Out of the Vaults: Marie Antoinette's Dress

The Royal Ontario Museum has a magnificent costume and textile collection consisting of approximately 50,000 items. Sadly only a very tiny fraction of that is ever on display in the Patricia Harris Gallery of Textiles and Costume.

An upcoming highlight will be the display of Marie Antoinette's dress from 1780 in October for a limited time ONLY (October 11-26).

I can hardly wait to see this dress in person. It should serve as delightful inspiration for my latest series of artwork.

Patricia Harris Gallery of Textiles and Costume
Royal Ontario Museum
100 Queen's Park, Toronto, Ontario Canada
416-586-5700 www.rom.on.ca

Painting as a Fashion Motif

Whether fashion can be considered to be a work of art in and of itself is an ongoing debate among art curators and fashion historians. But it cannot be disputed that Yves Saint Laurent was the first fashion designer to use a painting as a direct source of inspiration for his collections and as a fashion motif.

In 1965, YSL created the "Mondrian" dress which applied the simplified colour blocks seen in the work of the artist Piet Mondrian to a sleeveless jersey knit tunic dress. This deceptively simple design with the graphic blocks of white, yellow, red, blue and black from Mondrian's paintings was considered a masterpiece of construction.

This reference to art in YSL designs was followed up with the "Pop Art Look" in the following year and hand-beaded Van Gogh iris jackets in the 1980s.

Since that first Mondrian dress, many other designers have referenced art in their designs. This past season alone there were countless designers who did os, including John Galliano for Dior Haute Couture (Hand-painted and embroidered dress after Gustav Klimt's Adele Block-Bauer portrait), Marc Jacobs for Louis Vuitton (Sheer dress and slipdress after Richard Prince's Man Crazy Nurse #3), and Armani (Silk-organza petal dress with jewel brooch after Degas Dancers).

The House of Viktor and Rolf at the Barbican Art Gallery

Viktor and Rolf are a Dutch design duo that create technically exquisite, artistically breathtaking fashion. I attended the retrospective of their work at the Barbican Art Gallery in London (June 18 - September 21, 2008).

The exhibition presents looks from the past fifteen seasons on custom-made life-size porcelain dolls with the features painted and the hair styled to resemble the model that initially wore that garment. The other-worldly beauty of these dolls is surreal and somewhat unsettling.

My favourite garments were from Flowerbomb 2005 where bows and ribbons decorated the outfits like an exquisite partly unwrapped gift.

Flowerbomb Collection Spring/Summer 2005
Photo by Ingrid Mida 2008

I also loved the dove-white duchess satin wedding dress of Her Royal Highness Princess Mabel von Orange-Nassua from the White collection of 2002.

Viktor & Rolf White collection 2002
Photo by Ingrid Mida 2008

Viktor & Rolf White Collection 2002
Photo by Ingrid Mida

The highlight of the show is a spectacular 6 metre high doll's house containing 54 custom-made dolls, wearing a perfect miniature version of a Victor and Rolf garment. Sadly I was not able to photograph this. I walked around the doll's house several times trying to absorb and remember all the details.

One of the most meaningful parts of the exhibition for me was seeing the evolution of Viktor and Rolf's artistic vision and success. They are true artists as much as they are fashion designers. A dress is more than a dress; it has to express a vision and conform to the theme for the season. A key part of their development seemed to be the 1996 collection which presented their collection in miniature. The designers said that "we created a series of miniature installations visualizing our strongest ambitions: a doll on a catwalk, a doll in a photo studio, a miniature boutique and so forth. The dolls were an abstraction of people and the scenes they enacted showed a life we desired but only dared to dream of."

House of Viktor and Rolf June 18-September 21, 2008
Barbican Art Gallery
Silk Street, London, England EC2Y 8DS
www.barbican.org.uk/artgallery

Court Dress and Hoop Petticoats at the Victoria and Albert Museum

One could spend days at the Victoria and Albert Museum. On a recent visit there, I went upstairs to see the British Collection and was astonished that there is a treasure trove of costumes included amongst the exhibits of furniture and artifacts.


This dress, called a mantua, was in fashion around 1740-45 and was the grandest style of court fashion. It was so wide that a woman would have to turn sideways to go through a door. The huge skirt permits a lavish display of exquisitely embroidered flowers.



