this drawing.

PLAN

FRONT ELEVATION

62 62 7 9

T17.1

Showcase panel: by others

Folding Screens: refer to drg. no. G40-404 & Folding Screen Schedule

Tables: refer to drg. no. G40-403 & Table Schedule

Plinths: refer to drg. no. G40-402 & Plinth Schedule

Label holders: refer to drg. no. G40-401 & Label Holder Schedule (on drawing)

Showcase base to be painted to match RAL 3007 Black Red. Refer to Painting Scheudle

A

591

P17.2

591 590

591 590

558

558

590

588

B8

s17.1

B8 P17.3

588

x37

599

599

B8 x37

B8 x37

599 600

599 600

x37

641 B7

641 B7

Yamamoto tbc

641

B7

DATE 16.12.11

REV A

546

546

Yamamoto tbc

to be replaced with Calvin Klein

600

546

546 B7 to be replaced with Calvin Klein

600

641

8 60 9 60

T17.2

CS

Layouts updated

DRAWN DESCRIPTION

B

5 59 06 5-6 2 60 59 7 60

Showcase back & sides to be painted Dulux Trade 30BB 83/001. Refer to Painting Schedule

NOTES/KEY

shoes tbc

614-618

shoes tbc

614-618

590

s17.1

60

Drawing to be read in conjunction with specifications & scope of work document.

shoes

619-626

P17.1

619-626

591

6 64 7 64

Contractor to confirm all dimensions on site.

General notes:

1990s & 2000s

SHOWCASE PANEL

shoes tbc

571 & 572

ELEVATION A

1990s & 2000s

SHOWCASE PANEL

T17.3

2 64 6 59

105

trend fashion for everyone.

The internet has had a powerful impact on fashion, from global forecasting websites to individual blogs. On-line fashion magazines and e-tailing offer new opportunities for the consumer. While top fashion houses still exert their influence through catwalk collections, “designers for the high street” provide instant, on-

By the mid 1990s ‘stealth luxury’ was an increasingly dominant trend, as the fashion cognoscenti began to reject overt labelling and logos in favour of functional essence. The pared-down minimalism of Calvin Klein, Helmut Lang and, later, Nicolas Ghesquière for Balenciaga relied on a perfect, honed physique.

Menswear collections shown in Milan and Paris have become an increasingly important event in the fashion calendar.

In the ’90s collector Mark Reed bought many of the flamboyant looks offered by designers such as Jean-Paul Gaultier.

Wearing them to London art openings, he said, ‘I think people have forgotten how to dress’.

s17.2

586 645

585 584

Victoria and Albert Museum Design Studio South Kensington London SW7 2RL

586 582 585-584

586 645

592

592

607

DRAWN BY

DATE

SCALE

T17.2

14.11.11 CS

1:50

DRAWING NUMBER

595

646 647

646 647

T17.3

s17.2

647

TENDER

642

642

642

642

will fit if portrait

646

will fit if portrait

G40-315

315 Showcase 17

594 592 595 608-609 607 605-606

607

595

606 605

594 592 595 608-609 607 605-606

DRAWING NAME

645 to be replaced 594

582

Gallery 40 Reinstall

PROJECT NAME

582 585-584

608609

594

ELEVATION B

585 584

582

586

644

fashion photo

to be replaced?

608 609

315 SHOWCASE 17 / 20th & 21st CENTURIES / 1990s - 2000s

62 6 L

613 610 -

60 605 6

Radical Fashion 1990 – 2012.

57

1&

572 56 7-5 70

619 NE PA SE

s 00

20

4 64 5 64

CA

4 59 09 8-6 2 64 6 59

&

6 58 5 64

6 58 5 58 4 58

7 60

OW

2 6 60 5 60

0s

2 58 84 5-5 58

56 571 7-570 -57 2 62 62 7 9 619 610 -62 -61 6 3

58

2 59 5

SH

59

199

4 59

A

REVISION

106

Title

Archiving

Issue No.

