Now that Costume College 2019 is over, we can now give our full attention to getting ready for our upcoming trip to Germany and Sweden. While we’re planning on visiting a wide variety of places, Ludwig II’s castles have always been a source of fascination so that’s going to be at the top of the list of things to see so here’s a little warm-up. Stay tuned for more! 🙂
It’s Sunday and all my teaching duties at Costume College 2019 are complete! It’s been a busy past two days with teaching three classes and meeting up with old friends, some who we haven’t seen in a year or more. Our classes were well attended and hopefully we were able to impart some useful information. More importantly, we also learned some new things from the many thoughtful questions posed by our students and in some areas, we’re rethinking some of our opinions. The old adage “never say never” has never been more true when applied to fashion and fashion history and it seems that just when we thought we’d gotten a handle on a certain subject, something comes along to challenge us.
We’re looking forward to 2020 at Costume College and it’s our goal to work up more classes with compelling content. Looking forward to seeing you there next year!
The delicate dance of balancing tall hats and parasols, between the perils of possible hair pulling and eye gouging.. the struggle is real!
Paul Poiret has always been fascinating to us and his designs and innovations never fail to amaze. At the same time, Poiret is also a cautionary tale on the dangers of not adapting to a changing zeitgeist (the spirit of a particular historical period). Poiret was a bit of showman and he utilized all manner of publicity in order to advance his innovations such as eliminating the corset-created silhouette as an essential design element (even though other couturiers were working on similar designs at the same time such as Jeanne Paquin) and the introduction of the jupe-culotte.
Paul Poiret, Jupe Culotte, 1911; Metropolitan Museum of Art (1983.8a, b)
Poiret was also instrumental in introducing a simpler, less structured silhouette starting with the Directoire style in 1906:
The First World War disrupted the French fashion industry and Poiret was no exception. Called up for military service, Poiret was assigned to work on simplifying the production of uniforms and while he was successful in this area, his fashion house barely kept itself afloat financially. After the war, Poiret tried to pick up where he’d left off in 1914 but the fashion world had moved on with an emphasis on more simple designs such as those created by Coco Chanel. Poiret’s designs failed to catch on and combined with financial mismanagement and a nasty divorce from his wife Denise, he was ultimately forced to close his fashion house in 1929. In future posts, we’ll delve into some of Poiret’s post-WWI designs and the overall decline of Poiret’s influence as a designer.
“Do you live in a Victorian House?” It’s usually the first thing we’re asked. Well, for twenty years, we’ve been laughing (sometimes not!) at the slow restoration process of our vacation house in an Old West town that you may have heard of. Today, we got news that the contractor found a bit of architectural fun.