In this hands-on exhibit, I tried on a hoop petticoat. As you can see from the messy arrangement of the skirt, a dresser or lady in waiting was a necessity. I had a good chuckle but found it bulky and cumbersome and can hardly imagine having to walk around or sit in such an awkward garment.

Victoria and Albert Museum
Cromwell Road, South Knightsbridge
London, SW7 2RL
+44 0 20 7942 2000
www.vam.ac.uk

Corsets at the Victoria and Albert Musuem

I am obsessed with corsets as an object d'art and have studied books on their construction. One of the best displays of corsets is in the permanent collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, England. (Don't miss the second floor galleries which also include corsets, stays and bodices in amongst the other museum pieces).


This particular example called a stay moulded the wearer's torso into an inverted cone, which was the fashionable shape of the 1780s. A tiny waist was not the aim of this undergarment. Rather stays helped achieve smoothness of profile and firmness of contour. At this time in history, stays were plain without decoration.


By the late 19th century, manufacturers attempted to produce more comfortable corset designs. This ventilated corset, which was designed for sports and summer wear, had spaces in between the whalebone and cotton tapes allowing air to circulate and perspiration to evaporate.

Victoria and Albert Museum www.vam.ac.uk
Cromwell Road, South Kensington
London, UK SW7 2R7
+44 020 7942 2000

Yves Saint Laurent Retrospective at the Museum of Fine Arts in Montreal

Yves Saint Laurent Evening dress inspired by Matisse 

There are countless examples of artists and fashion designers who have looked to each other for inspiration in their work. In the recent Yves Saint Laurent retrospective at the Musee des Beaux Arts in Montreal, there was an entire room of garments that referenced artwork from artists including Matisse, Van Gogh, Renoir, and Mondrian. The gown in the top photo is a beautiful example of how Yves Saint Laurent reinterpreted the artist Matisse's cut-out artworks in garment form.

The exhibit was enchanting. I marveled at the elegance and originality of his designs on the approximately one hundred outfits on display. Most designs were timeless and difficult to attribute to a particular year, especially since YSL revisited his favourite sources of inspiration again and again.

This sketch of a cocoon-like wedding outfit made of hand-knit white wool tricot with silk satin ribbons was one of the most unusual outfits on display. Imagine how avant-gard this outfit would have been in 1965. It made me wonder if Viktor and Rolf were inspired by this outfit in creating their Russian doll collection for autumn/winter 1999-2000.

Yves Saint Laurent Wedding Gown 1999

This daring flora inspired wedding gown made of silk flowers with a pink silk organza train was spectacular! From the 1999 collection, this design was the incarnation of the mythological bride, the goddess Flora or Botticelli's Venus.

I left the exhibtion in awe of Yves Saint Laurent's tremendous talent and originality. He looked to many different sources for inspiration in his work including:
- other cultures (Africa, Spain, China, Morocco, Japan, India, Russia)
- other artists (Picasso, Matisse, Mondrian, Shakespeare, Appollinaire)
- other themes (glamour, silouette, masculine/feminine, flora/fauna, geometry, history)

Looking for sources of inspiration is something that I really understand as an artist. It was interesting for me to see how he interpreted and revisited these themes in his work over the course of a career spanning 40 plus years.

This exhibition continues at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts until September 28, 2008 and then will travel to the Fine Art Museum of San Francisco (November 1, 2008 to March 1, 2009).

Yves Saint Laurent Retrospective (until September 28, 2008)
Montreal Museum of Fine Arts
1380 Sherbrooke Ouest, Monteal
514-285-2000, 1-800-899-MUSE
www.mbam.qc.ca

San Francisco Museum of Fine Art, November 1, 2008 to March 1, 2009

Lessons from Yves Saint Laurent

This is the last of my tributes to the legendary Yves Saint Laurent. In all the research I did this week, I am left with a tremendous sense of respect for his revolutionary fashion ideas and business success. There are many lessons to be learned from the career of this talented designer.

1. A degree is not required.
YSL only attended the prestigious Chambre Syndicale school of haute couture for three months before quitting. He emerged as a promising young designer by winning the first prize for a cocktail dress design in a contest sponsored by the International Wool Secretariat. He was only 17 years old when he was hired by Christian Dior.