Part

1

4/4

Subject

Pages

Date

A/W 2013

Signature

107-127

Joan Brown: Hardy Amies Tailoress.

14 Savile Row is the renowned address of the house of Hardy Amies, and former workplace to the now retired ladies tailoress Joan Brown. Born in 1943, she started and ended her professional career making Sir Hardy Amies’ signature bespoke “power-suits”, working for the house until its closure in 2008. The house was embedded in the fascinating life of it’s founder, British heritage and bespoke tailoring mastered by an impeccable team of first-class tailors. Sir Hardy Amies became the Queen’s official dressmaker, staged the first ever menswear show in 1961, dressed the England 1966 World Cup team, and created futuristic costumes for Stanley Kubrick’s film 2001: A Space Odyssey. Joan Brown was part of the Hardy Amies team and shares her extraordinary story of the house, the man, her love of sewing and the importance of passing on skills.

My first day at Hardy Amies was on the 22nd of August in 1960. I was 17 and put in Mr. Leonard’s workroom, where I assisted Flory Threadgould. I thought that was a wonderful name for a ladies’ tailoress. It was here I began my six-year apprenticeship and was paid £3 a week. After a month, I was asked to go see Sir Hardy Amies’ sister Rosemary Amies. She was a terrifying woman and a very big lady, who showed this feeling of power over the desk. I knocked on the door to her office and to my big surprise she said, “Miss Joyce, we are very pleased with you and we are going to give you a two and six raise.”

Back then, that was quite a bit of money and I ended up getting £4 a week.

My grandmother taught me how to sew when I was five. Her father was a tailor and taught her how to sew, but he didn’t allow woman in his workrooms, so she went to London to work until she got married. My grandmother worked as a tailoress for the British couture house Redfern at 26 Conduit Street. Redfern was famous for their riding habits for ladies. My grandmother was six foot tall, and was one day asked to stand in for their in-house model who was sick. My grandmother went up the steps to mount the horse but got on it back to front. She was never asked to be a model again, and I think she was quite happy being back in the workroom.

My mother managed one of the laundries in the area called Soap Side Island in Acton, West London. All the laundries were located there because of the airflow and the quality of water.

I was brought up in Brentford and lived in the turning of the

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Great West Road, also called The Golden Mile. All the factories were located here, including: Gillette, Smith’s Potato Crisps, GlaxoSmithKline Beecham Pharmaceuticals, Mercedes Benz and BOAC. Men would stay in log-inn’s, work in the factories for five days and then go home to their family. I didn’t do well in school and my mother allowed me to do a City & Guilds course.

Our teacher Mrs. Hart got me the interview at Hardy Amies in August 1960. I was absolutely petrified, but Mrs. Hart told me how to dress and conduct myself. I had to wear a dress, hat, bag, shoes and gloves. Everything had to match.

The working environment at Hardy Amies was very hierarchical, and a disciplined way of training. There was a great feeling of divide and conquer, and we never mixed in the workrooms.

In the workroom were the Cutter, his Second, the Hand and the Hand’s Assistant. The Cutter would do the cuttings, patterns, fit the clients and deal with what happened in the showrooms.

He literally spent his whole day going up and down the stairs.

Fittings were very carefully timed, and a very structured way of life. The Cutter’s Second was a lady called Elsie, and she ordered the fabrics, cut the garment out, wrapped it in canvas and distributed it in packages to the Hands. The Hand would do the entire making and finish of the garment. The Hand’s assistant was called “Sitting by Nelly”, and was how I began my six-year apprenticeship. The name Nelly was used because it was very popular at the time. The assistant would sit by Nelly until she had completed her six-year apprenticeship, and ask the Hand and Cutter if she could take on her own work. If they agreed, you would become a Hand and earn a little bit more.

The assistants to the Hand were the lowest of the low and earned around £2 and 10 shillings. They were not allowed to touch the fabrics, only pick up the pins, and run up and down the stairs to the stockroom for supplies. They would wear aprons with very big pockets to carry sewing kits, silks, tapes and what was needed to make the garments.

