Cartes des Visite and Fashion History

White has been the choice of most brides since the time of Queen Victoria's wedding to Prince Albert in 1840. But surprisingly other colours such as black, blue or brown were also worn in the 19th century by brides who favoured a more practical choice of gown to be worn again. 

From the Halmrash studio, 529 Washington Avenue South, Minneapolis

In this particular photograph, the bride is wearing a dark gown, probably dark blue or black silk. Undated, it took a bit of sleuthing to date this photograph.  

In the Victorian era, collecting cartes de visite of friends, family and prominent persons was a popular pastime. These small  2⅛ × 3½ photographs were supplanted in the early 1870s by the larger sized "cabinet cards" which measured  4½ by 6½ inches. Cabinet cards remained popular into the early 20th century when Kodak introduced the Brownie camera. When I see a tray of cartes de visite or cabinet cards in an antique market, I am compelled to bring them home. Once I bought so many that the vendor asked me if I was buying a family. What I'm actually buying is a bit of fashion history. 

The bride is wearing a black, blue, or brown dress with long sleeves and a high collar with white piping detail and white buttons for the collar opening. The bodice is slim fitting and appears to be a type of corset overlay with two rows of white buttons. The skirt seems to be softly draped across the front and has a small ruffled hem. Her white veil is sheer and to the floor with flowers or other ornament as a type of tiara. 

How would a historian date this dress?

The image is a larger cabinet card for a starting point of at least 1870. But the absence of a bustle suggests that it must be later than 1880. And since the sleeves are not overly extreme in shape as was common in in the mid-1890s, I'm guessing that this dress would be dated somewhere between 1898-1903.

To check, I went to the Victoria and Albert Museum website which offers a treasure trove of information on historical dress and discovered that they have a database of wedding photos. There is a similar style of dress worn by Sarah Poortvliet in her marriage to Fobbe William Hoekstra dated February 14, 1901. How cool is that?

The History of Fashion Photography

Cover Image by Sarah Moon 1973

In the scheme of art history, photography is a relatively new art form, having only been in existence since 1839. And although photographs of fashionable dress have existed since then, the emergence of photographs to sell clothing and accessories took another half century to develop. It wasn't until after the invention and application of the halftone printing process that fashion photography took off.  The purpose of fashion photography is to sell clothes, but today many fashion photographs seem to be about creating a story, evoking a mood or expressing a concept. The lines between art and fashion have been blurred.

The names of the great fashion photographers like Edward Steichen, Richard Avendon, Irving Penn and Helmut Newton are well known but there are others: Horst, Bresson, Blumenfeld, David Bailey, Bert Stern, Hiro, William Klein. But, the ones that I was most influenced by are both women:  Sarah Moon and Deborah Turbeville.

Unseen Versailles series by Deborah Turbeville circa 1980

These two women were born around the same time and were both involved in fashion before becoming photographers. Sarah Moon is a former model-turned-photographer and Deborah Turbeville is a former fashion-editor-turned-photographer.  Both use colour in a monochromatic way and create personal visions that are like day dreams. And both women create photographs that are exquisitely  beautiful.

Sarah Moon was born in 1941 in France and often captures her subjects in motion. The faces of her models are often blurred or their eyes are closed, rarely making eye contact. She has taken photographs for Cacharel, Chanel, Dior, Lacroix and other designers. Some of her recent series have included Frocks in Fantasy and The Shadows of Style.

In a 2008 interview with the UK Independent, Moon said "For me, photography is pure fiction even if it comes from life. I photograph people, of course, as I do nature – trees, flowers, animals – but I charge it with something other than reality, with feeling, with a certain feeling depending on the day. I compare myself to reportage photographers, who make some sort of statement about life. I don't believe that I am making any defined statement. Instead, I am expressing something, an echo of the world maybe."

Jean Muir and Models by Deborah Turbeville 1973

Deborah Turbeville was born in Massachusetts and grew up in New England. At age 20, she moved to New York City to work with designer Claire McCardell and later became a fashion editor before becoming a photographer. She uses blurring and disintegration to great effect and is somewhat obsessed with decay and dream sequences. Her work has been compared to the Impressionist Edgar Degas. "Even Turbeville's color is close to that of the impressionist master. Her color is rather non-color, or color fields of limpid and palely monchromatic beauty. Her palette is based on white with hints of pastel hues which subtly create, like her choice of poses, affinities with Degas ballet studies." (page 217, The History of Fashion Photography)

Turbeville created the breathtaking photographs in the book called The Unseen Versailles (another rare and beautiful book). Now in her seventies, Turbeville continues to work as a photographer, dividing her time between New York and Mexico.



The History of Fashion Photography is one of those books that is worth looking for. While long out of print, it offers a comprehensive look back at the development of this art form from its infancy up to 1980.