L’Histoire de Mode~Elizabeth Taylor, RIP 2/1932-3/2011
B. Feb. 27, 1932 & D. March 23 2011
Elizabeth Rosemond “Liz” Taylor, DBE, was an English-born
American actress. Beginning as a child star, as an adult she came to
be known for her acting talent and beauty, and had a much publicised private
life, including eight marriages and several near-death experiences. Taylor was
considered one of the great actresses of Hollywood’s Golden Age. The
American Film Institute named Taylor seventh on its Female Legends list.
Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor was born in Hampstead, a wealthy district of
north west London, the second child of Francis Lenn Taylor and
Sara Viola Warmbrodt (1895–1994), who were Americans residing in England. Taylor’s
older brother, Howard Taylor, was born in 1929. Her parents were originally from Arkansas City, Kansas.
Francis Taylor was an art dealer, and Sara was a former actress whose stage name was
“Sara Sothern.” Sothern retired from the stage when she and Francis married in
1926 in New York City. Taylor’s two first names are in honor of her paternal
grandmother, Elizabeth Mary (Rosemond) Taylor.
A dual citizen of the United Kingdom
and the United States, she was born a British subject through her birth on British soil and
an American citizen through her parents. She reportedly sought,
in 1965, to renounce her United States citizenship, to wit: “Though never accepted
by the State Department, Liz renounced in 1965. Attempting to shield much of her
European income from U.S. taxes, Liz wished to become solely a British citizen.
According to news reports at the time, officials denied her request when she
failed to complete the renunciation oath, refusing to say that she
renounced ‘all allegiance to the United States of America.'”
At the age of three, Taylor began taking ballet lessons with Vaccani. Shortly
before the beginning of World War II, her parents decided to return to the United States
to avoid hostilities. Her mother took the children first, arriving in New York in April 1939,
while her father remained in London to wrap up matters in the art business, arriving in November.
They settled in Los Angeles, California, where Sara’s family, the Warmbrodts, were then living.
Through Hedda Hopper, the Taylors were introduced to Andrea Berens, a wealthy
English socialite and also fiancée of Cheever Cowden, chairman and major
stockholder of Universal Pictures in Hollywood. Berens insisted that
Sara bring Elizabeth to see Cowden who, she was adamant, would
be dazzled by Elizabeth’s breathtaking dark beauty; she was
born with a mutation that caused double rows of eyelashes,
which enhanced her appearance on camera.
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer soon took interest in the
British youngster as well but she failed to secure
a contract with them after an informal audition
with producer John Considine had shown that she
couldn’t sing. However, on September 18, 1941,
Universal Pictures signed Elizabeth to a six-month
renewable contract at $100 a week.
Taylor appeared in her first motion picture at the age of nine in
There’s One Born Every Minute, her only film for Universal Pictures. Less than six
months after she signed with Universal, her contract was reviewed by Edward Muhl, the studio’s
production chief. Muhl met with Taylor’s agent, Myron Selznick (brother of David), and
Cheever Cowden. Muhl challenged Selznick’s and Cowden’s constant support of Taylor:
“She can’t sing, she can’t dance, she can’t perform. What’s more, her mother has to be
one of the most unbearable women it has been my displeasure to meet.”
Universal cancelled Taylor’s contract just short of her tenth birthday in February 1942.
Nevertheless on October 15, 1942, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer signed Taylor to $100 a week for up to
three months to appear as “Priscilla” in the film Lassie Come Home.
Lassie Come Home featured child star Roddy McDowall, with
whom Taylor would share a lifelong friendship. Upon its release in
1943, the film received favourable attention for both McDowall and Taylor.
On the basis of her performance in Lassie Come Home MGM signed Taylor
to a conventional seven-year contract at $100 a week but increasing at
regular intervals until it reached a hefty $750 during the seventh year.
Her first assignment under her new contract at MGM was a loan-out to
20th Century Fox for the character of Helen Burns in a film version of the
Charlotte Bronte novel Jane Eyre (1944). During this period she also
returned to England to appear in another Roddy McDowall picture for
MGM, The White Cliffs of Dover (1944). But it was Taylor’s persistence in
campaigning for the role of Velvet Brown in MGM’s National Velvet that
skyrocketed Taylor to stardom at the tender age of 12.
Taylor’s character, Velvet Brown, is a young girl who trains her beloved
horse to win the Grand National. National Velvet, which also costarred
beloved American favorite Mickey Rooney and English newcomer Angela Lansbury,
became an overwhelming success upon its release in December 1944. Many years later
Taylor called it “the most exciting film” she had ever made, and the film changed her
life forever. Although it vastly increased her star power, many of her back problems were
traced to when she hurt her body falling off a horse during its filming.
National Velvet grossed over US$4 million at the box office and
Taylor was signed to a new long-term contract that raised her salary
to $30,000 per year. To capitalize on the box office success of Velvet,
Taylor was shoved into another animal opus, Courage of Lassie, in which
a different dog named “Bill”, cast as an Allied combatant in World War II,
regularly outsmarts the Nazis, with Taylor going through another outdoors
role. The 1946 success of Courage of Lassie led to another contract
drawn up for Taylor earning her $750 per week, her mother $250,
as well as a $1,500 bonus. Her roles as Mary Skinner in a loan-out
to Warner Brothers’ Life With Father (1947), Cynthia Bishop in Cynthia (1947),
Carol Pringle in A Date with Judy (1948) and Susan Prackett in
Julia Misbehaves (1948) all proved to be successful.
Her reputation as a bankable adolescent star and nickname of “One-Shot Liz”
(referring to her ability to shoot a scene in one take) promised her a full and bright career
with Metro. Taylor’s portrayal as Amy, in the American classic Little Women (1949) would prove to
be her last adolescent role. In October 1948, she sailed aboard the RMS Queen Mary
travelling to England where she would begin filming on Conspirator, in
which she would play her first adult role.
Unlike other child actors, Taylor easily transitioned to adult roles. Before
Conspirator’s 1949 release, a Time cover article called her “a jewel of
great price, a true star sapphire”, and the leader among Hollywood’s
next generation of stars such as Montgomery Clift, Kirk Douglas, and
Ava Gardner. The film failed at the box office, but 16-year-old
Taylor’s portrayal of a 21-year-old debutante who unknowingly
marries a communist spy played by 38-year-old Robert Taylor,
was praised by critics for her first adult lead in a film. Taylor’s
first picture under her new salary of $2,000 per week was
The Big Hangover (1950), both a critical and box office failure,
that paired her with screen idol Van Johnson. The picture also
failed to present Taylor with an opportunity to exhibit
her newly realized sensuality.
Her first box office success in an adult role came as Kay Banks in the romantic
comedy Father of the Bride (1950), alongside Spencer Tracy and Joan Bennett.
The film spawned a sequel, Father’s Little Dividend (1951), which Taylor’s costar
Spencer Tracy summarised with “boring… boring… boring”. The film did well at the
box office but it would be Taylor’s next picture that would set the course for her career
as a dramatic actress. In late 1949, Taylor had begun filming George Stevens’
A Place In The Sun. Upon its release in 1951, Taylor was hailed for her performance as
Angela Vickers, a spoiled socialite who comes between George Eastman (Clift) and
his poor, pregnant factory-working girlfriend Alice Tripp (Shelley Winters).
The film became the pivotal performance of Taylor’s career as critics acclaimed it as a
classic, a reputation it sustained throughout the next 50 years of cinema history.
The New York Times’ A.H. Weiler wrote, “Elizabeth’s delineation of the rich and
beauteous Angela is the top effort of her career”, and the Boxoffice reviewer
unequivocally stated “Miss Taylor deserves
an Academy Award”.
Taylor became increasingly unsatisfied with the roles being offered to her
at the time. While she wanted to play the lead roles in The Barefoot Contessa
and I’ll Cry Tomorrow, MGM continued to restrict her to mindless and
somewhat forgettable films such as: a cameo as herself in Callaway Went Thataway
(1951), Love Is Better Than Ever (1952), Ivanhoe (1952),
The Girl Who Had Everything (1953) and Beau Brummel (1954). She had
wanted to play the role of Lady Rowena in Ivanhoe, but the part was given to
Joan Fontaine. Taylor was given the role of Rebecca. When Taylor
became pregnant with her first child, MGM forced her through
The Girl Who Had Everything (even adding two hours to her daily
work schedule) so as to get one more film out of her before she
became too heavily pregnant.
Taylor lamented that she needed the money, as she had just bought
a new house with second husband Michael Wilding and with a child on the way things
would be pretty tight. Taylor had been forced by her pregnancy to turn down Elephant Walk
(1954), though the role had been designed for her. Vivien Leigh, almost two decades Taylor’s
senior, but to whom Taylor bore a striking resemblance, got the part and went to Ceylon to
shoot on location. Leigh suffered a nervous breakdown during filming, and Taylor reclaimed the role
after the birth of her child Michael Wilding, Jr. in January 1953.
portrayed Louise Durant, a beautiful rich girl in love with a
temperamental violinist (Vittorio Gassman) and an earnest young
pianist (John Ericson). A film critic for the New York Herald Tribune
wrote: “There is beauty in the picture all right, with Miss Taylor glowing
into the camera from every angle… but the dramatic pretenses are
weak, despite the lofty sentences and handsome manikin poses.”
Taylor’s fourth period picture, Beau Brummell, made just after
Elephant Walk and Rhapsody, cast her as the elaborately costumed Lady Patricia,
which many felt was only a screen prop—a ravishing beauty whose sole purpose was to
lend romantic support to the film’s title star, Stewart Granger. The Last Time I Saw Paris
(1954) fared only slightly better than her previous pictures, with Taylor being reunited
with The Big Hangover costar Van Johnson. The role of Helen Ellsworth Willis was based on
that of Zelda Fitzgerald and, although pregnant with her second child, Taylor went ahead with the
film, her fourth in twelve months. Although proving somewhat successful
at the box office, she still yearned for meatier roles.
Following a more substantial role opposite Rock Hudson and
James Dean in George Stevens’ epic Giant (1956), Taylor was
nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress four years in
a row for Raintree County (1957) opposite Montgomery Clift;
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958) opposite Paul Newman;
Suddenly, Last Summer (1959) with Montgomery Clift,
Katharine Hepburn and Mercedes McCambridge; and finally
winning for BUtterfield 8 (1960), which co-starred then husband Eddie Fisher.
In 1960, Taylor became the highest paid actress up to that time when she
signed a one million dollar contract to play the title role in 20th Century Fox’s
lavish production of Cleopatra,[14] which would eventually be released in 1963.
During the filming, she began a romance with her future husband Richard Burton, who
played Mark Antony in the film. The romance received much attention from the tabloid
press, as both were married to other spouses at the time. By working overtime,
Taylor received more than $2 million for her role.
Her second Academy Award, also for Best Actress in a Leading Role,
was for her performance as Martha in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966),
playing opposite then husband Richard Burton. Taylor and Burton would
appear together in six other films during the decade –
The V.I.P.s (1963), The Sandpiper (1965), The Taming of the Shrew (1967),
Doctor Faustus (1967), The Comedians {1967} and Boom! (1968).
Taylor appeared in John Huston’s Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967)
opposite Marlon Brando (replacing Montgomery Clift who died before
production began) and Secret Ceremony (1968) opposite Mia Farrow.
However, by the end of the decade her box-office drawing power
had considerably diminished, as evidenced by the failure of
The Only Game in Town (1970), with Warren Beatty.
Taylor continued to star in numerous theatrical films throughout the 1970s, such
as Zee and Co. (1972) with Michael Caine, Ash Wednesday (1973), The Blue Bird (1976)
with Jane Fonda and Ava Gardner, and A Little Night Music (1977). With then-husband
Richard Burton, she co-starred in the 1972 films Under Milk Wood and Hammersmith Is Out,
and the 1973 made-for-TV movie Divorce His, Divorce Hers. A chain smoker from an early age,
Taylor feared she had lung cancer in October 1975 after an X-ray showed spots on her lungs;
however, she was later found not to have the disease.
Taylor starred in the 1980 mystery film The Mirror Crack’d, based
on an Agatha Christie novel. In 1985, she played movie gossip columnist
Louella Parsons in the TV film Malice in Wonderland opposite
Jane Alexander, who played Hedda Hopper. Taylor appeared in the
miniseries North and South. Her last theatrical film was 1994’s The Flintstones.
In 2001, she played an agent in the TV film These Old Broads. She appeared on a
number of television series, including the soap operas General Hospital and
All My Children, as well as the animated series The Simpsons—once as herself,
and once as the voice of Maggie Simpson, uttering one word “Daddy”.
Taylor also acted on the stage, making her Broadway and West End debuts in 1982
with a revival of Lillian Hellman’s The Little Foxes. She was then in a production
of Noel Coward’s Private Lives (1983), in which she starred with her former husband,
Richard Burton. The student-run Burton Taylor Theatre in Oxford was named for the
famous couple after Burton appeared as Doctor Faustus in the Oxford University
Dramatic Society (OUDS) production of the Marlowe play. Taylor played the ghostly,
wordless Helen of Troy, who is entreated by Faustus to “make [him]
immortal with a kiss”. In the 1980s, she received
treatment for alcoholism.
In March 2003 Taylor declined to attend the 75th Annual Academy
Awards, due to her opposition to the Iraq war. She publicly condemned
then US President George W. Bush for calling on Saddam Hussein to leave
Iraq, and said she feared the conflict would lead to “World War III”.
Taylor is known to have smoked cigarettes into her mid-fifties.
In November 2004, she announced that she had been diagnosed with
congestive heart failure, a progressive condition in which the
heart is too weak to pump sufficient blood throughout the
body, particularly to the lower extremities: the ankles and feet.
She broke her back five times, had both her hips replaced, survived
a benign brain tumor operation and skin cancer, and faced life-
threatening bouts with pneumonia twice, one of which (1961),
resulted in an emergency tracheotomy. Towards the end of her
life she was reclusive and sometimes failed to make scheduled
appearances due to illness or other personal reasons. She used a
wheelchair and when asked about it stated that she had osteoporosis
and was born with scoliosis.
In 2005, Taylor was a vocal supporter of her friend Michael Jackson in his trial
in California on charges of sexually abusing a child.[26][27] He was eventually acquitted when
the prosecution collapsed due to a lack of concrete evidence. On 30 May 2006,
Taylor appeared on Larry King Live to refute the claims that she had been ill,
and denied the allegations that she was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease
and was close to death.
In late August 2006, Taylor decided to take a boating trip to
help prove that she was not close to death. She also decided to
make Christie’s auction house the primary place for selling her
jewelry, art, clothing, furniture and memorabilia.[29] Six months later,
the February 2007 issue of Interview magazine was devoted entirely
to Taylor. It celebrated her life, career and her upcoming 75th birthday.
On 5 December 2007, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and California
First Lady Maria Shriver inducted Taylor into the California Hall of Fame,
located at The California Museum for History, Women and the Arts.
Taylor was in the news in 2007 for a rumored ninth marriage to her companion
Jason Winters, which she dismissed as a rumour. However, she was quoted
as saying, “Jason Winters is one of the most wonderful men I’ve ever known and
that’s why I love him. He bought us the most beautiful house in Hawaii and we visit
it as often as possible,” to gossip columnist Liz Smith. Winters accompanied
Taylor to Macy’s Passport HIV/AIDS 2007 gala, where Taylor was honoured with
a humanitarian award. In 2008, Taylor and Winters were spotted celebrating the
4th of July on a yacht in Santa Monica, California. The couple attended the Macy’s
Passport HIV/AIDS gala again in 2008.
On December 1, 2007, Taylor acted on-stage again, appearing
opposite James Earl Jones in a benefit performance of the
A. R. Gurney play Love Letters. The event’s goal was to raise
$1 million for Taylor’s AIDS foundation. Tickets for the show
were priced at $2,500, and more than 500 people attended.