There was full employment in Britain in the early 1960s, and you could easily do your apprenticeship in different fashion houses. I worked at Hardy Amies for a year and then went to work 14 months at Harvey Nichols in Knightsbridge. My real passion was tailoring and I had heard of the House of Worth, which was the oldest established haute couture house in London.

They took me on and I continued my apprenticeship there with a

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wonderful Cutter called Mr. Bashford. He was a very fatherly type, and looked after his girls. Many of the girls started when they were 15 and came straight from school. The House of Worth was located on 50 Grover Street, and an extraordinary house with several workrooms. Hardy Amies and Worth dressed woman from the skin out. They had corset rooms, lingerie rooms, dressmakers, tailors, rooms for beading, rooms for embroidery and furriers. Next to our workroom was the furriers, because we would sew the fur onto the garments. An in-house furrier was exclusive to have at the time and would never happen in the same way today. The clientele were in the horse racing industry and people who went to the casinos in the south of France. You would do the casino season, the Ascot season and the shooting season. The Ascot season was an absolute mad house. You learnt about the aristocracy, because those were the people you worked for.

I married in 1965, and took my own work in 1966. The House of Worth closed in 1968, and Mr. Bashford, some of the dressmaking ladies and tailoring girls, went to a smaller couture house called Hillier’s Couture on Cork Street. Mr.Petts was the owner of the business and a really canny man. They had a vacancy and I was back with Mr. Bashford doing the work I wanted to do.

Mr. Petts had managed to get two of the Vendors from Worth, which meant they brought their black books with details of all Worth’s clients. Those books were worth a fortune. The bread and butter of Hillier’s Couture were the uniforms for the Queen Alexandra Royal Army Nursing Corps. It was quite interesting taking on another branch of clothing while making the couture garments. After having my daughter I began doing out-work for Mr. Petts, and made the tropical dresses for officers on outpost in Singapore and place alike. He fitted the girls and I made the work at home in the evenings. I came back the next day and was paid. When my children got to Senior School, I began teaching an adult class at Chiswick Town Hall and a City & Guilds course in Brentford. My oldest student was 90 and an extraordinary woman. I began teaching at Brighton University in 1994, and followed a class through. The students were brilliant, and I had the time of my life teaching them.

In 1996, in the mist of it all, I was invited in for an interview at Hardy Amies. I was just as petrified as I was at my interview in 1960. I got the job again, and became part of

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Mr. Allan’s workroom, specializing in skirts and trousers. Two other ladies made the jackets and coats. I was thrilled to be back on Savile Row and pinched myself everytime I was there.

The staff had been reduced and the canteen was gone. There were once eight people around a table, and we were now one at each.

The work environment was great which certainly was because of Mr. Allan who was a very charismatic man. We worked eight hours a day and if you were doing collections it would be 10-12 hours a day.

We had to dress in a certain way at Hardy Amies, but still be comfortable and most of us wore our old shoes. Linda was another ladies’ tailoress, who began as an apprentice when she was 16. She retired when she turned 60, after 44 years in the house. Downstairs was Mrs. Lillian who was a dressmaker and retired after 47,5 years in the house. She was a legend in her own lifetime. Sir Hardy Amies dressed The Queen for 50 years, and Mrs. Lillian fitted her in the palace for 31 years. Mrs. Lillian photographed every dress she made for the Queen. I’ve seen the photographic evidence.

I worked for the House of Hardy Amies for 11,5 years and retired in 2008. My colleagues had organized a wonderful lunch on the day I retired and presented me with a very special gift: a couple of years earlier I went to the Llewellyn Alexander Gallery near Waterloo station, because I had heard that they exhibited work not accepted for the Royal Academy’s summer exhibition. The exhibition was wonderful and had some really stunning pieces. I was a bit short in the bank account, but found these two beautiful miniature figures. Mr. Allan called me a Patron of the Arts after that, and it made me very happy.

