De Young Costume Exhibition from the Brooklyn Museum
This exhibition at the Legion of Honor Fine Arts Museum in SF was such a great pleasure to see. It had been mounted in NYC and shown at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and will also appear at the Cincinnati Art Museum. Jan Glier Reeder is responsible for the catalogue, HIGH STYLE, Masterworks from the Brooklyn Museum Costume Collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Elsa Schiaparelli (1930's-1940's) was, of course, my favorite and the curator from the Philadelphia Museum of Art, distinguished Curator Dilys Blum, provided us a lecture, illuminating her life and art... The designs inspired by music including a belt with a music box in it and "pianos" as buttons on an elegant black suit stood out, but so did the gown with musical staffs...and notes playing and dancing across the silk. Several of her dresses had been purchased by the Standard Oil heiress, Millicent Huttleston Rogers, famous for being an arbitrar of taste by introducing Western style to NYC fashion. I had visited her museum outside Santa Fe New Mexico near Tao. Rogers owns 75% of the 250 pieces by Schiaparelli, which are known. The butterfly, one of my favorite symbols, was also a ubiquitous motif in Schiaparelli's work and for the Surrealists, a symbol of transformation but also of temporality and mortality. Schiaparelli used the butterly to represent beauty emerging from the mundane, and I ahd the exact silk design in a scarf, with butterflies, from China. and wore it for this occasion. "Life like insects, not romanticized interpretations, are the slightly unsettling motifs on this elegeant evening dress and parasol". In the catalogue she also has a brown and white tweed pants suit, like one I had made and continuously wore in China, including the large brown buttons! It was one of my favorite, but wore out! Buttons were a favorite of Schiaparellis' as my own. I recall the button store in the E 60s in NYC where I would often go to open the beautiful wall lined boxs containing the most beautiful buttons I had ever seen. I continued to collect special buttons in China. Chanel was a rival designer in the period, but Schiaparelli is known for her idiosyncratic and distinctive style, especially when she cooperated with Surrealist artists Jean Cocteau, Salvador Dali, and Leonor Fini...and was inspired by her friendship with photographer, Man Ray....she does see fashion as art, whereas Prada says that fashion is first, function. Schiaparelli's clothes have somewhat of the theater about them. Eventually, she would be eclipsed by the opening of the House of Dior, who in 1947, like Schiaparelli, twenty years earlier, would captivate America and Europe with "a new look". Schiaparelli had sold most of her fashions to New York and other American retailers. One of the amusing pieces, but Schiaparelli told the story that when a child, she ate flower seeds hoping the flowers would grow on her face! She appliques seed packets onto a plain weave cotton dress, with one of her revealing gold zippers running all the way down the back. .
Worth and others in a beautiful history of french designers was on display, to remind one of the early Beaux Art histories in America when New Yorkers would travel to Paris for the latest ball gowns, such as in the books by Edith Wharton... then the flowering of American designers, beginning with the elegant Charles James, who also had a show dedicated to him at the Met were favorites. The whole show was such a great pleasure to view. Dilys and I spoke before she lectured and she mentioned to the audience my presence; members of the Textile Arts Council (TAC) guessed it was me, as I am the only one from Philadelphia.
I returned the second time with my long time friend(since the 60s in HS in Wisconsin or Joan Bergholt, who was VP for I Magnin and in that capacity attended all the fashion circuit in Europe in her career and had many reflections on the designers and which ones she had met at the I Magnin showrooms in SF. ) I shared my own reflections on memories of designers from Manhattan period, and of my own design creations in China, which corresponded mostly to the artistic romanticism of Schiaparelli. Joan is more of a Armani and Prada type; we had fun deciding which one of us would wear which...and enjoyed a bottle of Sancerre and a delicious salad in the dining room of the restaurant,
followed by a viewing of a room from a french hotel in which Joan, in that decade of fashion at the shows in Paris, would stay for a week or two, each time. The original hotel was destroyed, but it had been lovingly rebuilt and restored, and so the rooms in which Joan stayed were the "same" in memory as those on display.
An unexpected pleasure. Additionally the chamber group was playing a setting of compositions arranged for Emily Dickinson's poems, so it could not have been a more fortuitous time for me to visit. . There is so much more to comment on, but I will leave this blog entry, now...see the catalogue! .