The event happened to coincide with the 2007 Writers Guild of America strike
and, rather than cross the picket line, Taylor requested a “one night dispensation.
” The Writers Guild agreed not to picket the Paramount Pictures lot
that night to allow for the performance.
Taylor had a passion for jewelry. She was a client of well-known jewelry
designer Shlomo Moussaieff. Over the years she owned a number of well-known
pieces, two of the most talked-about being the 33.19-carat (6.64 g) Krupp
Diamond and the 69.42-carat (13.88 g) pear-shaped Taylor-Burton Diamond, which
were among many gifts from husband Richard Burton. Taylor also owned the 50-carat (10 g)
La Peregrina Pearl, purchased by Burton as a Valentine’s Day present in 1969. The pearl
was formerly owned by Mary I of England, and Burton sought a portrait of Queen Mary
wearing the pearl. Upon the purchase of such a painting, the Burtons discovered that the
British National Portrait Gallery did not have an original painting of Mary, so they
donated the painting to the Gallery. Her enduring collection of jewelry has been
documented in her book My Love Affair with Jewelry (2002) with photographs by
the New York photographer John Bigelow Taylor (no relation).
Taylor started designing jewels for The Elizabeth Collection, creating
fine jewelry with elegance and flair. The Elizabeth Taylor collection by
Piranesi is sold at Christie’s. She also launched three perfumes, “Passion”,
“White Diamonds”, and “Black Pearls”, which, together, earn an estimated
US$200 million in annual sales. In fall 2006, Taylor celebrated the 15th
anniversary of her White Diamonds perfume, one of the top 10 best selling
fragrances for more than the past decade.
Taylor devoted much time and energy to AIDS-related charities and
fundraising. She helped start the American Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR)
after the death of her former costar and friend, Rock Hudson. She also created
her own AIDS foundation, the Elizabeth Taylor Aids Foundation (ETAF). By 1999,
she had helped to raise an estimated US$50 million to fight the disease. In 2006,
Taylor commissioned a 37-foot (11 m) “Care Van” equipped with examination tables
and X Ray equipment and also donated US$40,000 to the New Orleans Aids task force, a
charity designed for the New Orleans population with AIDS and HIV. The donation of the
van was made by the Elizabeth Taylor HIV/AIDS Foundation and Macy’s.
In the early 1980s, Taylor moved to Bel Air, Los Angeles, California, which was her
residence until her death. She also owned homes in Palm
Springs, London and Hawaii.
Taylor was a supporter of Kabbalah and member of the
Kabbalah Centre. She encouraged long-time friend Michael Jackson
to wear a red string as protection from the evil-eye during his 2005
trial for molestation, where he was eventually cleared of all charges. On
6 October 1991, Taylor had married construction worker Larry Fortensky
at Jackson’s Neverland Ranch.[38] In 1997, Jackson presented Taylor
with the exclusively written-for-her epic song “Elizabeth, I Love
You”, performed on the day of her 65th birthday celebration.
In October 2007, Taylor won a legal battle, over a Van Gogh painting
in her possession, View of the Asylum and Chapel at Saint Remy. The
United States Supreme Court refused to reconsider a legal suit filed by four persons
claiming that the artwork belonged to one of their Jewish ancestors,
regardless of any statute of limitations. Taylor attended Michael Jackson’s
-private funeral on 3 September 2009.
Marriages
Taylor was married eight times to seven husbands:
- Conrad “Nicky” Hilton (May 6, 1950 – January 29, 1951) (divorced)
- Michael Wilding (February 21, 1952 – January 26, 1957) (divorced)
- Michael Todd (February 2, 1957 – March 22, 1958) (widowed)
- Eddie Fisher (May 12, 1959 – March 6, 1964) (divorced)
- Richard Burton (March 15, 1964 – June 26, 1974) (divorced)
- Richard Burton (October 10, 1975 – July 29, 1976) (divorced)
- John Warner (December 4, 1976 – November 7, 1982) (divorced)
- Larry Fortensky (October 6, 1991 – October 31, 1996) (divorced)
Burton and Taylor remarried 16 months after their first divorce, in a mud hut in Botswana. He disagreed with others about her’s famed beauty, saying that calling Taylor “the most beautiful woman in the world is absolute nonsense. She has wonderful eyes, but she has a double chin and an overdeveloped chest, and she’s rather short in the leg.
Taylor converted from Christian Science to Judaism, between her marriages to Todd and Fisher.
Children
With Wilding (two sons):
- Michael Howard Wilding (born 1953)
- Christopher Edward Wilding (born 1955)
With Todd (one daughter):
- Elizabeth Frances “Liza” Todd (born 1957)
With Burton (one daughter):
- Maria Burton (born 1961; adopted 1964)
In 1971, Taylor became a grandmother at the age of 39. At the time of her death she was survived by her four children, ten grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren.
Taylor dealt with many serious health problems during her life, and many
times newspaper headlines announced that she was close to death. In 2004 it
was announced that she was suffering from congestive heart failure, and in 2009 she
underwent cardiac surgery to replace a leaky valve. In February 2011, new
symptoms related to congestive heart failure caused her to be admitted into
Cedars-Sinai Medical Center for treatment.
Taylor won two Academy Awards for Best Actress (for her
performance in Butterfield 8 in 1960, and for Who’s Afraid of
Virginia Woolf in 1966). She joined a select list of two-time Academy
Award winning Best Actress winners which includes Luise Rainer,
Bette Davis, Olivia de Havilland, Vivien Leigh, Ingrid Bergman, Glenda
Jackson, Jane Fonda, Sally Field, Jodie Foster, and Hillary Swank.
Additionally, she was awarded the Jean Herscholt Humanitarian
Academy Award in 1992 for her work fighting AIDS. In 1999, Taylor
was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire.
Taylor died on March 23, 2011, surrounded by her four
children at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles,
California, at the age of 79.
L’Histoire de Mode~Corset
Click picture for 18th Century Corset Pattern
A corset is a garment worn to hold and shape the torso into a
desired shape for aesthetic or medical purposes (either for the duration
of wearing it, or with a more lasting effect). Both men and women are
known to wear corsets, though women are more common wearers.
In recent years, the term “corset” has also been borrowed by the fashion
industry to refer to tops which, to varying degrees, mimic the look of
traditional corsets without actually acting as one. While these modern
corsets and corset tops often feature lacing and/or boning and generally
mimic a historical style of corsets, they have very little if any effect
on the shape of the wearer’s body. Genuine corsets are usually made by
a corsetmaker and should be fitted to the individual wearer.
The word corset is derived from the Old French word corps, the diminutive of
body, which itself derives from corpus – Latin for body. The craft of corset construction
is known as corsetry, as is the general wearing of them. (The word corsetry is
sometimes also used as a collective plural form of corset.) Someone who makes
corsets is a corsetier or corsetière (French terms for a man and for a woman,
respectively), or sometimes simply a corsetmaker. The word corset came into general
use in the English language in 1785. The word was used in The Ladies Magazine
to describe a “quilted waistcoat” called un corset by the French. The word was used
to differentiate the lighter corset from the heavier stays of the period.
Fashion
The most common and well-known use of corsets is to slim the
body and make it conform to a fashionable silhouette. For women
this most frequently emphasizes a curvy figure, by reducing
the waist, and thereby exaggerating the bust and hips. However,
in some periods, corsets have been worn to achieve a tubular
straight-up-and-down shape, which involves minimizing the bust and hips.
For men, corsets are more customarily used to slim the figure. However,
there was a period from around 1820 to 1835 when a wasp-waisted figure
(a small, nipped-in look to the waist) was also desirable for men; this
was sometimes achieved by wearing a corset.
An overbust corset encloses the torso, extending from just under the arms
to the hips. An underbust corset begins just under the breasts and extends down
to the hips. Some corsets extend over the hips and, in very rare instances, reach the knees.
A shorter kind of corset, which covers the waist area (from low on the ribs to just
above the hips), is called a waist cincher. A corset may also include garters to hold up
stockings (alternatively a separate garter belt may be worn for that).
Normally a corset supports the visible dress, and
spreads the pressure from large dresses, such as the
crinoline and bustle. Sometimes a corset cover is used to
protect outer clothes from the corset and to smooth the lines
of the corset. The original corset cover was worn under the
corset to provide a layer between it and the body. Corsets
were not worn next to the skin, possibly due to difficulties
with laundering these items during the 19th century, as they
had steel boning and metal eyelets which would rust. The
corset cover would be in the form of a light chemise,
made from cotton lawn or silk.
Medical
People with spinal problems such as scoliosis or with internal injuries may be fitted
with a form of corset in order to immobilize and protect the torso. Andy Warhol was shot
in 1968 and never fully recovered, and wore a corset for the rest of his life.
Fetish
Aside from fashion and medical uses, corsets are also used
in sexual fetishism, most notably in BDSM activities. In BDSM, a
submissive can be forced to wear a corset which would be laced
very tight and give some degree of restriction to the wearer. A dominant
can also wear a corset, often black, but for entirely different reasons,
such as aesthetics, and to achieve a severe, armored, “unbending”,
commanding appearance. A very common fetish costume for
women is the dominatrix costume. Usually it consists of mostly
dark or even black clothing. The woman usually wears a corset or
bustier and stockings with high-heeled footwear. High boots
are quite common as they enhance the woman’s domination.
Women in dominatrix costumes usually carry an accessory such
as a whip or a riding crop. A specially designed corset, in which
the breasts and vulva are left exposed can be worn during.
vanilla sex or BDSM activities.
Corsets are typically constructed of a flexible material (like cloth,
particularly coutil, or leather) stiffened with boning (also called ribs or stays) inserted
into channels in the cloth or leather. In the 19th century, bones of elephant, moose,
and whale were favored for the boning. Plastic is now the most commonly
used material for lightweight corsets and the majority of poor quality corsets,
whereas spring or spiral steel is preferred for stronger corsets and generally the
better quality corset too. Other materials used for boning include ivory, wood,
and cane. (By contrast, a girdle is usually made of elasticized fabric,
without boning.)
Corsets are held together by lacing, usually (though
not always) at the back. Tightening or loosening the lacing
produces corresponding changes in the firmness of the corset.
Depending on the desired effect and time period, corsets can be
laced from the top down, from the bottom up, or both up from the
bottom and down from the top, using two laces that meet in the
middle. It is difficult—although not impossible—for a back-laced
corset-wearer to do his or her own lacing. In the Victorian
heyday of corsets, a well-to-do woman’s corset laces would
be tightened by her maid, and a gentleman’s by his valet.
However, Victorian corsets also had a buttoned or
hooked front opening called a busk. If the corset was
worn loosely, it was possible to leave the lacing as
adjusted and take the corset on and off using the front
opening (if the corset is worn snugly, this method will
damage the busk if the lacing is not significantly
loosened beforehand). Self-lacing is also almost impossible
with tightlacing, which strives for the utmost possible reduction
of the waist. Modern tightlacers, lacking servants,
are usually laced by spouses and partners.
By wearing a tightly-laced corset for extended periods, known
as tightlacing, men and women can learn to tolerate extreme waist constriction
and eventually reduce their natural waist size. Tightlacers dream of 16 inches (41 cm)
and 17 inches (43 cm) waists[citation needed], but most are satisfied with anything under
20 inches (51 cm). Some went so far that they could only breathe with the top part of their
lungs. This caused the bottom part of their lungs to fill with mucus, symtoms of this
include a slight but persistant cough and heavy breathing causing a heaving
appearance of the bosom. Until 1998, the Guinness Book of World Records
listed Ethel Granger as having the smallest waist on record at 13 inches (33 cm).
After 1998, the category changed to “smallest waist on a living person”
and Cathie Jung took the title with a 15 inches (38 cm) waist. Other women,
such as Polaire, also have achieved such reductions
(14 inches (36 cm) in her case).
However, these are extreme cases. Corsets were and are still usually
designed for support, with freedom of body movement, an important
consideration in their design. Present day corset-wearers usually tighten
the corset just enough to reduce their waists by 2 inches (5.1 cm) to
4 inches (10 cm); it is very difficult for a slender woman to achieve
as much as 6 inches (15 cm), although larger women can do so more easily.
In the past, a woman’s corset was usually worn over a chemise, a sleeveless
low-necked gown made of washable material (usually cotton or linen). It absorbed
perspiration and kept the corset and the gown clean. In modern times, an
undershirt or corset liner may be worn.
Moderate lacing is not incompatible with vigorous activity.
Indeed, during the second half of the 19th century, when corset
wearing was common, there were sport corsets specifically designed
to wear while bicycling, playing tennis, or horseback riding,
as well as for maternity wear.
The corset has been erroneously attributed to Catherine de’ Medici, wife
of King Henry II of France. She enforced a ban on thick waists at court attendance
during the 1550s. For nearly 350 years, women’s primary means of support was
the corset, with laces and stays made of whalebone or metal. Other
researchers have found evidence of the
use of corsets in early Crete.
The corset has undergone many changes. The corset was
originally known as stays in the early 16th century. It was a
simple bodice with tabs at the waist, stiffened by horn, buckram,
and whalebone. The center front was further reinforced by a busk
made of ivory, wood, or metal. It was most often laced from
the back, and was, at first, a garment reserved for the aristocracy.
Stays took a different form in the 18th century, whalebone began to be
used more, and there was more boning used in the garment. The shape of the
stays changed as well. The stays were low and wide in the front, while in the
back they could reach as high as the upper shoulder. Stays could be strapless
or use shoulder straps. The straps of the stays were attached in
the back and tied at the front sides.
The purpose of 18th century stays was to support the bust, confer
the fashionable conical shape while drawing the shoulders back. At this
time, the eyelets were reinforced with stitches, and were not placed
across from one another, but staggered. This allowed the stays to be
spiral laced. One end of the stay lace is inserted and knotted in the
bottom eyelet, the other end is wound through the stays’ eyelets
and tightened on the top. Tight-lacing was not common in this
time period, and indulged in only by the very fashionable.
Stays were worn by women in all societal levels, from
ladies of the court to street vendors. At this time, there
were two other variants of stays, jumps, which were
looser stays with attached sleeves, like
a jacket, and corsets.
Corsets were originally quilted waistcoats, worn by French women
as an alternative to stiff corsets. They were only quilted linen, laced in the
front, and un-boned. This garment was meant to be worn on informal occasions,
while stays were worn for court dress. In the 1790s, stays fell out of fashion. This
development coincided with the French Revolution, and the adoption of neoclassical
styles of dress. Interestingly, it was the men, Dandies, who began to wear corsets.
The fashion persisted thorough the 1840s, though after 1850 men who wore corsets
claimed they needed them for “back pain”.
Stays went away in the late 18th century, but the corset remained.
Corsets in the early 19th century lengthened to the hip, the lower
tabs replaced by gussets at the hip. Room was made for the bust in
front with more gussets, and the back lowered. The shoulder straps
disappeared in the 1840s for normal wear.
In the 1820s, fashion changed again, with the waistline lowered back to
almost the natural position. Corsets began to be made with some
padding and boning. Corsets began to be worn by all classes of society.
Some women made their own, while others bought their corsets. Corsets
were one of the first mass produced garments for women. Corsets began to
be more heavily boned in the 1840s. By 1850, steel
boning became popular.
With the advent of metal eyelets, tight lacing became possible.
The position of the eyelets changed, they were now situated across
from one another at the back. The front was now fastened with a metal
busk in front. Corsets were mostly white. The corsets of the 1850s-1860s
were shorter than the corsets of the 19th century through 1840s. This
was because of a change in the silhouette of women’s fashion.
The 1850s and 60s emphasized the hoopskirt. After the 1860s,
when the hoop fell out of style, the corset became longer to
mold the abdomen, exposed by the new lines of the
princess or cuirass style.
