Since the European Middle Ages, religious dress and ornamentation have gone hand-in-hand with the lush fabrics and craftsmanship now associated with haute couture.
All tagged 10-Minute Read
The Life and Work of Ruby Bailey, Zelda Wynn Valdes, and Ann Lowe
Ruby Bailey, Zelda Wynn Valdes, and Ann Lowe were three very different designers, united by their experiences as black female designers in mid-century New York City. Despite their differing design aesthetics, they faced the same racial and gender discrimination in their efforts to make names for themselves as designers in a burgeoning fashion capital.
Dressed Up in Paper: What Will I Be?
Whether the paper doll is a girl or boy, celebrity or historical figure, these “stylish” pieces are advertisements for the latest fashion trends. Beyond play, they are objects that have taught children, throughout time, how to dress for life.
A Space for Self-Fashioning: The Countess of Castiglione’s Photographic Self-Image
While she alludes to common archetypes of femininity in her photographs, the photographs of the Countess are more than just a submission to pre-scripted definitions of womanhood.
Into the Archive: Unpacking the Collections
The textile storage space is a place of gentle, gloved movements and careful, reverent handling of myriad artifacts. It’s a place where, currently, conservation tasks lag and preservation is maintained at a bare minimum, aimed to suspend time and deter the real world practicalities of change, decay, and age.
The Ruth Finley Collection
As a fashion and textile historian who works closely with the Fashion Calendar archive, I am exceedingly privileged to not only have access to a previously un-investigated source that is so rich with information, but to be able to interact with the maker of the archive herself. This enables the archive to be continuously dynamic, since Finley’s knowledge about American fashion history is vast and mostly based on experience.
She's Got Legs: A History of Hemlines and Fashion
Throughout history, dance performers have pushed the boundaries of acceptable dress. At a time when it was considered inappropriate for a woman to expose an ankle or calf, on stage doing so was, conversely, required. For the sake of improving technical skills and freeing the body to move, ankles, calves, and knees started to emerge, until eventually the entire leg was visible.
Race in Vogue: Finding Myself in a Space of Exclusion
My bouncy curls that were the product of a mixed heritage and symbolized a forward-looking world were seemingly not to be celebrated, at least not by the media and fashion industry. The fleeting moments of praise were shrouded in fetishism, and the sense of “otherness” was consistently present. Ironically, however, I continued to respect a system that did not respect me back.
The Patriot Games: Ralph Lauren, Captain America, and the Fashioning of American Identity
To say 2016 was a big year for America would be a drastic understatement. The events of the year pushed our nation into an intense period of self-reflection and re-evaluating. With the shocking success of a businessman’s run for president, our culture was obsessed with exploring what America stands for and who gets to define contemporary patriotism.
The Influence of Communication Technology on Our Lives
It has come to my attention that communication technology has a profound influence on the lives of people, especially the younger generations. My hypothesis is that the increased use and reliance on gadgets such as smartphones creates a decrease in face-to-face social interaction and empathy, creating a world of virtual interactions and loneliness instead.
The Unpublished Musings of Elizabeth Hawes
A hand-scrawled note reads: “Now that Fashion’s Gone to Hell And Dress has become neuter." The phrase floats alone in the center of a small note page—the type of thing one might expect to find today, coffee-stained and abandoned amid a mess of stir sticks and sugar crystals on a vacant table at Starbucks, except this particular note dates to a very pre-Frappuccino® era, written sometime around 1969 by the resident of apartment #429 of the famed bastion of New York bohemian culture, the Hotel Chelsea. It was written by the one-and-only Elizabeth Hawes.
The Itsy Bitsy, Teenie Weenie, Atomic Bikini
It was an itsy bitsy, teenie weenie, yellow polka dot bikini…. This catchy tune is as much a part of the summertime for many of us as ice cream. Despite years of singing this song on my way to the pool, it was only once I began researching the bikini’s origins that I found the multiple links between this popular swimsuit style and mid-20th century military developments.
Safe Spaces of Desire: Advertisements in the Nineteenth-Century Fashion Press of Berlin, Paris, and New York
This essay looks at advertisements that appeared in three turn-of-the-century fashion magazines — exploring how the fashion industry in some ways participated in the perpetuation of normative gender roles, but in others created a more subversive counter-narrative.
Whys and Why Nots: Reading the Stakes and Meanings of Russell Westbrook’s NBA Style Revolution
Debating and dissecting Westbrook’s style has become a tradition and an ongoing concern for a wide swath of sportswriters, broadcasters, journalists, and fans. In general, however, whereas the sports media has often seen Westbrook’s style choices as a sign of inauthenticity, the fashion industry has almost unanimously embraced these same choices as sign of authenticity.
Appropriation and Legacy: A Recent History of Vetements
Since its rise to fame, Vetements and its post-Soviet aesthetic, has been embraced by streetwear aficionados and high fashion connoisseurs alike. Their ability to appeal to a broad range of audiences stems from the dichotomous approach they’ve taken to their business strategy and design sensibilities.
Tailoring Cultural Change in the 1960s: Pierre Cardin’s Cylinder Suit Jacket
Though the Cylinder suit jacket itself saw limited sales, Cardin used it to set a mass market template that allowed him to incorporate influences from outside the fashion capitals. Democratizing fashion in this way reinvigorated the menswear industry through the ideas it communicated: new-look masculinity, cultural inclusivity, and a massive generational shift.
L’Orient Exotique: Couture, Culture, and the Colonial Dreamscape
Sabyasachi Mukherjee sells aura over object, lifestyle over product. He de-emphasizes the commerce of his business to a point where it is not even visible anymore. But conversely, the images used to advertise the products create a perceived sense of cultural authenticity that I call his “Colonial Dreamscape.”
“Everything is Wrong”: A Search for Order in the Ethnometaphysical Chaos of Sustainable Luxury Fashion
When I reflect on luxury fashion, one of the last things I tend to think of is sustainability. This is not uncommon though, as while luxury fashion organizations commonly seek visibility and attention, sustainability is often not part of their raison d'être.
Points of Touch: Towards a Fashion Epistemology
Possessing a peculiar manner of epistemic functioning, an invitation made out of a fabric sample, a press release written in the shape of a poem, or a blurred image of a garment printed in a catalogue can trigger sensorial knowledge about fashion.