At my retirement lunch, I was presented with my gift after all the speeches. Everyone had chipped in, and they gave me a £240 voucher to go be a Patron of the Arts again. Forget about drugs, I was as high as a kite.

Sir Hardy Amies died on the 6th of March 2003, and we went to his funeral in a country church in the Cotswolds. We were all invited to his memorial service at St. James at Piccadilly on his birthday 17th of July. The church was absolutely packed.

It was the first time staff, clients and business partners were gathered in the same room. It was a very special occasion on many levels. The Duchess of Devonshire read one of the lessons and it was amazing. After the service, the staff went for lunch at our usual place at the back of Hardy Amies on Regent Street. Mr. Allan thought for once that we all finally

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would be together, but the Vendors went to have lunch in South Kensington. I don’t think he ever forgave them for that.

It didn’t bother me, but it was interesting to see how the hierarchy still excisted in 2003. Amanda, another tailoress, called me in 2008 and said that the house had discarded ladies’ couture. It was the end of an era, and the house came to represent the beginning and end of British haute couture. It brings me joy that they kept on the menswear and the house of Sir Hardy Amies still is very much alive.

Today, I volunteer at the Victoria & Albert Museum with my good friend Sue Clark. We make individual bags for the dresses in their extraordinary fashion collection, so the garments are stored and protected in the best possible way. The curators say we make the dresses happy. Sue and I met through the Museum of London’s membership club The Friends of Fashion, where we also volunteered. Sir Hardy Amies was the first member of the club, and he had an exhibition there in 1989. I also teach at Norwich University, and was recently asked to be part of a film project where I would teach the technician Laura to make a tailor-made jacket. Laura sat beside me, and suddenly this brought me back to a very special time in my early life. We did “Sitting by Nelly”. It brings me great joy to pass on my skills, and it’s the key to it all. A student once asked, what kept driving me to work and be so passionate? It’s the adrenalin and love of sewing, and while you got that, you can conquer the world.

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As told to Louise Rytter.

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Hardy Amies: Private Wardrobe.

Sir Hardy Amies’ private wardrobe was in 2008 donated to the Museum and Study Collection, Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design, by Lady Farringdon who was a close friend and costumer of his. The Hardy Amies collection consists of 62 pieces, including coats, tailored suits, shirts, braces, hats, scarves, shoes, invitations, illustrations, letters, two porcelain tiles and his school cap.Appointments to view the collection can be made by emailing: Museum.collection@csm.arts.ac.uk.

“Your dress should be outstanding through its excellence of cut and fit rather than for its flamboyance of colour.”

“The great point about men’s evening clothes is that dark blue or black is an admirable foil to the colours of the women’s dresses.”

“Correct dressing is only another form of good manners, and good manners are only another form of mental comfort.”

Nine Gorgeous Linens.

Photography: Roderick Field.

Autumn 2013 linen. Nine at Merchant reveals how

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is all about making it flow in gorgeous ones are now in stock & Mills, and Draper Carolyn Denham they really can shine.

1.Name: Washed Linen.

Width: 145 cm.

Weight: 225.

Colour: Dead cactus.

Feel: Soft and warm.

Production: 100% Irish linen.

Wash: 40 degrees.

Use: This fabric is a celebration of linen, and has a beautiful crumpled

and distressed appearance. Let the fabric do what it naturally does, and see how it really shines. It is perfect for curtains or a relaxed and simple

everyday outfit. All linens tend to be very wobbly and it can be difficult to determine a straight grain. A tip is to pull a thread from the selvedge edge across the fabric, which will show the straight weave.

2. Name: Linen Check.

Width: 145 cm.

Weight: 175.

Colour: Beige.

Feel: Relaxed and formal.

Production: 100% Irish linen.

Wash: 30 degrees.

Use: This is a supremely versatile fabric with delicate checks for the

relaxed twist on a classic. Get the perfect finish by pressing the linen from both sides front and back with a damp cloth, steam alone will not give you a good result. For the most stylish look, pay attention to matching the checks where possible.

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3. Name: Monochrome Linen.

Width: 145 cm.