During the Edwardian period, the straight front corset (also known as
the S-Curve corset) was introduced. This corset was straight in front, with a
pronounced curve at the back that forced the upper body forward, and
the derrière out. This style was worn from 1900-1908.
The corset reached its longest length in the early 20th century.
The longline corset at first reached from the bust down to the
upper thigh. There was also a style of longline corset that started
under the bust, and necessitated the wearing of a brassiere.
This style was meant to complement the new silhouette.
It was a boneless style, much closer to a modern
girdle than the traditional corset. The longline
style was abandoned during World War I.
The corset fell from fashion in the 1920s in Europe and North America,
replaced by girdles and elastic brassieres, but survived as an article of costume.
Originally an item of lingerie, the corset has become a popular item of outerwear in
the fetish, BDSM and goth subcultures. In the fetish and BDSM literature, there is often
much emphasis on tightlacing, and many corset
makers cater to the fetish market.
Outside the fetish community, living history re-enactors
and historic costume enthusiasts still wear corsets
according to their original purpose, to give the proper
shape to the figure when wearing historic fashions.
In this case, the corset is underwear rather than
outerwear. Skilled corset makers are available to
make reproductions of historic corset shapes,
or to design new styles.
There was a brief revival of the corset in the late 1940s and early
1950s, in the form of the waist cincher sometimes called a “waspie”. This
was used to give the hourglass figure dictated by Christian Dior’s ‘New Look’.
However, use of the waist cincher was restricted to haute couture, and mos
t women continued to use girdles. This revival was brief, as the New Look
gave way to a less dramatically-shaped silhouette.
Since the late 1980s, the corset has experienced periodic
revivals, which have usually originated in haute couture and
which have occasionally trickled through to mainstream fashion.
These revivals focus on the corset as an item of outerwear
rather than underwear. The strongest of these revivals
was seen in the Autumn 2001 fashion collections and
coincided with the release of the film Moulin Rouge!, the costumes
for which featured many corsets as characteristic of the era. Another
fashion movement which has renewed interest in the corset is the
“Steampunk” culture, which utilizes late-Victorian fashion
shapes in new ways. The look was popularized by the
costumes in the film “The Golden Compass.”
L’Histiore de Mode: Nouvelle Mode~Fabrican
In 2000 Fabrican patented an instant, sprayable, non-woven fabric.
Developed through a collaboration between Imperial College London and the
Royal College of Art, Fabrican technology has captured the imagination of designers,
industry and the public around the world. The technology has been developed for use
in household, industrial, personal and healthcare, decorative and fashion applications
using aerosol cans or spray-guns, and will soon be found in
products available everywhere.
The original idea of spray-on fabric came from Manel Torres’
work in the fashion industry. These photos capture the essence
of science and fashion in collaboration. Fabrican spray-on fabric
will liberate designers to create new and unique garments, offer a
carrier technology for delivery of fragrance or even medical active
substances, and allow the wearer to personalise their wardrobe
in infinite combinations. New textures and material characteristics are
a matter of adjusting chemistry. In addition to fashion, the technology is
opening new vistas, offering sprayable material for any application requiring a
fabric coating. The technology opens new vistas for personalised fashion,
allowing individual touches to be added to manufactured garments, or even impromptu
alterations. Garments could incorporate fragrances, active substances,
or conductive materials to interface with information technolgy.
After a decade of research, this futuristic
vision is taking shape.
Fabrican is a rare achievement in transforming a dream to practical realisation.
Through combination of clever exploitation of people’s immediate fascination with
the spray-on fabric, and Manel’s extraordinary ability to motivate multi-disciplinary
collaboration, Fabrican has brought interest and worldwide
media coverage.
Company History
- 1995 – 1997 Manel Torres conceives the idea for Spray-on Fabric whilst studying for his MA in Fashion Women’s Wear, Royal College of Art, London.
- 1998 – 2001 Manel Torres obtains his PhD for Spray-on Fabric at the Royal College of Art and has a patent filed for this technology. During his PhD research, his work was supervised by Dr Susannah Handley (Royal College of Art) and Professor Paul Luckham (Department of Chemical Engineering, Imperial College London).
- 2003 Manel Torres establishes Fabrican Ltd. with Professor Paul Luckham.
Aware of the slow process of constructing garments, Manel investigated novel ways to speed up this process. Manel’s foresight and vision led him to think of developing a material that would almost magically fit the body like a second skin and at the same time have the appearance of clothing.
The original concept was to utilise Spray-on Fabric in the fashion industry. However, the technology has the potential to revolutionise and enhance numerous market areas.
Fabrican is focused on the research and development of Spray-on Fabric which can then be used across a number of market sectors. Fabrican’s mission is to develop prototype products, in collaboration with leading industrial partners, leading to commercial exploitation by the partner.
Fabrican
Our technology can be used across many industries, positively impacting the lives of millions of people as well as the environment.
Fabrican Ltd. is a company exploiting inter-disciplinary research which links the subjects of science and design.
Our team is dedicated to meeting the needs of consumers with creative ideas and innovative products, through the development of new applications for Spray-on Fabric technology.
Our novel concepts are enlightening major worldwide manufacturers as to the huge potential which exists, through the successful branding of a product range.
Our underlying ethos is to produce concept products which are market leaders, through scientific research and development for future markets.
Fabrican in Action
In the science lab
On the Runway
Couture in a Can
I still can’t tell yet if it would be a good investment as a designer or a huge waste of money, time, & effort. LoL Who wears that out? Gaga? That’s it?!?
L’Histoire de Mode~Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire
The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City on
March 25, 1911, was the deadliest industrial disaster in the
history of the city of New York and resulted in the fourth highest
loss of life from an industrial accident in U.S. history. The fire
caused the deaths of 146 garment workers, who either died
from the fire or jumped to their deaths. Most of the victims were
recent immigrant Jewish women aged sixteen to twenty-three.
Many of the workers could not escape the burning building because the
managers had locked the doors to the stairwells and exits. People jumped from
the eighth, ninth, and tenth floors. The fire led to legislation requiring improved
factory safety standards and helped spur the growth of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union,
which fought for better working conditions for sweatshop workers. The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory was
located in the Asch Building, now known as the Brown Building of Science, a New York University facility.
It has been designated as a National Historic Landmark and
a New York City landmark.
The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory occupied the eighth, ninth, and tenth floors
of the Asch Building. Under the ownership of Max Blanck and Isaac Harris,
the factory produced women’s blouses, known as “shirtwaists.” The factory normally
employed about 500 workers, mostly young immigrant women, who worked nine
hours a day on weekdays plus seven hours on Saturdays.
On the afternoon of Saturday, March 25, 1911, as the workday was ending, a fire
flared up in a scrap bin under one of the cutters’ tables on the eighth floor.Both owners of the
factory were in attendance and had invited their children to the factory on that afternoon.
The Fire Marshal concluded that the likely cause of the fire was the disposal of an
unextinguished match or cigarette butt in the scrap bin. Although smoking was banned in the
factory, cutters were known to sneak cigarettes, exhaling the smoke through their lapels
to avoid detection. A New York Times article suggested that the fire may have been
started by the engines running the sewing machines, while The Insurance Monitor, a leading
industry journal, suggested that the epidemic of fires among shirtwaist manufacturers
was “fairly saturated with moral hazard.” No one suggested arson.
A bookkeeper on the eighth floor was able to warn employees on the
tenth floor via telephone, but there was no audible alarm and no way
to contact staff on the ninth floor. According to survivor
Yetta Lubitz, the first warning of the fire on the ninth
floor arrived at the same time as the fire itself.
The floor had a number of exits – two freight elevators, a
fire escape, and stairways down to Greene Street and
Washington Square – but flames prevented workers from
descending the Greene Street stairway and the door to the Washington Square
stairway was locked to prevent theft and the foreman who held the
key had escaped by another route.
Dozens of employees escaped the fire by going up the Greene Street
stairway to the roof. Other survivors were able to jam themselves into the elevators
while they continued to operate. Within three minutes, the Greene Street stairway
became unusable in both directions. Terrified employees crowded
onto the single exterior fire escape, a flimsy and poorly-anchored iron structure
which may have been broken before the fire. It soon twisted and collapsed from the
heat and overload, spilling victims to their deaths onto the concrete pavement
nearly a hundred feet below. Elevator operators Joseph Zito
and Gaspar Mortillalo saved many lives by traveling three times up
to the ninth floor for passengers, but Mortillalo was eventually forced
to give up when the rails of his elevator buckled under the heat. Some victims pried
the elevator doors open and jumped down the empty shaft. The weight of these
bodies made it impossible for Zito to make another attempt.
As a large crowd of bystanders gathered on the street, sixty-two people
died by jumping or falling from the ninth floor. Louis Waldman, later a
New York Socialist state assemblyman, described the scene years later:
One Saturday afternoon in March of that year — March 25, to be precise — I was sitting at one of the reading tables in the old Astor Library… It was a raw, unpleasant day and the comfortable reading room seemed a delightful place to spend the remaining few hours until the library closed. I was deeply engrossed in my book when I became aware of fire engines racing past the building. By this time I was sufficiently Americanized to be fascinated by the sound of fire engines. Along with several others in the library, I ran out to see what was happening, and followed crowds of people to the scene of the fire. A few blocks away, the Asch Building at the corner of Washington Place and Greene Street was ablaze. When we arrived at the scene, the police had thrown up a cordon around the area and the firemen were helplessly fighting the blaze. The eighth, ninth, and tenth stories of the building were now an enormous roaring cornice of flames.Word had spread through the East Side, by some magic of terror, that the plant of the Triangle Waist Company was on fire and that several hundred workers were trapped. Horrified and helpless, the crowds — I among them — looked up at the burning building, saw girl after girl appear at the reddened windows, pause for a terrified moment, and then leap to the pavement below, to land as mangled, bloody pulp. This went on for what seemed a ghastly eternity. Occasionally a girl who had hesitated too long was licked by pursuing flames and, screaming with clothing and hair ablaze, plunged like a living torch to the street. Life nets held by the firemen were torn by the impact of the falling bodies.
The emotions of the crowd were indescribable. Women were hysterical, scores fainted; men wept as, in paroxysms of frenzy, they hurled themselves against the police lines.
The remainder waited until smoke and fire overcame them. The fire
department arrived quickly but was unable to stop the flames,
as there were no ladders available that could reach beyond
the sixth floor. The fallen bodies and falling victims also
made it difficult for the fire department
to reach the building. Bodies of the
victims being placed in coffins
on the sidewalk.
Although early references of the death toll ranged from 141 to 148, almost all modern
references agree that 146 people died as a result of the fire. Six victims remained
unidentified until 2011. Most victims died of burns, asphyxiation,
blunt impact injuries, or a combination of the three. Almost thirty
of the victims were men. The first person to jump was a man, and another man
was seen kissing a young woman at the window before they
both jumped to their deaths.
Twenty-two victims of the fire were buried by the
Hebrew Free Burial Association in a special section at Mount
Richmond Cemetery. In some instances, their tombstones refer to the fire.
Another six victims were buried in the Cemetery of the Evergreens in
Brooklyn. Originally interred elsewhere on the grounds, their
remains now lie underneath a monument to the tragedy,
a large marble slab featuring a kneeling woman.
Six of those victims were identified in February 2011.
The company’s owners, Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, had fled to the building’s roof
when the fire began and survived. They were later put on trial, at which Max Steuer, counsel for
the defendants, managed to destroy the credibility of one of the survivors, Kate Alterman,
by asking her to repeat her testimony a number of times — which she did without altering
key phrases that Steuer believed were perfected before trial. Steuer argued to the jury that
Alterman and probably other witnesses had memorized their statements and might even
have been told what to say by the prosecutors. The defense also stressed that the
prosecution had failed to prove that the owners knew the exit doors were locked at the
time in question. The jury acquitted the owners. However, they lost a subsequent
civil suit in 1913 and plaintiffs won compensation in the amount of $75 per
deceased victim. The insurance company paid Blanck and Harris about
$60,000 more than the reported losses, or about $400 per casualty. In 1913, Blanck
was once again arrested for locking the door in his factory
during working hours. He was fined $20.
Films
- American Experience: Triangle Fire (2011), documentary produced and directed by Jamila Wignot, narrated by Michael Murphy
- The Triangle Factory Fire Scandal (1979), directed by Mel Stuart, produced by Mel Brez and Ethel Brez
- Those Who Know Don’t Tell: The Ongoing Battle for Workers’ Health (1990), produced by Abby Ginzberg, narrated by Studs Terkel
- With These Hands (1950), directed by Jack Arnold
L’Histoire de Mode~Crochet
Crochet
Crochet (pronounced /kroʊˈʃeɪ/) is a process of creating fabric from yarn using a crochet hook. The word is derived from the French word “crochet”, meaning hook. Crocheting, similar to knitting, consists of pulling loops of yarn through other loops. Crochet differs from knitting in that only one loop is active at one time (the sole exception being Tunisian crochet), and that a single crochet hook is used instead of two knitting needles.
Lis Paludan theorizes that crochet evolved from traditional practices
in Arabia, South America, or China, but there is no decisive evidence of the
craft being performed before its popularity in Europe during the 19th century
The earliest written reference to crochet refers to shepherd’s knitting from
The Memoirs of a Highland Lady by Elizabeth Grant in the 19th century.
The first published crochet patterns appeared in the Dutch magazine Pénélopé in
1824. Other indicators that crochet was new in the 19th century include the
1847 publication A Winter’s Gift, which provides detailed instructions for
performing crochet stitches, although it presumes that readers
understand the basics of other needlecrafts. Early references to
the craft in Godey’s Lady’s Book in 1846 and 1847
refer to crotchet before the
spelling standardized
in 1848.
Knit and knotted textiles survive from very early periods,
but there are no surviving samples of crocheted fabric in
any ethnological collection, or archeological source prior to
1800. These writers point to the tambour hooks used in
tambour embroidery in France in the 18th century, and
contend that the hooking of loops through fine fabric in tambour
work evolved into “crochet in the air.” Most samples of early work
claimed to be crochet turn out to actually be samples of nålebinding.
Donna Kooler identifies a problem with the tambour hypothesis:
period tambour hooks that survive in modern collections cannot
produce crochet because the integral wing nut necessary for tambour
work interferes with attempts at crochet. Kooler proposes that early
industrialization is key to the development of crochet. Machine spun
cotton thread became widely available and inexpensive in Europe and
North America after the invention of the cotton gin and the spinning jenny,
displacing hand spun linen for many uses. Crochet technique consumes
more thread than comparable textile production methods
and cotton is well suited to crochet.
Early crochet hooks ranged from primitive bent needles in a
cork handle, used by poor Irish lace workers, to expensively crafted
silver, brass, steel, ivory and bone hooks set into a variety of handles, some of which
were better designed to show off a lady’s hands than they were to work with thread.
By the early 1840s, instructions for crochet were being published
in England, particularly by Eleanor Riego de la Blanchardiere and Frances Lambert.
These early patterns called for cotton and linen thread for lace,
and wool yarn for clothing,
often in vivid color combinations.
In the 19th century, as Ireland was facing the Great Irish Famine (1845-1849),
crochet lace work was introduced as a form of famine relief (the production of crocheted
lace being an alternative way of making money for impoverished Irish workers).
Mademoiselle Riego de la Blanchardiere is generally credited with the
invention of Irish Crochet, publishing the first book of patterns in 1846.
Irish lace became popular in Europe and America, and was
made in quantity until the first World War.
Fashions in crochet changed with the end of the Victorian era in the 1890s.
Crocheted laces in the new Edwardian era, peaking between 1910 and 1920, became
even more elaborate in texture and complicated stitching.The strong Victorian
colours disappeared, though, and new publications called for white or pale threads,
except for fancy purses, which were often crocheted of brightly colored silk
and elaborately beaded. After World War I, far fewer crochet patterns were published,
and most of them were simplified versions of the early 20th century patterns.
