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On Wednesday, the Museum of the City of New York announced the opening of an online-only show of its extensive holdings of the work of two couturiers, Charles Frederick Worth and Main Rousseau Bocher, the designer known as Mainbocher.The detail of description of each garment is just wonderful.
"Galliano said he found the cinematic cue while thinking about Lauren Bacall. "She was a great Dior client; there are amazing photos of her in the salon with Bogart. It was that and Arletty in Hôtel du Nord," he said. That central character—a provocative, smoldering femme fatale with a side-parted, over-one-eye hairdo and red lips—gave him free reign to script a wardrobe narrative. It started with abbreviated wartime trenchcoats, flipped through silver lamé dresses, arrived at a sequence in which the heroine is seen in her scanties, and then followed her out to make a drop-dead entrance in some nightclub or other."
"With the house of Lacroix filing for bankruptcy, and Yves Saint Laurent gone, some fear that haute couture is finished. But Paris's fashion phoenix has survived world war, cultural revolution and economic meltdown, reshaped to fit the times. (that is a really poorly worded sentence, no?) Tracing its lineage- Worth, Poiret, Chanel, Dior and onward- Amy Fine Collins describes the current incarnation: spectacular shows accessible to millions on the Internet and a new global client base in the Middle East, India and China."
Dior Cocktail Dress, ca 1950
It turns out the piece is a Victorian paste pin, once meant as a sash decoration. It came from Carole Tanenbaum, who offers a premiere collection of vintage costume jewelry. We love that Mrs. O would wear a historical piece on such a historical day!
Hope you all have a lovely holiday.
Vogue 1949
Even though Life magazine is no more, the Life photo archive is now available through Google's Image Search feature. There are more than 10 million photos, many of which were never published. About 20% of the collection went online yesterday, and Google will be adding more in the coming months.
The following is an article from Colliers Magazine, February 10, 1951. This was a time when there were no racks of clothing in the store: Ladies came in to shop, sat on sofas and were shown the clothing on models. And strangely enough for the time, the merchandising operations of the Garfinckel's stores were run by a woman, Miss Elizabeth Fairall, who had been with Julius Garfinckel since the beginning of the company in 1905. During a time when corporations were run by men, I'm sure this article about the female vice president of one of the most important fashion retailers in the United States was unique.