Weight: 175.

Colour: Black and white fine stripe.

Feel: Relaxed but crisp.

Production: 100% Irish linen.

Wash: 40 degrees.

Use: This fine linen is great for a T-Shirt with a bound neck or a fresh loose dress. The fabric doesn’t have a dense weave and will fray, so stay away from difficult detailing. The lovely nostalgic striped linen will mix well with

solid colours. Use a coloured chalk when marking out your pattern, but always remember to cut on the inside of the chalk line.

4. Name: Belgium Linen Laundered Cotton.

Width: 150 cm.

Weight: 175.

Colour: Blue and grey.

Feel: Soft and casual.

Production: Made in Belgium.

Wash: 40 degrees up to 3% shrinkage.

Use: This is a great fabric for a dressmaker. It has a fine but dense weave making it easy to handle and great for detailing and topstitching.

Its laundered finish adds a contemporary look. Great for dress shirts, tops and light-weight trousers.

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5. Name: Light Indigo Linen.

Width: 145 cm.

Weight: 175.

Colour: Light indigo.

Feel: Soft and light.

Production: 100% Irish linen.

Wash: 40 degrees.

Use: This cross weave linen has different warp and weft colours. Its fine

weave will snag if you use a machine needle that is too thick. Your needle

size for handling the fabric should be about 70 – 80mm. Be careful with pins

as they can blunt over time and cause snagging in the fabric. A pincushion of emery will keep your pins sharp.

6. Wool Linen Mix Pinstripe.

Width: 145 cm.

Weight: 250.

Colour: Navy.

Feel: Soft.

Production: 100 % Irish linen.

Wash: Dry clean only.

Use: This is a classic and soft alternative to wool suiting, making it

great for jackets and skirts. It is a good and stable fabric and will take detailing well. Press well with a damp cloth to avoid a home dressmaker’s

look. Use a lightweight inter facing on collars and facings, to avoid anything heavy to control the fabric.

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7. Name: Denim Linen Twill.

Width: 145 cm.

Weight: 225.

Colour: Denim.

Feel: Luminous and soft.

Production: 100% Irish linen.

Wash: Dry clean only.

Use: The linen twill weave gives a soft sheen to the fabric surface, and

makes the best linen trousers. It gives a soft and drapey look, while still

being strong enough for detailing. Take special care when cutting the fabric, as it is very wobbly. Fusible interfacing will control and hold the fabric,

and you may need to line up your pattern pieces again to make sure they still match up.

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8. Mid Weight Linen.

Width: 147 cm.

Weight: 300.

Colour: Earth.

Feel: Robust.

Production: 100 % Irish linen.

Wash: 40 degrees.

Use: We know this lovely fabric well. Interior designers use it extensively because the fabric is extremely versatile. It was originally designed as

a jacket fabric, but more commonly used for curtains, soft furnishings and

light upholstery. The flax gives a low sheen and is dry clean only, however washed it makes a beautiful unlined summer jacket. The fabric has a coarse weave and requires a heavy press.

9. Name: Blue Twill.

Width: 150 cm.

Weight: 275.

Colour: Muddy blue.

Feel: Soft and dra pery.

Production: 100% Irish linen.

Wash: Dry clean only.

Use: This twill weave has a nice sheen, and a wonderful drape and wobbly look.

Let it do its thing, and let it flow. It can be tricky to cut out, so pay good attention to the grain.

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The Clothworkers’ Centre for Textiles and Fashion Study and Conservation.

By Edwina Erhman, Curator of Fashion and Textiles, V&A. The V&A’s textile and fashion study collection is moving. From 8 October visitors making appointments to see objects in the collection will be welcomed at the Museum’s new Clothworkers’ Centre for Textiles and Fashion Study and Conservation at Blythe House at Olympia.

Although the collection’s new home is only 1.7 miles from the V&A in South Kensington the move has been a major logistical exercise. We have over 100,000 objects to care for. These range from rare Pre-Columbian textiles to huge carpets, couture evening gowns and many thousands of shoes. All have had to be packed, moved, unpacked and re-housed.