After World War II, from the late 40s until the early 60s, there was a resurgence in
interest in home crafts, particularly in the United States, with many new
and imaginative crochet designs published for colorful doilies, potholders,
and other home items, along with updates of earlier publications. These patterns
called for thicker threads and yarns than in earlier patterns and included
wonderful variegated colors. The craft remained primarily a homemaker’s art
until the late 1960s and early 1970s, when the new generation picked up on crochet
and popularized granny squares, a motif worked in the round and incorporating
bright colors. Although crochet underwent a subsequent decline in popularity,
the early 21st century has seen a revival of interest in handcrafts and DIY, as well
as great strides in improvement of the quality and varieties of yarn. There are many
more new pattern books with modern patterns being printed, and most yarn
stores now offer crochet lessons in addition to the traditional knitting lessons.
Filet crochet, Tunisian crochet, broomstick lace, hairpin lace, cro-hooking, and
Irish crochet are all variants of the basic crochet method.
Crochet patterns have an underlying mathematical
structure and have been used to illustrate shapes
in hyperbolic geometry that are difficult to reproduce
using other media or are difficult to understand
when viewed two-dimensionally.
Materials:
Hook
The Crochet hook comes in many sizes and materials,
such as bone, bamboo, aluminum, plastic and steel.
Steel crochet hooks range from 0.4 to
3.5 millimeters in the size of the hook,
or from 00 to 16 in American sizing.
These hooks are used for fine crochet work.
Aluminum, bamboo, and plastic crochet
hooks are available from 2.5 to 19 millimeters
in hook size, or from B to S in American sizing.
There are also many artisan-made hooks,
most of hand-turned wood, sometimes
decorated with semi-precious stones or beads.
Crochet hooks used for Tunisian crochet are elongated and have a stopper at
the end of the handle, while double-ended crochet hooks have a hook on both ends
of the handle. There is also a double hooked apparatus called a Cro-hook that has become
popular. Also, a Hair-Pin Crochet Hook is often used to create lacey and long stitches.
For crocheting you will also need some type of material that will be crocheted,
which is most commonly yarn or thread.
Other equipment includes cardboard cut-outs, which can be
used to make tassels, fringe, and many other items; a pom-pom circle,
used to make pom-poms; a tape measure, a gauge measure, both
used for measuring crocheted work and counting stitches; a row counter;
and occasionally plastic rings, which are used for special projects.
Yarn
Yarn for crochet is usually sold as balls or skeins (hanks), although it may also be
wound on spools or cones. Skeins and balls are generally sold with a yarn-band, a label that describes
the yarn’s weight, length, dye lot, fiber content, washing instructions, suggested
needle size, likely gauge, etc. It is common practice to save the yarn band for future reference,
especially if additional skeins must be purchased. Crocheters generally ensure that the yarn
for a project comes from a single dye lot. The dye lot specifies a group of skeins that were
dyed together and thus have precisely the same color; skeins from different dye-lots,
even if very similar in color, are usually slightly different and may produce a
visible stripe when crocheted together. If insufficient yarn of a single dye lot
is bought to complete a project, additional skeins of the same dye lot can
sometimes be obtained from other yarn stores or online.
The thickness or weight of the yarn is a significant factor in
determining the gauge, i.e., how many stitches and rows are
required to cover a given area for a given stitch pattern. Thicker
yarns generally require thicker crocheting hooks, whereas thinner
yarns may be knit with thick or thin needles. Hence, thicker yarns
generally require fewer stitches, and therefore less time, to knit
up a given garment. Patterns and motifs are coarser with thicker
yarns; thicker yarns produce bold visual effects, whereas thinner
yarns are best for refined patterns. Yarns are grouped by thickness
into six categories: superfine, fine, light, medium, bulky and
superbulky; quantitatively, thickness is measured by the
number of wraps per inch (WPI). The related weight
per unit length is usually measured in tex or dernier.
Before use, one would typically transform a hank into a ball where the yarn
emerges from the center of the ball; this making the work easier by preventing the
yarn from becoming easily tangled. This transformation may be done
by hand, or with a device known as a ballwinder.
A yarn’s usefulness is judged by several factors, such as its loft (its ability to trap air),
its resilience (elasticity under tension), its washability and colorfastness,
its hand (its feel, particularly softness vs. scratchiness), its durability against abrasion,
its resistance to pilling, its hairiness (fuzziness), its tendency to twist or untwist, its overall
weight and drape, its blocking and felting qualities, its comfort (breathability,
moisture absorption, wicking properties) and of course its look, which includes its
color, sheen, smoothness and ornamental features. Other factors include allergenicity;
speed of drying; resistance to chemicals, moths, and mildew; melting point and
flammability; retention of static electricity; and the propensity to become stained and to
accept dyes. Different factors may be more significant than others for different projects, so
there is no one “best” yarn. The resilience and propensity to (un)twist are general
properties that affect the ease to work with.
Although crochet may be done with ribbons, metal wire or more exotic
filaments, most yarns are made by spinning fibers. In spinning,
the fibers are twisted so that the yarn resists breaking under tension;
the twisting may be done in either direction, resulting in an Z-twist
or S-twist yarn. If the fibers are first aligned by combing them, the
yarn is smoother and called a worsted; by contrast, if the fibers are
carded but not combed, the yarn is fuzzier and called woolen-spun. The
fibers making up a yarn may be continuous filament fibers such as silk and
many synthetics, or they may be staples (fibers of an average length, typically
a few inches); naturally filament fibers are sometimes cut up into staples before
spinning. The strength of the spun yarn against breaking is determined
by the amount of twist, the length of the fibers and the thickness of the
yarn. In general, yarns become stronger with more twist (also called worst),
longer fibers and thicker yarns (more fibers); for example, thinner
yarns require more twist than do thicker yarns to resist breaking
under tension. The thickness of the yarn may vary along its l
ength; a slub is a much thicker section in which a mass
of fibers is incorporated into the yarn.
The spun fibers are generally divided into animal fibers, plant and synthetic fibers.
These fiber types are chemically different, corresponding to proteins, carbohydrates and
synthetic polymers, respectively. Animal fibers include silk, but generally are l
ong hairs of animals such as sheep (wool), goat (angora, or cashmere goat), rabbit
(angora), llama, alpaca, dog, cat, camel, yak, and muskox (qiviut). Plants used for
fibers include cotton, flax (for linen), bamboo, ramie, hemp, jute, nettle, raffia, yucca,
coconut husk, banana trees, soy and corn. Rayon and acetate fibers are also produced from
cellulose mainly derived from trees. Common synthetic fibers include acrylics,[10] polyesters such
as dacron and ingeo, nylon and other polyamides, and olefins such as polypropylene. Of these types,
wool is generally favored for crochet, chiefly owing to its superior elasticity, warmth and
(sometimes) felting; however, wool is generally less convenient to clean and some people are
allergic to it. It is also common to blend different fibers in the yarn, e.g., 85% alpaca and 15%
silk. Even within a type of fiber, there can be great variety in the length and thickness of the
fibers; for example, Merino wool and Egyptian cotton are favored because they produce
exceptionally long, thin (fine) fibers for their type.
A single spun yarn may be crochet as is, or braided or plied with another.
In plying, two or more yarns are spun together, almost always in the
opposite sense from which they were spun individually; for example,
two Z-twist yarns are usually plied with an S-twist. The opposing
twist relieves some of the yarns’ tendency to curl up and produces
a thicker, balanced yarn. Plied yarns may themselves be plied together,
producing cabled yarns or multi-stranded yarns. Sometimes, the
yarns being plied are fed at different rates, so that one yarn loops
around the other, as in bouclé. The single yarns may be dyed
separately before plying, or afterwords to give the
yarn a uniform look.
The dyeing of yarns is a complex art. Yarns need not be dyed; or they may be
dyed one color, or a great variety of colors. Dyeing may be done industrially, by hand
or even hand-painted onto the yarn. A great variety of synthetic dyes have been developed
since the synthesis of indigo dye in the mid-19th century; however, natural dyes are also possible,
although they are generally less brilliant. The color-scheme of a yarn is sometimes called its colorway.
Variegated yarns can produce interesting visual effects,
such as diagonal stripes; conversely.
How it’s Done
Crocheted fabric is begun by placing a slip-knot loop on the hook,
pulling another loop through the first loop, and repeating this process
to create a chain of a suitable length. The chain is either turned and worked
in rows, or joined to the beginning of the row with a slip stitch and worked in
rounds. Rounds can also be created by working many stitches into a single loop.
Stitches are made by pulling one or more loops through each loop of the chain.
At any one time at the end of a stitch, there is only one loop left on the hook.
Tunisian crochet, however, draws all of the loops for an entire row onto a long
hook before working them off one at a time.
Samples:
Free Crochet Lace Pattern, click the photo below. Something to start us off with….
Qoute of the Day: 18 Feb. ’11~P.J. O’Rourke
“Never wear anything that panics the cat.”~P.J. O’Rourke
O'Rourke (born November 14, 1947) is an American political satirist, journalist, writer, and author. O'Rourke is the H. L. Mencken Research Fellow at the Cato Institute and is a regular correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly, The American Spectator, and The Weekly Standard, and frequent panelist on National Public Radio's game show Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! He is known in the United Kingdom as the face of a long-running series of television advertisements for British Airways in the 1990s.
L’Histoire de Mode~Kimono
click for pattern
The kimono (着物) is a Japanese traditional garment worn by women,
men and children. The word “kimono”, which literally means a “thing to wear”
(ki “wear” and mono “thing”), has come to denote these full-length robes. The
standard plural of the word kimono in English is kimonos, but the unmarked
Japanese plural kimono is also sometimes used. Kimonos are T-shaped,
straight-lined robes worn so that the hem falls to the ankle, with attached
collars and long, wide sleeves. Kimonos are wrapped around the body, always
with the left side over the right (except when dressing the dead for burial),
and secured by a sash called an obi, which is tied at the back. Kimonos are
generally worn with traditional footwear (especially zōri or geta)
and split-toe socks (tabi).
Today, kimonos are most often worn by women, and on special occasions.
Traditionally, unmarried women wore a style of kimono called furisode,
with almost floor-length sleeves, on special occasions. A few older women and even fewer men still
wear the kimono on a daily basis. Men wear the kimono most often at weddings, tea ceremonies,
and other very special or very formal occasions. Professional sumo wrestlers are often
seen in the kimono because they are required to wear
traditional Japanese dress whenever
appearing in public.
As the kimono has another name, gofuku (呉服, literally “clothes of Wu (吳)”),
the earliest kimonos were heavily influenced by traditional Han Chinese clothing,
known today as hanfu (漢服, kanfuku in Japanese), through Japanese embassies
to China which resulted in extensive Chinese culture adoptions by Japan, as early
as the 5th century CE. It was during the 8th century, however, that Chinese
fashions came into style among the Japanese, and the overlapping collar became
particularly a women’s fashion. During Japan’s Heian period (794–1192 CE),
the kimono became increaslingly stylized, though one still wore a half-apron,
called a mo, over it. During the Muromachi age (1392–1573 CE), the Kosode,
single kimono formerly considered underwear, began to be worn without the
hakama (trousers, divided skirt) over it, and thus began to be held closed by
an obi “belt”. During the Edo period (1603–1867 CE), the sleeves began to grow
in length, especially among unmarried women, and the Obi became wider, with
various styles of tying coming into fashion. Since then, the basic shape of
both the men’s and women’s kimono has remained essentially unchanged.
Kimonos made with exceptional skill from fine materials have
been regarded as great works of art.
The formal kimono was replaced by the more convenient Western clothes
and Yukata as everyday wear. After an edict by Emperor Meiji,police, railroad men
and teachers moved to Western clothes. The Western clothes became the army and school uniform
for boys. After the 1923 Great Kantō earthquake, kimono wearers often became victims of robbery
because they could not run very fast due to the restricting nature of the kimono on the body and
geta slippers. The Tokyo Women’s & Children’s Wear Manufacturers’ Association
(東京婦人子供服組合) promoted Western clothes. Between 1920 and 1930 the sailor outfit replaced
the undivided hakama in school uniforms for girls. The 1932 fire at Shirokiya’s Nihombashi
is said to have been the catalyst for the decline in kimonos as everyday wear. Kimono-clad Japanese
women did not wear panties and several women refused to jump into safety nets because they were ashamed
of being seen from below. (It is, however, suggested, that this is an urban myth.)The national uniform,
Kokumin-fuku (国民服), a type of Western clothes, was mandated for males in 1940.Today
most people wear Western clothes and wear the cooler and more
comfortable yukata for special occasions.
Kimonos for men are available in various sizes and should fall
approximately to the ankle without tucking. A woman’s kimono
has additional length to allow for the ohashori, the tuck that can be
seen under the obi, which is used to adjust the kimono to the individual
wearer. An ideally tailored kimono has sleeves that fall to the wrist
when the arms are lowered.
Kimonos are traditionally made from a single bolt of fabric called a tan.
Tan come in standard dimensions—about 14 inches wide and 12½ yards long—and the
entire bolt is used to make one kimono. The finished kimono consists of four main strips
of fabric—two panels covering the body and two panels forming the sleeves—
with additional smaller strips forming the narrow front panels and collar.
Historically, kimonos were often taken apart for washing as separate panels
and resewn by hand. Because the entire bolt remains in the finished
garment without cutting, the kimono can be retailored
easily to fit a different person.
The maximum width of the sleeve is dictated by the width of the fabric.
The distance from the center of the spine to the end of the sleeve could not
exceed twice the width of the fabric. Traditional kimono fabric was typically
no more than 36 centimeters (14 inches) wide. Thus the distance from spine to
wrist could not exceed a maximum of roughly 68 centimeters (27 inches).
Modern kimono fabric is woven as wide as 42 centimeters (17 inches) to
accommodate modern Japanese body sizes. Very tall or heavy people,
such as sumo wrestlers, must have kimonos custom-made by either
joining multiple bolts, weaving custom-width fabric, or using
non-standard size fabric.
Traditionally, kimonos are sewn by hand, but even machine-made kimonos
require substantial hand-stitching. Kimono fabrics are also frequently hand made
and hand decorated. Various techniques such as yūzen dye resist are used for
applying decoration and patterns to the base cloth. Repeating patterns that cover a
large area of a kimono are traditionally done with the yūzen resist technique
and a stencil. Over time there have been many variations in color, fabric
and style, as well as accessories such as the obi.
The kimono and obi are traditionally made of silk, silk brocade, silk crepes
(such as chirimen) and satin weaves (such as rinzu). Modern kimonos are also
widely available in less-expensive easy-care fabrics such as rayon, cotton
sateen, cotton, polyester and other synthetic fibers. Silk is still
considered the ideal fabric.
Customarily, woven patterns and dyed repeat patterns are considered informal.
Formal kimonos have free-style designs dyed over the whole surface or along the hem.
During the Heian period, kimonos were worn with up to a dozen or more colorful contrasting layers,
with each combination of colors being a named pattern.Today, the kimono is normally worn with
a single layer on top of one or more undergarments. The pattern of the kimono can also
determine in which season it should be worn. For example, a pattern with butterflies or
cherry blossoms would be worn in spring. Watery designs are common during the summer.
A popular autumn motif is the russet leaf of the Japanese maple; for winter, designs
may include bamboo, pine trees and plum blossoms.
A popular form of textile art in Japan is shibori (intricate tie dye),
found on some of the more expensive kimonos and haori kimono jackets.
Patterns are created by minutely binding the fabric and masking off areas,
then dying it, usually done by hand. When the bindings are removed, an
undyed pattern is revealed. Shibori work can be further enhanced with
yuzen (hand applied) drawing or painting with textile dyes or with embroidery;
it is then known as tsujigahana. Shibori textiles are very time consuming to
produce and require great skill, so the textiles and garments created from
them are very expensive and highly prized.