2. Be innovative.
YSL was one of the first to use couture as a laboratory. Although many of his design innovations endure today, he was not without his share of flops. As I mentioned yesterday, his introduction of street fashion in 1962 and the leather jacket for women, was considered a failure and resulted in his dismissal from the house of Dior. As well, he included knickerbockers in his collections more than once.

During an interview on France-Info radio, his business partner Pierre Berge said "Saint Laurent was a true creator, going beyond the aesthetic to make a social statement. In this sense, he was a libertarian, an anarchist and he threw bombs at the legs of society. That's how he transformed society and that's how he transformed women."

3. Failure can be the path to something bigger and better than you ever imagined.
After YSL was dismissed from Dior and conscripted into military service, he was hospitalized for depression and subjected to such horrors as electroshock therapy. Enduring the public humiliation of being fired and the shame of being in a mental hospital did not mean the end of Saint Laurent's career. Without this break from the house of Dior, it is conceivable that he might never have enjoyed the success that he did.

4. Know your strengths and find a partner whose strengths compliments your weaknesses.
Yves Saint Laurent was a true artiste - creative, sensitive, and fragile. Undoubtedly, it was his partner Pierre Berge who was the mastermind behind the business success of the house. In 1966, the house of YSL opened the first ready-to-wear Rive Gauche boutique by a couture designer on the Paris Left Bank. This move was instrumental in the development of the idealogical shift that fashion was no longer just for the rich.

These lessons are applicable not only to the big business of fashion but to the business of life. In writing this post, I have myself learned about taking risks and living your dream. Merci Monsieur Saint Laurent!

Yves Saint Laurent and The Leather Jacket

The influence of the late Yves Saint Laurent on what women wear today is mind boggling. In all the tributes to the designer this week, few people mention his introduction of the leather jacket for women in 1960. Although my leather jacket is not YSL, it is one of my favourite items and I wear it almost every day in spring and fall. It is incredibly versatile and goes with everything from jeans to a pencil skirt.

In what turned out to be his last collection for Dior in 1960, Saint Laurent referenced Paris street wear and introduced the first leather jackets for couture with this crocodile version trimmed in mink shown in the photo above. This marriage of couture with street fashion represented a fundamental shift in the fashion world at the time.

But at the time, the drastic departure from the ladylike look at Dior was heavily criticized and Sain Laurent was effectively fired and replaced with Marc Bohan. The stay on Saint Laurent's mandatory military service was canceled and he was forced into military service in September of 1960. After three weeks of service, he entered a military hospital for nervous depression where he stayed for six weeks of treatment. He was given a medical discharge by the end of the year. The experience haunted him for the rest of his life and he suffered recurring bouts of depression.

In retrospect, this break from Dior turned out to be a turning point in Saint Laurent's life (an inspiration for anyone who has suffered a setback). Breaking from Dior turned out to be a silver lining in a drak cloud since it allowed him to open a fashion house under his own name and to freely create his innovative fashions without the shadow of a founder over him.

Yves Saint Laurent used his haute couture label as a labratory for ideas, leaving a legacy of fashion innovation that not only allowed women to embrace their beauty and power but also to use fashion as a form of self-expression.

A Working Wardrobe Staple: The Pantsuit

One of the most significant fashion legacies of the late Yves Saint Laurent was his introduction of the pantsuit for women. "A woman in a pant suit is not masculine at all - a severe and implacable cut only emphasizes her femininity, her seductiveness all the more."

The YSL pantsuit first appeared in the form of a "smoking tuxedo" in the summer haute couture collection of 1966. This alternative to the evening gown became a YSL "signature look and reappeared in each of his subsequent collections.

In January 1968, YSL introduced the safari look pantsuit. He said "I suddenly became aware of the female form. I started to have a dialogue with women and to understand what a modern woman was." His pantsuits revolutionized what was considered acceptable street wear for chic women after the 1968 Paris student uprisings.

And of course, I cannot write about the YSL pantsuits without mentioning the infamous story of socialite Nan Kemper who was turned away from a fashionable Manhattan restaurant because she was wearing a YSL tunic with pants. Instead of leaving, she simply removed the pants and wore the tunic as a very short dress. Talk about elegance under pressure!!