The collection’s storage needs are complex. Some garments can hang, more must lie flat; many textiles are best rolled round metal cylinders while others are too fragmentary or highly decorated; objects that are vulnerable to movement cannot be stored in mobile units and must be found space in cupboards; and then there are the problems - the things that are too big for any of our modular storage and have to be found a home with other, random, “large 3-D” material.

We needed custom-built storage, with room for expansion that would meet all these requirements and ensure the future of the collection.

Planning was made more complicated by the limitations of the building whose construction restricted the overall weight loading on the floors. Not only did we have to measure large numbers of items we also had to weigh them. The final layout, built in aluminium supported on heavy-duty steel beams, incorporates 7,000 drawers in six different sizes, 500 linear metres of storage for hanging garments, locations for 1280 large rolled textiles up to six metres long and for twice as many small rolled textiles and many, many metres of shelves.

When visitors arrive at the Clothworkers’ Centre they will see some of our new storage as they walk to the splendid new Study Room. The massive but light-weight mobile units, which are almost four metres tall, are clad in black aluminium, giving them extraordinary presence. They convey a sense of order, security and industry, which reflects the original architecture and purpose of Blythe House and our purpose today. Built between 1899 and 1903 as the Headquarters of the Post Office Savings Bank the building once housed 5,000 clerks. Its interior 130

walls are clad with creamy white ceramic tiles and its high ceilings supported by cast-iron columns and girders. It is a building of character, a building to which we are already becoming attached.

The Clothworkers’ Centre for Textiles and Fashion Study and Conservation opens to the public on 8 October 2013.

Appointments to study objects in the collection can be made from 2 September. .........................................

Page 3 Women’s dress: 1800-1820. Drawers and drawers of muslin.

Page 5 Storage for five metre rolled textiles. Average

weight: 44kg. No labels, just unique identifying numbers.

Page 129 Holding drawers: “Textiles Woven 1600s”/

dressing gowns, walking sticks”/”curtain

“Embroidery” 1700s”/”20th century Print”/”Men: trimming?”.

Page 131 Boxes waiting to be unpacked. Strapped for security.

Stockists Abrams Books www.abramsbooks.com Acne www.acnestudios.com Blitz Magazine www.blitzmagazine.co.uk CSM Museum and Study Collection www.csm.arts.ac.uk Christie’s Auction House www.christies.com Designmuseum Danmark www.designmuseum.dk Diana Vreeland www.dianavreeland.com Financial Times www.ft.com Fondation Pierre Berge-YSL www.fondation-pb-ysl.net Hardy Amies www.hardyamies.com Katerina Jebb www.katerinajebb.com Kerry Taylor Auctions www.kerrytaylorauctions.com Les Arts Décoratifs www.lesartsdecoratifs.fr L’Osmothèque www.osmotheque.fr Marsh Christian Trust www.marshchristiantrust.org Merchant & Mills www.merchantandmills.com ModeMuseum Antwerp www.momu.be Musée Galliera www.paris.fr Museum of London www.museumoflondon.org.uk Patek Philippe www.patek.com Patek Philippe Museum www.patekmuseum.com Parfums de Nicolaï www.pnicolai.com Philadelphia Museum of Art www.philamuseum.org Prada www.prada.com Precious Time www.precioustime.com.sg Royal Ontario Museum www.rom.on.ca Schiaparelli www.schiaparelli.com Schoolhouse Press www.schoolhousepress.com Simone Handbag Museum www.simonehandbagmuseum.co.kr Staley-Wise Gallery www.staleywise.com The Clothworkers’ Company www.clothworkers.co.uk The Eye has to Travel www.dianavreeland-film.com The Mechanical Smile www.yalebooks.co.uk The Royal Collection www.royalcollection.org.uk Victoria and Albert Museum www.vam.ac.uk Vogue www.vogue.com Wardown Park Museum www.lutonculture.com Yale University Press www.yalebooks.co.uk ...................................................

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