Old kimonos are often recycled in various ways: altered to make haori, hiyoku, or
kimonos for children, used to patch similar kimono, used for making handbags and similar
kimono accessories, and used to make covers, bags or cases for various implements, especially
for sweet-picks used in tea ceremonies. Damaged kimonos can be disassembled and resewn
to hide the soiled areas, and those with damage below the waistline can be worn under a hakama.
Historically, skilled craftsmen laboriously picked the silk thread from old kimono and rewove
it into a new textile in the width of a heko obi for men’s kimono, using a
recycling weaving method called saki-ori.
Parts of a kimono
 |
- Dōura (胴裏) upper lining on a woman’s kimono
- Eri (衿) collar
- Fuki hem guard
- Furi sleeve below the armhole
- Maemigoro (前身頃) front main panel, excluding sleeves. Covering portion of the other side of the back, maemigoro is divided into “right maemigoro” and “left maemigoro”.
- Miyatsukuchi opening under the sleeve
- Okumi (衽) front inside panel situated on the front edge of the left and right, excluding the sleeve of a kimono. Until the collar, down to the bottom of the dress goes, up and down part of the strip of cloth. Have sewn the front body. It is also called “袵”
- Sode (袖) sleeve
- Sodeguchi (袖口) sleeve opening
- Sodetsuke (袖付) kimono armhole
- Susomawashi (裾回し) lower lining
- Tamoto (袂) sleeve pouch
- Tomoeri (共衿) over-collar (collar protector)
- Uraeri (裏襟) inner collar
- Ushiromigoro (後身頃) back main panel, excluding sleeves, covering the back portion. They are basically sewn back-centered and consist of “right ushiromigoro” and “left ushiromigoro”. But for wool fablic, ushiro migoro consists of 1 clothes.
Samples:
L’Histoire de Mode~Athletic Shoe
Athletic shoe is a generic name for the footwear primarily designed for sports or other forms of physical exercise but in recent years has come to be used for casual everyday activities.
They are also known as trainers (British English), sandshoes, gym boots or joggers (Australian English), running shoes, runners or gutties (Canadian English, Australian English, Hiberno-English), sneakers, tennis shoes (North American English, Australian English), gym shoes, tennies, sports shoes, sneaks, tackies(South African English and Hiberno-English), rubber shoes (Philippine English) or canvers (Nigerian English).
The idea of a “sneaker” did not come along until an American inventor, Charles Goodyear, patented the process for the vulcanization of rubber.
While many believe that the first basketball shoe was the famous Converse All Stars (developed in 1917), this is mistaken. The Spalding company produced shoes specifically for the game of basketball as early as 1907.
By the early 1900s, sneakers were being produced by small rubber companies who specialized in the production of bicycle tires. U.S. Rubber, introduced Keds in 1916, about the same time that Converse was marketing its All Star. Other companies, including B.F. Goodrich and Spalding Co., were producing tennis shoes and smaller family-owned companies were manufacturing early cleated shoes. At first, the market for sneakers was small and practically invisible, but after World War I, the U.S. turned to sports and athletes as a way to demonstrate moral fiber and patriotism. The U.S. market for sneakers grew steadily as young boys lined up to buy sneakers endorsed by football player Jim Thorpe and Converse All Stars endorsed by basketball player Chuck Taylor.
As the 1920s and 1930s approached, these companies added traction, and also started marketing them for different sports. A huge breakthrough of this time was the separation of designs for men and women. At this time, sneakers were used strictly for athletic events. When the Olympics were revived, this attracted more fans not only to sports, but to sneakers as well. In 1936, a French brand by the name of Spring Court was born as the first canvas tennis shoe featuring signature 8 ventilation channels on the vulcanized natural rubber sole.
The 1950s gave American families more leisure time, and as the baby boom started, more families chose to dress their youth in sneakers as school dress codes relaxed. Sneaker sales in the United States soared to six hundred million pairs a year in 1957, which led leather shoe makers to claim that “sneakers are bad for children’s feet” to which sneaker producers replied “sneakers cure the syndrome of Inhibited Feet.”
In the early 1960s, sneakers were imported to the United States from Japan, but accounted for only a small portion of the market until Nike founders Phil Knight and Bill Bowerman began importing Tiger shoes under the name Blue Ribbon Sports.
In the 1970s, sneakers led their own way as jogging quickly became popular and so did the necessity to have a pair of shoes for the occasion. Until this time, factories had been concerned with high production, but now the companies started to market their products as a lifestyle purpose. Soon there were shoes for football, jogging, basketball, running—every sport had its own shoe. This was made possible by podiatrist development of athletic shoe technology.
By the 1980s, sneakers were everywhere; Woody Allen wore them to the ballet, Led Zeppelin wore them in their 1976 documentary, and Dustin Hoffman wore them while playing reporter Carl Bernstein in the movie All the President’s Men. The shoes originally developed for sports became the mainstay for most people. Nike and Reebok were among the market leaders. Newer brands went in and out of fashion, and sneaker companies started shelling out major endorsements to players. One of, if not the largest, endorsements was to Chicago player Michael Jordan, for a contract with Nike to make his own signature line of shoes and apparel.
During the 1990s, shoe companies perfected their fashion and marketing skills. Sports endorsements grew larger and marketing budgets went through the roof. Sneakers became a fashion statement, and definition of identity and personality rather than humble athletic aids. http://www.drpribut.com/sports/sneaker_odyssey.htmlAthletic shoes are also often worn by children to school.
Use in sports
The term athletic shoes is typically used for running in a marathon or half marathon, basketball, and tennis (amongst others) but tends to exclude shoes for sports played on grass such as association football and rugby football, which are generally known as “Studs,” or in North America as cleats.
Attributes of an athletic shoe include a flexible sole, appropriate tread for the function ability to absorb impact. As the industry and design have expanded, the term “athletic shoes” is based more on the design of the bottom of the shoe than the aesthetics of the top of the shoe. Today’s designs even include sandal, Mary Jane and even elevated styles suitable for running, dancing and jumping.
The shoes themselves are made of flexible compounds, typically featuring a sole made of dense rubber. While the original design was basic, manufacturers have since tailored athletic shoes for the different purposes that they can be used for. A specific example of this is the spiked shoe developed for track running. Many of these shoes are made up to a very large size because of athletes with large feet.
High-end marathon running shoes will often come in different shapes suited to different foot types, gait etc. Generally, these shoes are divided into neutral, overpronation and underpronation (supination) running shoes to fit the respective foot strike of the runners. As running shoes become more advanced, amateur joggers, as well as marathon runners, are beginning to purchase shoes based on their running style and foot arch. This is often important for injury prevention, as well as to increase running efficiency.
There are a variety of specialized shoes designed for specific uses:
- Racing flats
- Track shoe
- Skate shoes
- Climbing shoe
- Approach shoe
- Wrestling shoes
- Cleats
- Football boot
- Dance Shoe
Types
- High-tops cover the ankle.
- Low-tops do not cover the ankle.
- Mid-cut are in-between high-tops and low-tops.
- Sneaker boots extend to the calf.
Sneakers
Sneakers or canvas shoes are casual athletic shoes.
Sneaker collectors, called “Sneakerheads”, use sneakers as fashionable items. Casual sneakers like the Air Force One (Nike) or Superstar (Adidas) have become icons in today’s pop culture. Artistically-modified sneakers can sell for upwards of $500. In more recent years, the classic shoe Nike Dunk has come attention to sneakerheads. During the release of these shoes people often line up several hours before the shops while open patiently waiting to get their hands on the shoes. There artistically-modified sneakers can sell for up to $500 depending on its popularity. The opening day cost for these shoes can range from USD $60-300.
Shoe Game
The “Shoe Games” is a termed used by many people who buy and sells shoes for profit. This type of buying and re-selling started to become popular during the early 1970s when Nike first started to make basketball shoes, and began to rise with the introduction of “Air Force 1”. In 1984 the Shoe Game took off with the introduction of Nike’s “Air Jordan”. As the years went on Nike Came out with many shoes, naming them after basketball players, and maximizing their profits by doing limited releases, meaning a store would only carry a certain amount of shoes and once all stores are out, no more reproductions are made, and that is how many “Sneakerheads” make their profits. Each year after the introduction of the first style of shoe Nike would name the next years version two, three, and so on. For example, one of the most profitable shoes was the Nike Air Jordans XXIII, the twenty third release of Nike’s Air Jordans. Twenty-three was a big deal because Michael Jordan’s number is Twenty-three. People camped out hours sometimes days before to buy these limited edition shoes. The “Shoe Game” became very popular and productive in the late 1990s’ and continue to be very profitable until about 2010. This was mainly because the drop in the American Economy.
Brands
Large brands include:
- Adidas
- Anta
- ASICS
- BATA
- Clae
- Converse
- DC Shoes
- DVS
- Fila
- Gola
- Globe
- Heelys
- Jordan shoes
- K-Swiss
- Kalenji
- Keds
- Keen
- Lacoste
- Li Ning
- Lonsdale
- Mizuno
- New Balance
- Nike
- PF Flyers
- Puma
- Reebok
- Saucony
- Sperry Top-Sider
- Starbury
- Supra
- UK Gear
- Vans
L’Histoire de Mode~Jewellery/Jewelry
The history of jewellery is a long one, with many different uses among different cultures. It has endured for thousands of years and has provided various insights into how ancient cultures worked.
Early history
The first signs of jewellery came from the people in Africa. Perforated beads made from snail shells have been found dating to 75,000 years ago at Blombos Cave. In Kenya, at Enkapune Ya Muto, beads made from perforated ostrich egg shells have been dated to more than 40,000 years ago.
Outside of Africa, the Cro-Magnons had crude necklaces and bracelets of bone, teeth, berries and stone hung on pieces of string or animal sinew, or pieces of carved bone used to secure clothing together. In some cases, jewellery had shell or mother-of-pearl pieces. In southern Russia, carved bracelets made of mammoth tusk have been found. The Venus of Hohle Fels features a perforation at the top, showing that it was intended to be worn as a pendant.
Around 7,000 years ago, the first sign of copper jewellery was seen.
Egypt
Amulet pendant (254 BC) made from gold, lapis lazuli, turquoise and carnelian, 14 cm wide.
An 18th dynasty pharaonic era princess’ crown
The first signs of established jewellery making in Ancient Egypt was around 3,000-5,000 years ago. The Egyptians preferred the luxury, rarity, and workability of gold over other metals. Predynastic Egypt had Jewellery in Egypt soon began to symbolise power and religious power in the community. Although it was worn by wealthy Egyptians in life, it was also worn by them in death, with jewellery commonly placed among grave goods.
In conjunction with gold jewellery, Egyptians used coloured glass in place of precious gems. Although the Egyptians had access to gemstones, they preferred the colours they could create in glass over the natural colours of stones. For nearly each gemstone, there was a glass formulation used by the Egyptians to mimic it. The colour of the jewellery was very important, as different colours meant different things; the Book of the Dead dictated that the necklace of Isis around a mummy’s neck must be red to satisfy Isis’s need for blood, while green jewellery meant new growth for crops and fertility. Although lapis lazuli and silver had to be imported from beyond the country’s borders, most other materials for jewellery were found in or near Egypt, for example in the Red Sea, where the Egyptians mined Cleopatra’s favourite gem, the emerald. Egyptian jewellery was predominantly made in large workshops attached to temples or palaces.
Egyptian designs were most common in Phoenician jewellery. Also, ancient Turkish designs found in Persian jewellery suggest that trade between the Middle East and Europe was not uncommon. Women wore elaborate gold and silver pieces that were used in ceremonies.
Europe and the Middle East
Mesopotamia
By approximately 4,000 years ago, jewellery-making had become a significant craft in the cities of Sumer and Akkad. The most significant archaeological evidence comes from the Royal Cemetery of Ur, where hundreds of burials dating 2900–2300 BC were unearthed; tombs such as that of Puabi contained a multitude of artefacts in gold, silver, and semi-precious stones, such as lapis lazuli crowns embellished with gold figurines, close-fitting collar necklaces, and jewel-headed pins. In Assyria, men and women both wore extensive amounts of jewellery, including amulets, ankle bracelets, heavy multi-strand necklaces, and cylinder seals.
Jewellery in Mesopotamia tended to be manufactured from thin metal leaf and was set with large numbers of brightly-coloured stones (chiefly agate, lapis, carnelian, and jasper). Favoured shapes included leaves, spirals, cones, and bunches of grapes. Jewellers created works both for human use and for adorning statues and idols; they employed a wide variety of sophisticated metalworking techniques, such as cloisonné, engraving, fine granulation, and filigree.
Extensive and meticulously maintained records pertaining to the trade and manufacture of jewellery have also been unearthed throughout Mesopotamian archaeological sites. One record in the Mari royal archives, for example, gives the composition of various items of jewellery:
1 necklace of flat speckled chalcedony beads including: 34 flat speckled chalcedony bead, [and] 35 gold fluted beads, in groups of five.
1 necklace of flat speckled chalcedony beads including: 39 flat speckled chalcedony beads, [with] 41 fluted beads in a group that make up the hanging device.
1 necklace with rounded lapis lazuli beads including: 28 rounded lapis lazuli beads, [and] 29 fluted beads for its clasp.
Greece
Gold earring from Mycenae, 16th century BC.
The Greeks started using gold and gems in jewellery in 1600 BC, although beads shaped as shells and animals were produced widely in earlier times. By 300 BC, the Greeks had mastered making coloured jewellery and using amethysts, pearl and emeralds. Also, the first signs of cameos appeared, with the Greeks creating them from Indian Sardonyx, a striped brown pink and cream agate stone. Greek jewellery was often simpler than in other cultures, with simple designs and workmanship. However, as time progressed the designs grew in complexity different materials were soon utilised.
Pendant with naked woman, made from electrum, Rhodes, around 630-620 BC.
Jewellery in Greece was hardly worn and was mostly used for public appearances or on special occasions. It was frequently given as a gift and was predominantly worn by women to show their wealth, social status and beauty. The jewellery was often supposed to give the wearer protection from the “Evil Eye” or endowed the owner with supernatural powers, while others had a religious symbolism. Older pieces of jewellery that have been found were dedicated to the Gods. The largest production of jewellery in these times came from Northern Greece and Macedon. However, although much of the jewellery in Greece was made of gold and silver with ivory and gemstones, bronze and clay copies were made also.
Ancient Greek jewellery from 300 BC.
They worked two styles of pieces; cast pieces and pieces hammered out of sheet metal. Fewer pieces of cast jewellery have been recovered; it was made by casting the metal onto two stone or clay moulds. Then the two halves were joined together and wax and then molten metal, was placed in the centre. This technique had been practised since the late Bronze Age. The more common form of jewellery was the hammered sheet type. Sheets of metal would be hammered to thickness and then soldered together. The inside of the two sheets would be filled with wax or another liquid to preserve the metal work. Different techniques, such as using a stamp or engraving, were then used to create motifs on the jewellery. Jewels may then be added to hollows or glass poured into special cavities on the surface. The Greeks took much of their designs from outer origins, such as Asia when Alexander the Great conquered part of it. In earlier designs, other European influences can also be detected. When Roman rule came to Greece, no change in jewellery designs was detected. However, by 27 BC, Greek designs were heavily influenced by the Roman culture. That is not to say that indigenous design did not thrive; numerous polychrome butterfly pendants on silver foxtail chains, dating from the 1st century, have been found near Olbia, with only one example ever found anywhere else.
Rome
Roman Amethyst intaglio engraved gem, c. 212 AD; later regarded as of St. Peter.