Yves Saint Laurent gave working woman a lasting gift in designing clothes that allowed us to be both powerful and beautiful. Merci Monsieur!!

Quotes from the late Yves Saint Laurent

Elegance is a way of moving. It is also knowing how to adapt to all of life's circumstances. Without elegance of the Heart, there is no elegance.

Fashion is a party. To dress is to prepare to play a part.

All creation is just re-creation, a new way of seeing the same things, and expressing them differently, specifying them, privileging one hitherto unnoticed corner, or revealing their outlines.

Women who follow fashion too closely run a great risk. That of losing their profound nature, their style, and their natural elegance.

Fashion pass, style is eternal. Fashion is futile, style is not.

Don't burn your wings at fashion's flame.

BREAKING NEWS: The Death of Yves St. Laurent

Earlier this evening, the legendary fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent died at age 71 after a long illness.

This talented but fragile fashion giant was known for revolutionizing the way women dress. He introduced the Mondrian dress in 1965, the smoking tuxedo in 1966, the safari look in 1968 and the classic trouser suit in 1978. He once said that he felt "fashion was not only supposed to make women beautiful, but to reassure them, to give them confidence, to allow them to come to terms with themselves."

Yves Saint Laurent was born on August 1, 1936 in Algeria and attended only three months of fashion training at the Chambre Syndicale before being hired on the spot by Christian Dior at age 17. At the tender age of 21, Yves was named head designer of the House of Dior following Dior's untimely death. The trapeze line, YSL's first collection for Dior in 1957, was heralded as a huge success. The next few years were also acclaimed but in 1960, he introduced street wear into couture and YSL was fired. He was then drafted into military service and was left in a fragile state. In 1962, he opened his own house with his partner Pierre Berge. Life Magazine declared his first line under his own label as "the best collection of suits since Chanel". YSL retired at age 65 in 2002. Time after time in his forty-five years as a fashion designer, his collections revolutionized fashion.

"His gift to fashion was that he empowered women after Chanel had freed them."
Pierre Berge, partner to Yves Saint Laurent

Suffering for the Sake of Beauty: Chinese Foot Binding

The ancient practice of Chinese foot binding is a classic example of how women will suffer for the sake of beauty. Recently I attended a lecture on Chinese foot binding at the Bata Shoe Museum. The speaker was Joan Judge, a York University professor, who launched her book "Foot Binding and Chinese Modernity: The Demise of One of History's Most Enigmatic Practices" by Stanford University Press, 2008.

Foot binding was practiced in China for about 1000 years until the beginning of the 20th century. Although there are few written records, the practice has been attributed to a dancer by the name of Yaoniang in 930 AD. Initially, food binding was confined to dancers and courtesans but gradually women of the upper classes adopted it and tiny, bound feet became a prized attribute in selecting a bride. The tiny lotus foot, a symbol of beauty, was an erotic attraction to men. Approximately 50-80% of Chinese women had bound feet in the 18th century.

This woman to woman practice (men were not involved in any way) began when a girl was 5 or 6 years old. Her mother would bind the girl's feet in a bandage 10 cm by 4 m long. The toes would be broken and pushed under with the toe and heel forced together to mold the foot into an ideal lotus shape with a pronounced arch, a pointed toe, and ideally a length of 3 inches. These bandages had to be worn continually and were perfumed to cover up the smell of rotting flesh. On top of the bandages were layers of wrapping. Foot binding was banned in the early part of the 20th century as a result of political, social and educational reforms in China (which is the subject of Joan Judge's book).

After Joan's talk, the audience initiated a discussion of the extremes of beauty that modern women subject themselves to. High heels seem to be de rigeur at fashionable galas and soirees. I'd always considered myself fairly sensible on that account, except when I found myself with aching feet at a performance of the ballet Cinderella (the ultimate irony!). I was wearing a pair of beige 3-inch heels that looked fabulous but left me crippled by my shoes. And even though I sat through the performance with my shoes off, as the hours passed I could barely mince along the few steps to the lounge. There I was unable to walk and was suffering for the sake of beauty, just like a Chinese woman with bound feet!

Bata Shoe Museum
327 Bloor Street West
Toronto
416-979-7799
www.batashoemuseum.ca