Mondrian inspired hat
Elsa Schiaparelli (1930's-1940's) was, of course, my favorite and the curator from the Philadelphia Museum of Art, distinguished Curator Dilys Blum, provided us a lecture, illuminating her life and art... The designs inspired by music including a belt with a music box in it and "pianos" as buttons on an elegant black suit stood out, but so did the gown with musical staffs...and notes playing and dancing across the silk. Several of her dresses had been purchased by the Standard Oil heiress, Millicent Huttleston Rogers, famous for being an arbitrar of taste by introducing Western style to NYC fashion. I had visited her museum outside Santa Fe New Mexico near Tao. Rogers owns 75% of the 250 pieces by Schiaparelli, which are known. The butterfly, one of my favorite symbols, was also a ubiquitous motif in Schiaparelli's work and for the Surrealists, a symbol of transformation but also of temporality and mortality. Schiaparelli used the butterly to represent beauty emerging from the mundane, and I ahd the exact silk design in a scarf, with butterflies, from China. and wore it for this occasion. "Life like insects, not romanticized interpretations, are the slightly unsettling motifs on this elegeant evening dress and parasol". In the catalogue she also has a brown and white tweed pants suit, like one I had made and continuously wore in China, including the large brown buttons! It was one of my favorite, but wore out! Buttons were a favorite of Schiaparellis' as my own. I recall the button store in the E 60s in NYC where I would often go to open the beautiful wall lined boxs containing the most beautiful buttons I had ever seen. I continued to collect special buttons in China. Chanel was a rival designer in the period, but Schiaparelli is known for her idiosyncratic and distinctive style, especially when she cooperated with Surrealist artists Jean Cocteau, Salvador Dali, and Leonor Fini...and was inspired by her friendship with photographer, Man Ray....she does see fashion as art, whereas Prada says that fashion is first, function. Schiaparelli's clothes have somewhat of the theater about them. Eventually, she would be eclipsed by the opening of the House of Dior, who in 1947, like Schiaparelli, twenty years earlier, would captivate America and Europe with "a new look". Schiaparelli had sold most of her fashions to New York and other American retailers. One of the amusing pieces, but Schiaparelli told the story that when a child, she ate flower seeds hoping the flowers would grow on her face! She appliques seed packets onto a plain weave cotton dress, with one of her revealing gold zippers running all the way down the back. .
Worth and others in a beautiful history of french designers was on display, to remind one of the early Beaux Art histories in America when New Yorkers would travel to Paris for the latest ball gowns, such as in the books by Edith Wharton... then the flowering of American designers, beginning with the elegant Charles James, who also had a show dedicated to him at the Met were favorites. The whole show was such a great pleasure to view. Dilys and I spoke before she lectured and she mentioned to the audience my presence; members of the Textile Arts Council (TAC) guessed it was me, as I am the only one from Philadelphia.
I returned the second time with my long time friend(since the 60s in HS in Wisconsin or Joan Bergholt, who was VP for I Magnin and in that capacity attended all the fashion circuit in Europe in her career and had many reflections on the designers and which ones she had met at the I Magnin showrooms in SF. ) I shared my own reflections on memories of designers from Manhattan period, and of my own design creations in China, which corresponded mostly to the artistic romanticism of Schiaparelli. Joan is more of a Armani and Prada type; we had fun deciding which one of us would wear which...and enjoyed a bottle of Sancerre and a delicious salad in the dining room of the restaurant,
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| Joan made a big hit with the young ticket taker at the show, who admired her sweater done by the daughter of one of the Beatles....!!!! |
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| The lovely french hotel room installed and on special exhibition, which is the hotel Joan stayed in, while in the fashion circuit in Paris. She wore Chanel to Chanel, Yves St Laurent to that show, etc...and has a collection of vintage pieces, which she will hope to sell one day. |
followed by a viewing of a room from a french hotel in which Joan, in that decade of fashion at the shows in Paris, would stay for a week or two, each time. The original hotel was destroyed, but it had been lovingly rebuilt and restored, and so the rooms in which Joan stayed were the "same" in memory as those on display.
An unexpected pleasure. Additionally the chamber group was playing a setting of compositions arranged for Emily Dickinson's poems, so it could not have been a more fortuitous time for me to visit. . There is so much more to comment on, but I will leave this blog entry, now...see the catalogue! .
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| Sciaparelli designs in nature |
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| The Butterfly dress and parasol |
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| The Sciaparelli "seed packet" plain weave cotton dress. |
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| Scassi (American, born Canada) 1931 1980s, left and 1960s right |
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| Charles James, reviving Beaux Art style in evening gowns |
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| The black suit with pianos for buttons Schiaparelli |
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| Halston Evening Dress 1975. |
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| Matisse Inspired hat |
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