Although jewellery work was abundantly diverse in earlier times, especially among the barbarian tribes such as the Celts, when the Romans conquered most of Europe, jewellery was changed as smaller factions developed the Roman designs. The most common artefact of early Rome was the brooch, which was used to secure clothing together. The Romans used a diverse range of materials for their jewellery from their extensive resources across the continent. Although they used gold, they sometimes used bronze or bone and in earlier times, glass beads & pearl. As early as 2,000 years ago, they imported Sri Lankan sapphires and Indian diamonds and used emeralds and amber in their jewellery. In Roman-ruled England, fossilised wood called jet from Northern England was often carved into pieces of jewellery. The early Italians worked in crude gold and created clasps, necklaces, earrings and bracelets. They also produced larger pendants which could be filled with perfume.
Like the Greeks, often the purpose of Roman jewellery was to ward off the “Evil Eye” given by other people. Although women wore a vast array of jewellery, men often only wore a finger ring. Although they were expected to wear at least one ring, some Roman men wore a ring on every finger, while others wore none. Roman men and women wore rings with a engraved gem on it that was used with wax to seal documents, an practice that continued into medieval times when kings and noblemen used the same method. After the fall of the Roman Empire, the jewellery designs were absorbed by neighbouring countries and tribes.
Middle Ages
Merovingian fibulae, Bibliothèque nationale de France.
6th century bronze eagle-shaped Visigothic cloisonné fibula from Guadalajara, Spain, using glass-paste fillings in imitation of garnets.
Post-Roman Europe continued to develop jewellery making skills; the Celts and Merovingians in particular are noted for their jewellery, which in terms of quality matched or exceeded that of Byzantium. Clothing fasteners, amulets, and to a lesser extent signet rings are the most common artefacts known to us; a particularly striking celtic example is the Tara Brooch. The Torc was common throughout Europe as a symbol of status and power. By the 8th century, jewelled weaponry was common for men, while other jewellery (with the exception of signet rings) seems to become the domain of women. Grave goods found in a 6th-7th century burial near Chalon-sur-Saône are illustrative; the young girl was buried with: 2 silver fibulae, a necklace (with coins), bracelet, gold earings, a pair of hair-pins, comb, and buckle. The Celts specialised in continuous patterns and designs; while Merovingian designs are best known for stylised animal figures. They were not the only groups known for high quality work; note the Visigoth work shown here, and the numerous decorative objects found at the Anglo-Saxon Ship burial at Sutton Hoo Suffolk, England, are a particularly well-known example. On the continent, cloisonné and garnet were perhaps the quintessential method and gemstone of the period.
Byzantine wedding ring.
The Eastern successor of the Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire, continued many of the methods of the Romans, though religious themes came to predominate. Unlike the Romans, the Franks, and the Celts, however; Byzantium used light-weight gold leaf rather than solid gold, and more emphasis was placed on stones and gems. As in the West, Byzantine jewellery was worn by wealthier females, with male jewellery apparently restricted to signet rings. Like other contemporary cultures, jewellery was commonly buried with its owner.
Renaissance
Sardonyx cameo.
The Renaissance and exploration both had significant impacts on the development of jewellery in Europe. By the 17th century, increasing exploration and trade lead to increased availability of a wide variety of gemstones as well as exposure to the art of other cultures. Whereas prior to this the working of gold and precious metal had been at the forefront of jewellery, this period saw increasing dominance of gemstones and their settings. A fascinating example of this is the Cheapside Hoard, the stock of a jeweller hidden in London during the Commonwealth period and not found again until 1912. It contained Colombian emerald, topaz, amazonite from Brazil, spinel, iolite, and chrysoberyl from Sri Lanka, ruby from India, Afghani lapis lazuli, Persian turquoise, Red Sea peridot, as well as Bohemian and Hungarian opal, garnet, and amethyst. Large stones were frequently set in box-bezels on enamelled rings. Notable among merchants of the period was Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, who in the 1660s brought the precursor stone of the Hope Diamond to France.
When Napoleon Bonaparte was crowned as Emperor of the French in 1804, he revived the style and grandeur of jewellery and fashion in France. Under Napoleon’s rule, jewellers introduced parures, suites of matching jewellery, such as a diamond tiara, diamond earrings, diamond rings, a diamond brooch and a diamond necklace. Both of Napoleon’s wives had beautiful sets such as these and wore them regularly. Another fashion trend resurrected by Napoleon was the cameo. Soon after his cameo decorated crown was seen, cameos were highly sought after. The period also saw the early stages of costume jewellery, with fish scale covered glass beads in place of pearls or conch shell cameos instead of stone cameos. New terms were coined to differentiate the arts: jewellers who worked in cheaper materials were called bijoutiers, while jewellers who worked with expensive materials were called joailliers; a practice which continues to this day.
Romanticism
Mourning jewellery in the form of a jet brooch, 19th century.
Starting in the late 18th century, Romanticism had a profound impact on the development of western jewellery. Perhaps the most significant influences were the public’s fascination with the treasures being discovered through the birth of modern archaeology, and the fascination with Medieval and Renaissance art. Changing social conditions and the onset of the Industrial Revolution also lead to growth of a middle class that wanted and could afford jewellery. As a result, the use of industrial processes, cheaper alloys, and stone substitutes, lead to the development of paste or costume jewellery. Distinguished goldsmiths continued to flourish, however, as wealthier patrons sought to ensure that what they wore still stood apart from the jewellery of the masses, not only through use of precious metals and stones but also though superior artistic and technical work; one such artist was the French goldsmith Françoise Désire Froment Meurice. A category unique to this period and quite appropriate to the philosophy of romanticism was mourning jewellery. It originated in England, where Queen Victoria was often seen wearing jet jewellery after the death of Prince Albert; and allowed the wearer to continue wearing jewellery while expressing a state of mourning at the death of a loved one.
In the United states, this period saw the founding in 1837 of Tiffany & Co. by Charles Lewis Tiffany. Tiffany’s put the United States on the world map in terms of jewellery, and gained fame creating dazzling commissions for people such as the wife of Abraham Lincoln; later it would gain popular notoriety as the setting of the film Breakfast at Tiffany’s. In France, Pierre Cartier founded Cartier SA in 1847, while 1884 saw the founding of Bulgari in Italy. The modern production studio had been born; a step away from the former dominance of individual craftsmen and patronage.
This period also saw the first major collaboration between East and West; collaboration in Pforzheim between German and Japanese artists lead to Shakudō plaques set into Filigree frames being created by the Stoeffler firm in 1885). Perhaps the grand finalé – and an appropriate transition to the following period – were the masterful creations of the Russian artist Peter Carl Fabergé, working for the Imperial Russian court, whose Fabergé eggs and jewellery pieces are still considered as the epitome of the goldsmith’s art.
Art Nouveau
In the 1890s, jewellers began to explore the potential of the growing Art Nouveau style and the closely related German Jugendstil, British (and to some extent American) Arts and Crafts Movement.
Art Nouveau jewellery encompassed many distinct features including a focus on the female form and an emphasis on colour, most commonly rendered through the use of enamelling techniques including basse-taille, champleve, cloisonné and plique-à-jour. Motifs included orchids, irises, pansies, vines, swans, peacocks, snakes, dragonflies, mythological creatures and the female silhouette.
René Lalique, working for the Paris shop of Samuel Bing, was recognised by contemporaries as a leading figure in this trend. The Darmstadt Artists’ Colony and Wiener Werkstätte provided perhaps the most significant German input to the trend, while in Denmark Georg Jensen, though best known for his Silverware, also contributed significant pieces. In England, Liberty & Co. and the British arts & crafts movement of Charles Robert Ashbee contributed slightly more linear but still characteristic designs. The new style moved the focus of the jeweller’s art from the setting of stones to the artistic design of the piece itself; Lalique’s dragonfly design is one of the best examples of this. Enamels played a large role in technique, while sinuous organic lines are the most recognisable design feature.
The end of World War One once again changed public attitudes; and a more sober style came in.
Art Deco
Growing political tensions, the after-effects of the war, and a reaction against the perceived decadence of the turn of the 20th century led to simpler forms, combined with more effective manufacturing for mass production of high-quality jewellery. Covering the period of the 1920s and 1930s, the style has become popularly known as Art Deco. Walter Gropius and the German Bauhaus movement, with their philosophy of “no barriers between artists and craftsmen” lead to some interesting and stylistically simplified forms. Modern materials were also introduced: plastics and aluminium were first used in jewellery, and of note are the chromed pendants of Russian born Bauhaus master Naum Slutzky. Technical mastery became as valued as the material itself; in the west, this period saw the reinvention of granulation by the German Elizabeth Treskow (although development of the re-invention has continued into the 1990s).
Jewish jewellery
Jewellery has been a part of Jewish culture since Biblical times. There are references in the Bible to the wearing of jewellery, both as a decoration and as a symbol. Now, Jewish jewellery is worn to show affiliation with Judaism, as well as talismans and amulets.
One of the most common symbols in Jewish jewellery is the Star of David. Another popular symbol is the Hamsa, also known as the “Hamesh hand”. The Hamsa appears often in a stylised form, as a hand with three fingers raised, and sometimes with two thumbs arranged symmetrically. Its five fingers are said to symbolise the five books if the Torah. The symbol is used for protection and as a talisman to ward off the Evil eye in amulets and charms and can also be found in various places such as home entrances and cars. It is also common to place other symbols in the middle of the Hamsa that are believed to help against the evil eye such as fish, eyes and the Star of David. The colour blue, or more specifically light blue, is also considered protective against the evil eye and many Hamsas are in that colour or with embedded gemstones in different shades of blue.
The Chai is also a popular Jewish motif for necklaces.
Other motifs found in Jewish jewellery are symbols from the Kabbalah, such as the Merkaba, a three-dimensional Star of David, and the Tree of life. Pieces of jewellery are decorated with parts or initials of known Jewish prayers and with 3-letters combinations, believed to represent different names of the Jewish God.
Asia
Royal earrings, India, 1st Century BC.
In Asia, the Indian subcontinent has the longest continuous legacy of jewellery making anywhere, with a history of over 5,000 years.[31] One of the first to start jewellery making were the peoples of the Indus Valley Civilization in what is now predominately modern-day Pakistan. Early jewellery making in China started around the same period, but it became widespread with the spread of Buddhism around 2,000 years ago.
China
One of the earliest cultures to begin making jewellery in Asia was the Chinese around 5,000 years ago. Chinese jewellery designs were very religion-oriented and contained Buddhist symbols, a tradition which continues to this day.
The Chinese used silver in their jewellery more often than gold, and decorated it with their favourite colour, blue. Blue kingfisher feathers were tied onto early Chinese jewellery and later, blue gems and glass were incorporated into designs. However, jade was preferred over any other stone, and was fashioned using diamonds. The Chinese revered jade because of the human-like qualities they assigned to it, such as its hardness, durability and beauty. The first jade pieces were very simple, but as time progressed, more complex designs evolved. Jade rings from between the 4th and 7th centuries BC show evidence of having been worked with a compound milling machine; hundreds of years before the first mention of such equipment in the west.
Jade coiled serpent, Han Dynasty (202 BC-220 AD)
`Xin’ Shape Jewellery from Ming Dynasty Tombs, (1368–1644)
In China, jewellery was worn frequently by both sexes to show their nobility and wealth. However, in later years, it was used to accentuate beauty. Women wore highly detailed gold and silver head dresses and other items, while men wore decorative hat buttons, which showed rank, and gold or silver rings. Women also wore strips of gold on their foreheads, much like women in the Indus Valley. The band was an early form of tiara and was often decorated with precious gems. The most common piece of jewellery worn by in China was the earring, which was worn by both men and women. Amulets were also common too, often with a Chinese symbol or dragon. In fact, dragons, Chinese symbols and also phoenixes were frequently depicted on jewellery designs.
The Chinese often placed their jewellery in their graves; most Chinese graves found by archaeologists contain decorative jewellery.
India
India has the longest continuous legacy of jewellery making anywhere since Ramayana and Mahabharata times. While Western traditions were heavily influenced by waxing and waning empires, India enjoyed a continuous development of art forms for some 5000 years. One of the first to start jewellery making were the peoples of the Indus Valley Civilization (encompassing present-day Pakistan and northwest India). By 1500 BC the peoples of the Indus Valley were creating gold earrings and necklaces, bead necklaces and metallic bangles. Before 2100 BC, prior to the period when metals were widely used, the largest jewellery trade in the Indus Valley region was the bead trade. Beads in the Indus Valley were made using simple techniques. First, a bead maker would need a rough stone, which would be bought from an eastern stone trader. The stone would then be placed into a hot oven where it would be heated until it turned deep red, a colour highly prized by people of the Indus Valley. The red stone would then be chipped to the right size and a hole drilled through it with primitive drills. The beads were then polished. Some beads were also painted with designs. This art form was often passed down through family; children of bead makers often learnt how to work beads from a young age.
Jewellery in the Indus Valley was worn predominantly by females, who wore numerous clay or shell bracelets on their wrists. They were often shaped like doughnuts and painted black. Over time, clay bangles were discarded for more durable ones. In India today, bangles are made out of metal or glass. Other pieces that women frequently wore were thin bands of gold that would be worn on the forehead, earrings, primitive brooches, chokers and gold rings. Although women wore jewellery the most, some men in the Indus Valley wore beads. Small beads were often crafted to be placed in men and women’s hair. The beads were about one millimetre long.
A female skeleton (presently on display at the National Museum, New Delhi, India) wears a carlinean bangle (a bracelet) on her left hand.
India was the first country to mine diamonds, with some mines dating back to 296 BC. India traded the diamonds, realising their valuable qualities. This trade almost vanished 1,000 years after Christianity grew as a religion, as Christians rejected the diamonds which were used in Indian religious amulets. Along with Arabians from the Middle East restricting the trade, India’s diamond jewellery trade lulled.
Today, many of the jewellery designs and traditions are still used and jewellery is commonplace in Indian ceremonies and weddings.
America
Jewellery played a major role in the fate of the Americas when the Spanish established an empire to seize South American gold. Jewellery making developed in the Americas 5,000 years ago in Central and South America. Large amounts of gold was easily accessible, and the Aztecs, the Mixtecs, the Mayans and numerous Andean cultures like the Mochica of Peru created beautiful pieces of jewellery.
With the Mochica culture, goldwork flourished. The pieces are no longer simple metalwork, but are now masterful examples of jewellery making. Pieces are sophisticated in their design, and feature inlays of turquoise, mother of pearl, spondylus shell, and amethyst. The nose and ear ornaments, chest plates, small containers and whistles are considered masterpieces of ancient Peruvian culture.
Moche Ear Ornaments. 1-800 AD. Larco Museum Collection, Lima-Peru
Among the Aztecs, only nobility wore gold jewellery, as it showed their rank, power and wealth. Gold jewellery was most common in the Aztec Empire and was often decorated with feathers from Quetzal birds and others. In general, the more jewellery an Aztec noble wore, the higher their status or prestige. The Emperor and his High Priests, for example, would be nearly completely covered in jewellery when making public appearances. Although gold was the most common and a popular material used in Aztec jewellery, Jade, Turquoise, and certain feathers were considered more valuable. In addition to adornment and status, the Aztecs also used jewellery in sacrifices to appease the gods. Priests also used gem encrusted daggers to perform animal and human sacrifices.
Another ancient American civilisation with expertise in jewellery making was the Maya. At the peak of their civilisation, the Maya were making jewellery from jade, gold, silver, bronze and copper. Maya designs were similar to those of the Aztecs, with lavish head dresses and jewellery. The Maya also traded in precious gems. However, in earlier times, the Maya had little access to metal, so made the majority of their jewellery out of bone or stone. Merchants and nobility were the only few that wore expensive jewellery in the Maya Empire, much the same as with the Aztecs.
In North America, Native Americans used shells, wood, turquoise, and soapstone, almost unavailable in South and Central America. The turquoise was used in necklaces and to be placed in earrings. Native Americans with access to oyster shells, often located in only one location in America, traded the shells with other tribes, showing the great importance of the body adornment trade in Northern America.
Pacific
Jewellery making in the Pacific started later than in other areas because of recent human settlement. Early Pacific jewellery was made of bone, wood and other natural materials, and thus has not survived. Most Pacific jewellery is worn above the waist, with headdresses, necklaces, hair pins and arm and waist belts being the most common pieces.
Jewellery in the Pacific, with the exception of Australia, is worn to be a symbol of either fertility or power. Elaborate headdresses are worn by many Pacific cultures and some, such as the inhabitants of Papua New Guinea, wear certain headresses once they have killed an enemy. Tribesman may wear boar bones through their noses.
Island jewellery is still very much primal because of the lack of communication with outside cultures; some areas of Borneo and Papua New Guinea are yet to be explored by Western nations. However, the island nations which were flooded with Western missionaries have had drastic changes made to their jewellery designs. Missionaries saw any type of tribal jewellery as a sign of the wearer’s devotion to paganism. Thus many tribal designs were lost forever in the mass conversion to Christianity.
A modern opal bracelet
Australia is now the number one supplier of opals in the world. Opals had already been mined in Europe and South America for many years prior, but in the late 19th century, the Australian opal market became predominant. Australian opals are only mined in a few select places around the country, making it one the most profitable stones in the Pacific.
One of the few cultures to today still create their jewellery as they did many centuries prior is the New Zealand Māori, who create Hei-tiki. The reason the hei-tiki is worn is not apparent; it may either relate to ancestral connections, as Tiki was the first Māori, or fertility, as there is a strong connection between this and Tiki. Another suggestion from historians is that the Tiki is a product of the ancient belief of a god named Tiki, perhaps dating back to before the Māoris settled in New Zealand. Hei-tikis are traditionally carved by hand from bone (commonly whale), nephrite or bowenite; a lengthy and spiritual process. The Hei-tiki is now popular amongst tourists who can buy it from souvenir or jeweller shops.
Other than jewellery created through Māori influence, jewellery in New Zealand remains similar to other western civilisations; multi cultural and varied. This is more noticeable in New Zealand because of its high levels of non-European citizens.
Modern
The modern jewellery movement began in the late 1940s at the end of World War II with a renewed interest in artistic and leisurely pursuits. The movement is most noted with works by Georg Jensen and other jewellery designers who advanced the concept of wearable art. The advent of new materials, such as plastics, Precious Metal Clay (PMC) and colouring techniques, has led to increased variety in styles. Other advances, such as the development of improved pearl harvesting by people such as Mikimoto Kōkichi and the development of improved quality artificial gemstones such as moissanite (a diamond simulant), has placed jewellery within the economic grasp of a much larger segment of the population.
The “jewellery as art” movement was spearheaded by artisans such as Robert Lee Morris and continued by designers such as Gill Forsbrook in the UK. Influence from other cultural forms is also evident; one example of this is bling-bling style jewellery, popularised by hip-hop and rap artists in the early 21st century.
The late 20th century saw the blending of European design with oriental techniques such as Mokume-gane. The following are innovations in the decades stradling the year 2000: “Mokume-gane, hydraulic die forming, anti-clastic raising, fold-forming, reactive metal anodising, shell forms, PMC, photoetching, and [use of] CAD/CAM.”
Artisan jewellery continues to grow as both a hobby and a profession. With more than 17 United States periodicals about beading alone, resources, accessibility and a low initial cost of entry continues to expand production of hand-made adornments. Some fine examples of artisan jewellery can be seen at The Metropolitan Museum.
Body modification
A Kayan girl in Northern Thailand.
Jewellery used in body modification is usually plain; the use of simple silver studs, rings and earrings predominates. Common jewellery pieces such as earrings, are themselves a form of body modification, as they are accommodated by creating a small hole in the ear.
Padaung women in Myanmar place large golden rings around their necks. From as early as 5 years old, girls are introduced to their first neck ring. Over the years, more rings are added. In addition to the twenty-plus pounds of rings on her neck, a woman will also wear just as many rings on her calves too. At their extent, some necks modified like this can reach 10-15 inches long; the practice has obvious health impacts, however, and has in recent years declined from cultural norm to tourist curiosity. Tribes related to the Paduang, as well as other cultures throughout the world, use jewellery to stretch their earlobes, or enlarge ear piercings. In the Americas, labrets have been worn since before first contact by Innu and First Nations peoples of the northwest coast.[42] Lip plates are worn by the African Mursi and Sara people, as well as some South American peoples.
In the late 20th century, the influence of modern primitivism led to many of these practices being incorporated into western subcultures. Many of these practices rely on a combination of body modification and decorative objects; thus keeping the distinction between these two types of decoration blurred.
In many cultures, jewellery is used as a temporary body modifier, with in some cases, hooks or even objects as large as bike bars being placed into the recipient’s skin. Although this procedure is often carried out by tribal or semi-tribal groups, often acting under a trance during religious ceremonies, this practise has seeped into western culture. Many extreme-jewellery shops now cater to people wanting large hooks or spikes set into their skin. Most often, these hooks are used in conjunction with pulleys to hoist the recipient into the air. This practice is said to give an erotic feeling to the person and some couples have even performed their marriage ceremony whilst being suspended by hooks.
Jewellery market
According to a recent KPMG study the largest jewellery market is the United States with a market share of 30.8%, Japan, India and China and the Middle East each with 8 – 9% and Italy with 5%. The authors of the study predict a dramatic change in market shares by 2015, where the market share of the United States will have dropped to around 25%, and China and India will increase theirs to over 13%. The Middle East will remain more or less constant at 9%, whereas Europe’s and Japan’s marketshare will be halved and become less than 4% for Japan, and less than 3% for the biggest individual European countries: Italy and the UK.
This or That~RTW SPRING 2011 Runway Shows
This is another one of our Video “This or That,” tell us which showing was your favorite. There are a few but Dior hits my top list…at least for the day. What about you?~Comment us!
L’Histoire de Mode~Fashion Photography
- Virginia Oldoini, Countess di Castiglione in a photo by Pierre-Louise Pierson (c. 1863/66)
Fashion Photography
Fashion photography is a genre of photography devoted
to displaying clothing and other fashion items. Fashion photography
is most often conducted for advertisements or fashionmagazines such
as Vogue, Vanity Fair, or Allure. Over time, fashion photography has
developed its own aesthetic in which the clothes and fashions are
enhanced by the presence of exotic locations or accessories.
Photography was developed in the 1830s, but the earliest popular technique, the
daguerreotype, was unsuitable for mass printing. In 1856, Adolphe Braun
published a book containing 288 photographs of Virginia Oldoini, Countess di Castiglione,
a Tuscan noblewoman at the court of Napoleon III. The photos depict her in her
official court garb, making her the first fashion model.
In the first decade of the 20th century, advances in
halftone printing allowed fashion photographs to be featured
in magazines. Fashion photography made its first appearance in
French magazines such as La mode practique. In 1909, Condé Nast took
over Vogue magazine and also contributed to the beginnings of fashion
photography. In 1911, photographer Edward Steichen was “dared” by
Lucien Vogel, the publisher of Jardin des Modes and La Gazette du Bon Ton,
to promote fashion as a fine art by the use of photography. Steichen
then took photos of gowns designed by couturier Paul Poiret.
These photographs were published in the April 1911 issue of
the magazine Art et Décoration. According to Jesse Alexander,
This is “…now considered to be the first ever modern fashion
photography shoot. That is, photographing the garments in such
a way as to convey a sense of their physical quality as well as
their formal appearance, as opposed to simply illustrating the object.”
At this time, special emphasis was placed on staging the shots, a process
first developed by Baron Adolf de Meyer, who shot his models in natural
environments and poses. Vogue was followed by its rival, Harper’s Bazaar, and
the two companies were leaders in the field of fashion photography throughout
the 1920s and 1930s. House photographers such as Edward Steichen,
George Hoyningen-Huene, Horst P. Horst and Cecil Beaton transformed
the genre into an outstanding art form. Europe, and especially
Germany, was for a short time the leader
in fashion photography.
But now with that change in time every country has taken
considerable measures to promote the field of photography.
In the mid 1940s as World War II approached, the focus
shifted to the United States, where Vogue and Harper’s continued
their old rivalry. House photographers such as Irving Penn,
Martin Munkacsi, Richard Avedon, and Louise Dahl-Wolfe would
shape the look of fashion photography for the following decades.
Richard Avedon revolutionized fashion photography — and redefined
the role of the fashion photographer — in the post-World War II era
with his imaginative images of the modern woman. Today, his work is being
exhibited in the Norton Museum in West Palm Beach, FL. This exhibition features
more than 200 works and spans Avedon’s entire career, including vintage
prints, contact sheets, and original magazines from Harper’s Bazaar,
Vogue and The New Yorker.
The artists abandoned their rigid forms for a much freer style. In 1936,
Martin Munkacsi made the first photographs of models in sporty poses at the beach.
Under the artistic direction of Alexey Brodovitch, the Harper’s
Bazaar quickly introduced this new style into its magazine.
In postwar London, John French pioneered a new form
of fashion photography suited to reproduction in
newsprint, involving where possible reflected
natural light and low contrast.
After the deaths of Richard Avedon, Helmut Newton and Herb Ritts,
some of today’s most famous fashion photographers are Patrick Demarchelier, Steven Meisel,
Mario Testino, Peter Lindbergh and Annie Leibovitz.
L’Histoire de Mode~Fabric Burn Testing
BURN TESTING
Burn Test – CAUTION. WARNING. BE CAREFUL!
This should only be done by skilled burners! Make sure there is a bucket of water nearby and that you burn in a metal bucket or non-plastic sink.
What it is & how to do it:
To identify fabric that is unknown, a simple burn test can be
done to determine if the fabric is a natural fiber, manmade fiber,
or a blend of natural and manmade fibers. The burn test is used by
many fabric stores and designers and takes practice to determine the
exact fiber content. However, an inexperienced person can still determine
the difference between many fibers to “narrow” the choices down to natural
or manmade fibers. This elimination process will give information
necessary to decide the care of the fabric.
It’s important to do a burn test in a well ventilated area to avoid inhaling potentially toxic fumes. At minimum, open some windows, or better yet, do the test outside on a calm day and avoid inhaling the fumes from the burning fibers.
• Pre-wash the mystery fabric to remove
any finishes that may affect the burn
characteristics. Cut fabric swatches for
testing approximately 2″ square.
• Use long tweezers to hold the swatches
you burn.
• Use a non-flammable container to place
under the burning swatch—a large
ashtray or glass dish will work, as will a
metal baking pan.
• Use a lighter, an unscented candle or a
fireplace starter to create a small flame.
• Keep water nearby in the event of a
flare-up, or do the testing near a sink.
• If you have long hair, tie it back out of
the way of the flame.
WARNING: All fibers will burn! Asbestos treated fibers are, for the most
part fire proof. The burning test should be done with caution. Use a small piece
of fabric only. Hold the fabric with tweezers, not your fingers. Burn over a metal dish with
soda in the bottom or even water in the bottom of the dish. Some fabrics will ignite and melt.
The result is burning drips which can adhere to fabric
or skin and cause a serious burn.
Cotton is a plant fiber. When ignited it burns with a steady flame
and smells like burning leaves. The ash left is easily crumbled.
Small samples of burning cotton can be blown out as you would
a candle. Cotton fibers ignite as the flame draws near.
Linen is also a plant fiber but different from cotton in that the
individual plant fibers which make up the yarn are long where cotton fibers
are short. Linen takes longer to ignite. The fabric closest to the ash is very brittle.
Linen is easily extinguished by blowing on it as you would a candle.
Silk is a protein fiber and usually burns readily, not
necessarily with a steady flame, and smells like burning
hair. The ash is easily crumbled. Silk samples are not
as easily extinguished as cotton or linen.
Wool is also a protein fiber but is harder to ignite than silk as the individual
“hair” fibers are shorter than silk and the weave of the fabrics is generally looser
than with silk. The flame is steady but more difficult to keep burning. The smell
of burning wool is like burning hair.
Man Made Fibers
(Synthetic fibers curl away from the heat and tend to “melt.” Hard lumps are the remains of melted synthetic fibers.)
Acetate is made from cellulose (wood fibers), technically cellulose
acetate. Acetate burns readily with a flickering flame that cannot be
easily extinguished. The burning cellulose drips and leaves a hard ash.
The smell is similar to burning wood chips.
Acrylic technically acrylonitrile is made from natural gas
and petroleum. Acrylics burn readily due to the fiber content and the
lofty, air filled pockets. A match or cigarette dropped on an acrylic blanket
can ignite the fabric which will burn rapidly unless extinguished.
The ash is hard. The smell is acrid or harsh.
Nylon is a polyamide made from petroleum. Nylon melts
and then burns rapidly if the flame remains on the melted
fiber. If you can keep the flame on the
melting nylon, it smells like burning plastic.
Polyester is a polymer produced from coal, air, water, and petroleum products.
Polyester melts and burns at the same time, the melting, burning ash can bond
quickly to any surface it drips on including skin. The smoke from polyester
is black with a sweetish smell. The
extinguished ash is hard.
Rayon is a regenerated cellulose fiber which is almost pure cellulose.
Rayon burns rapidly and leaves only a slight ash.
The burning smell is close to burning leaves.
Blends consist of two or more fibers and, ideally, are supposed to take on the
characteristics of each fiber in the blend. The burning test
can be used but the fabric content
will be an assumption.
Household Chemicals
Several chemicals usually found in the home can help further identify fabrics. As in the burn test, caution should be used. Reactions between some of the fibers and household chemicals are rapid and could cause damage to surrounding surfaces.
Acetate is dissolved by acetone, an ingredient in nail polish remover and Super Glue. Caution should be used when wearing acetate or an acetate blend fabric and using any acetone containing product.
Fiber-Etch, a liquid used in embroidery or cutwork embroidery, dissolves any plant fiber including cotton, linen, and rayon. Since this product removes plant fibers, it is also useful to determine fabric content. With blends of plant fiber fabrics, the blended fibers will remain. For example, a cotton/polyester fabric will, when this product is applied to a small area, remove the cotton fiber and leave the polyester fiber.
REMEMBER:
| FABRIC | FLAME QUALITY |
ODOR | ASH QUALITY |
COMMENTS |
| WOOL | orange color sputtery |
burning hair or feathers |
blackish turns to powder when crushed |
flame will self extinguish if flame source is removed no smoke |
| SILK | burns slowly | burning hair or feathers |
grayish turns to powder when crushed |
burns more easily than wool but will self extinguish is flame source removed |
| COTTON | yellow to orange color steady flame |
burning paper or leaves |
grayish, fluffy | slow burning ember |
| LINEN | yellow to orange color steady flame |
burning paper or leaves |
similar to cotton | takes longer to ignite than cotton but otherwise very similar |
| RAYON | fast orange flame | burning paper or leaves |
almost no ash | ember will continue to glow after flame source removed |
| POLYESTER | orange flame, sputtery | sweet or fruity smell | hard shiny black bead | black smoke |
| ACETATE | burns and melts,sizzly | acidic or vinegary | hard black bead | will continue to burn after flame source removed |
| NYLON | burns slowly and melts, bluse base and orange tip, no smoke | burning celery | hard grayish or brownish bead | self extinguish if flame source removed |
| ACRYLIC | burns and melts, white-orange tip, no smoke | acrid | black hard crust | will continue to burn after flame source removed |
Fiber Burn Chart
I know this isn’t the normal Fashion History segment, but it’s a helpful technique for the most part plus it’s fun to experiment with burn testing, fiber Etching, and dying using tomato soup or anything really. BE SAFE & Have fun!
L’Histoire de Mode~Haute Couture
Haute Couture
Haute couture (French for “high sewing” or “high dressmaking”) refers to the creation
of exclusive custom-fitted clothing. Haute couture is made to order for a specific customer,
and it is usually made from high-quality, expensive fabric and sewn with extreme attention
to detail and finished by the most experienced and capable seamstresses, often using
time-consuming, hand-executed techniques. Couture is a common abbreviation
of haute couture and refers to the same thing in spirit.
It originally referred to Englishman Charles Frederick Worth’s
work, produced in Paris in the mid-nineteenth century. In modern
France, haute couture is a “protected name” that can be used
only by firms that meet certain well-defined standards. However,
the term is also used loosely to describe all high-fashion custom-fitted
clothing, whether it is produced in Paris or in other fashion capitals such as
Milan, London, New York and Tokyo.
In France, the term haute couture is protected by law and is defined by
the Chambre de commerce et d’industrie de Paris based in Paris, France.
Their rules state that only “those companies mentioned on the list drawn up each year
by a commission domiciled at the Ministry for Industry are entitled to avail themselves”
of the label haute couture. The criteria for haute couture were established in 1945 and
updated in 1992. To earn the right to call itself a couture house and to use the term
haute couture in its advertising and any other way, members of the
Chambre syndicale de la haute couture must follow these rules:
- Design made-to-order for private clients, with one or more fittings.
- Have a workshop (atelier) in Paris that employs at least fifteen people full-time.
- Each season (i.e., twice a year), present a collection to the Paris press, comprising at least thirty-five runs/exits with outfits for both daytime wear and evening wear.
However, the term haute couture may have been misused by
ready-to-wear brands since the late 1980s, so that its true meaning
may have become blurred with that of prêt-à-porter (the French term for
ready-to-wear fashion) in the public perception. Every haute couture house also
markets prêt-à-porter collections, which typically deliver a higher return on investment
than their custom clothing . Falling revenues have forced a few couture
houses to abandon their less profitable couture division and concentrate
solely on the less prestigious prêt-à-porter. These houses, such as
Italian designer Roberto Capucci, all of whom have their
workshops in Italy, are no longer
considered haute couture.
Many top designer fashion houses, such as Chanel, use the word for
some of their special collections. These collections are often not for sale or they
are very difficult to purchase. Sometimes, “haute couture” is inappropriately used to
label non-dressmaking activities, such as fine art, music and more.
French leadership in European fashion may date from the
18th century, when the art, architecture, music, and fashions
of the French court at Versailles were imitated across Europe. Visitors
to Paris brought back clothing that was then copied by local dressmakers.
Stylish women also ordered fashion dolls dressed in the latest Parisian fashion
to serve as models. As railroads and steamships made European travel easier,
it was increasingly common for wealthy women to travel to Paris to shop for clothing
and accessories. French fitters and dressmakers were commonly thought to be the best
in Europe, and real Parisian garments were considered better than local imitations.
The couturier Charles Frederick Worth (October 13, 1826–March 10, 1895),
is widely considered the father of haute couture as it is known today. Although
born in Bourne, Lincolnshire, England, Worth made his mark in the French
fashion industry. Revolutionizing how dressmaking had been previously perceived,
Worth made it so the dressmaker became the artist of garnishment: a fashion designer.
While he created one-of-a-kind designs to please some of his titled or wealthy customers,
he is best known for preparing a portfolio of designs that were shown on live models at the
House of Worth. Clients selected one model, specified colors and fabrics, and had a
duplicate garment tailor-made in Worth’s workshop. Worth combined individual
tailoring with a standardization more characteristic of the ready-to-wear clothing industry,
which was also developing during this period.
Following in Worth’s footsteps were Callot Soeurs, Patou,
Poiret, Vionnet, Fortuny, Lanvin, Chanel, Mainbocher, Schiaparelli,
Balenciaga, and Dior. Some of these fashion houses still exist today, under
the leadership of modern designers.
In the 1960s a group of young designers who had trained under
men like Dior and Balenciaga left these established couture houses and opened their
own establishments. The most successful of these young designers were Yves Saint Laurent,
Pierre Cardin, André Courrèges, and Emanuel Ungaro. Japanese native and Paris-based
Hanae Mori was also successful in establishing her own line.
Lacroix is one of the fashion houses to have been started in
the late 20th century. Other new houses have included Jean-Paul Gaultier
and Thierry Mugler. Due to the high expenses of producing haute couture
collections, Lacroix and Mugler have since ceased
their haute couture activities.
For all these fashion houses, custom clothing is no longer the main source of
income, often costing much more than it earns through direct sales; it only adds the a
ura of fashion to their ventures in ready-to-wear clothing and related luxury products
such as shoes and perfumes, and licensing ventures that earn greater
returns for the company. Excessive commercialization and profit-making can be
damaging, however. Cardin, for example, licensed with abandon in the 1980s and his name
lost most of its fashionable cachet when anyone could buy Cardin luggage at a discount store.
It is their ready-to-wear collections that are available to a wider audience, adding a
splash of glamour and the feel of haute
couture to more wardrobes.
The 1960s also featured a revolt against established fashion
standards by mods, rockers, and hippies, as well as an increasing
internationalization of the fashion scene. Jet travel had spawned a jet set
that partied—and shopped—just as happily in New York as in Paris. Rich women
no longer felt that a Paris dress was necessarily better than one sewn elsewhere.
While Paris is still pre-eminent in the fashion world, it is no
longer the sole arbiter of fashion.
Couture Samples:
“Fashion Fairy Tale”~Lauren Milligan
Lacroix Sleeping Beauty
Lacroix Sleeping Beauty, cover
Lacroix Sleeping Beauty
Lacroix Sleeping Beauty
Lacroix Sleeping Beauty
Lacroix Sleeping Beauty
L auren Milligan 04 February 2011
CHRISTIAN LACROIX’S biography was never going to be captured in a simple, step-by-step story, so author Camilla Morton has woven it in to a fairy tale: Christian Lacroix and the Tale of Sleeping Beauty, illustrated by Lacroix himself.
“The book is a tale of two icons,” Morton told us. “Both well loved, both inspiring, and both living in magical kingdoms. I came up with the idea as I didn’t think a dry biography seemed an interesting prospect, nor could it hope to capture the mystique that surrounds the creative souls that punctuate the industry with their imagination. I thought the best way to tell their tales would be as a very special ‘Once Upon a Time’.”
Lacroix’s is the first in a series of designer biographies-cum-fairy- tales, written by Morton and illustrated by the designer – with Manolo Blahnik and Diane von Furstenberg to follow. “Its magical,” Morton said of her relationship with Lacroix. “He is a gentleman, and such a kind, inspiring friend, I feel honoured I was able to do this with him.”
Read more about the book in the March issue of Vogue, out now.
L’Histore de Mode~Codpiece
Metal Codpieces, 16th Century
Codpiece
A codpiece (from Middle English: cod, meaning “scrotum”) is a
covering flap or pouch that attaches to the front of the crotch of
men’s trousers and usually accentuates the genital area. It was held
closed by string ties, buttons, or other methods. It was an important item
of European clothing in the 15th and 16th centuries, and is still worn in the
modern era in performance costumes for rock music and metal musicians and
in the leather subculture.
From the ancient world there are extant depictions of the codpiece; for example,
archaeological recovery at Minoan Knossos on Crete has yielded figurines, some of which
are clad in codpieces. Most of what is objectively known about the cut, fit, and materials
of Renaissance clothing is learned from realistic portraits, clothing inventories, descriptive
receipts for payments of artifacts, or tailors’ cutting guides.In the 14th century, men’s
hose were two separate legs worn over linen drawers, leaving a man’s genitals covered only by a
layer of linen. As the century wore on and men’s hemlines rose, the hose became longer and
joined at the centre back but remained open at the centre front. The shortening of the cote
or doublet resulted in under-disguised genitals, so the codpiece began life as a
triangular piece of fabric covering the gap.
As time passed, codpieces became shaped and padded to
emphasize rather than to conceal, reaching their peak of size
and decoration in the 1540s before falling out of use by the 1590s.
Armor of the 16th century followed civilian fashion, and for a time
armored codpieces were a prominent addition to the best full harnesses.
A few of these are on display in museums today: the Metropolitan Museum
of Art in New York City has one, as does the Higgins Armory in Worcester,
Massachusetts; the armour of Henry VIII in the Tower of London has a
codpiece. In later periods, the codpiece became an object of the derision
showered on outlandish fashions. Renaissance humorist François
Rabelais jokingly refers to a book titled On the Dignity of Codpieces
in the foreword to his book The Histories of Gargantua and Pantagruel.
Through the same linguistic route, cods became
a modern slang term for the male genitalia.
Codpieces are worn in leather subcultural attire to cover and confine the
genitals of a man, sometimes while wearing leather chaps. The codpiece crossed over
from the leather subculture to become an established part of heavy metal fashion
performance costume when Rob Halford, of the band Judas Priest, began wearing clothing
adopted from the gay biker and leather subculture while promoting the Hell Bent for
Leather Album in 1978. Ian Anderson, front man for Jethro Tull, wore a codpiece during his
performances in the mid-1970s.
Gene Simmons of the American Rock Band Kiss often wore black and silver
costumes with codpieces. Shock rock performer Blackie Lawless, leader of the
group WASP, wore a codpiece that features a saw blade. Heavy metal singer King
Diamond has been known to wear a codpiece as part of his performance outfits.Electric
Six lead singer Dick Valentine can be seen wearing a brightly flashing codpiece in the
music video for the band’s 2003 hit single Danger! High Voltage. Metal singer Till
Lindemann of Rammstein occasionally wears codpieces on stage.
Black metal musician and Satanist Infernus
wore a codpiece as part of his attire during the Ad Majorem Sathanas Gloriam
era of Gorgoroth. William Murderface also wears a codpiece on
several occasions. Alice Cooper regularly wears bright red codpieces in concert.
GWAR front man Oderus Urungus wears a codpiece
called The Cuttlefish of Cthulu.
Codpieces:
Leather Codpiece
Batman in a codpiece
Vintage custom Codpiece
Armor codpiece
Oderus Urungus of metal band GWAR wearing a codpiece in a 2004 concert
Museum Exhibit on Codpieces
Quote of the Day: 5 Feb. ’11~Mignon McLaughlin
“Women usually love what they buy, yet hate two-thirds of what is in their closets.”~Mignon McLaughlin
McLaughlin was an American journalist and author.
This was supposed to be yesterday’s post sorry, I was busy sewing new stuff!
L’Histoire de Mode #1~Shoulder Pads
Shoulder Pads In Time
Shoulder pads are a type of fabric-covered padding used in men’s and women’s clothing to give the wearer the illusion of having broader and less sloping shoulders. In men’s styles, shoulder pads are often used in suits, jackets and overcoats, usually sewn at the top of the shoulder and fastened between the lining and the outer fabric layer. In women’s clothing, their inclusion depends on the fashions of the day. Their use is particularly associated with clothing of the early 1940s and the 1980s. Although from a non-fashion point of view they are generally for people with narrow or sloping shoulders, there are also quite a few cases in which shoulder pads will be necessary for a suit or blazer in order to compensate for certain fabrics’ natural properties, most notably suede blazers, due to the weight of the material.
1930
Shoulder pads originally became popular for women in the 1930s when
fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli included them in her designs of 1931, and the following
year Joan Crawford wore them in the film “Letty Lynton”. In the beginning, they were shaped
as a semicircle or small triangle, and were stuffed with wool, cotton or sawdust. They were
positioned at the top of the sleeve, to extend the shoulder line. A good example of this
is their use in “leg o’ mutton” sleeves, or the smaller puffed sleeves which were revived at
this time, and based on styles from the 1890s.
1940
After World War II began in 1939, women’s fashions became increasingly militarised.
Jackets and coats in particular were influenced by masculine styles and shoulder pads became bulkier and were
positioned at the top of the shoulder to create a solid look. Dresses too were made with shoulder pads;
soon the style was universal, found in all garments excepting lingerie but tapering off later in the
decade after the war was over and women yearned for a softer, more feminine look.
During the late 1940s to about 1951, some dresses featured a soft, smaller shoulder pad with
so little padding as to be barely noticeable. Its function seems to have been to slightly shape the shoulder line.
1950-1960
During the 1950s and 1960s small padded shoulder pads appeared only
in women’s jackets and coats—not in dresses, knitwear or blouses as
they had previously during the heyday of the early 1940s.
1970
Shoulder pads made their next appearance in women’s clothing in the early 1970s,
through the influence of British fashion designer Barbara Hulanicki and her label Biba.
Biba produced designs influenced by the styles of the 1930s and 1940s, and so a soft version
of the shoulder pad was revived. Ossie Clark was another London designer using shoulder
pads at the time. These styles did not, however, reach mainstream acceptance, and
so the popularity was relatively short lived.
1980
During the early 1980s there was a resurgence of interest in the ladies’ evening wear styles of the
early 1940s: peplums, batwing sleeves and other design elements of the times were re-interpreted for a new market.
The shoulder pad helped define the silhouette and was reintroduced in cut foam versions, especially
in well-cut suits reminiscent of the WWII era. Before too long, these masculinized shapes were adopted by women
seeking success in the corporate world and became an icon of women’s attempts to smash the
glass ceiling, a mission that was added by their notable appearance in the TV series Dynasty.
As the decade wore on, shoulder pads became the defining fashion statement of the era, known
as power dressing and bestowing the perception of status and position onto those who wore them. They became
both larger and more ubiquitous—every garment from the brassiere upwards would come with its own
set of shoulder pads. To prevent excessive shoulder padding, velcro was sewn onto the pads so that
the wearer could choose how many sets to wear. By the end of the era, some shoulder pads
were the size of dinner plates. It was inevitable that as the cycle of fashion
turned, they would lose favour in the early 1990s.
1990
The shoulder pad fashion carried over from the late 1980s with some popularity in the
early 1990s, but tastes were changing. Some designers continued to produce ranges featuring
shoulder pads into the mid-1990s, as shoulder pads were prominent in women’s formal
suits, and matching top-bottom attire, highly exampled in The Nanny. but the marketplace had
spoken—the styles now looked out of date and were shunned by the young and fashion-conscious.
Appearances were reduced to smaller, subtler versions augmenting the
shoulder lines of jackets and coats.
2000
In the late 2000s, a resurgence of shoulder pads appeared on many runways, fashion
designer collections and became mainstream among many people who were interested in
fashion. By the 2009-2010 seasons shoulder pads had made there way in
the mainstream market again. In 2010 many retailers
like Wal-Mart had shoulder pads on at
least half of all womens tops
and blouses.
Modern Samples:
L’Histoire de Mode #2~Fashion Week
Fashion Week History
In 1943, the first New York Fashion Week was held,
with one main purpose: to distract attention from French
fashion during WWII, when workers in the fashion industry
were unable to travel to Paris. This was an opportune
moment – as for centuries designers in America were thought
to be reliant on the French for inspiration. The fashion
publicist Eleanor Lambert organized an event she called
‘Press Week’ to showcase American designers for fashion journalists,
who had previously ignored their works. The Press Week was a success,
and, as a result, magazines like Vogue (which were normally filled with
French designs) began to feature more and more American innovations.
Until 1994, shows were held in different locations, such as hotels, or lofts.
Eventually, after a structural accident at a Michael Kors show, the event
moved to Bryant Park, behind the New York Public Library, where it remained
until 2010, when the shows relocated to Lincoln Center. However, long before
Lambert, there were fashion shows throughout America. In 1903, an NYC shop, called
Ehrich Brothers, put on what is thought to have been the country’s first fashion show,
to lure middle-class females into the store. By 1910, many big department stores
were holding shows of their own.
It is likely that American retailers saw that they were called
‘fashion parades’ in Paris couture salons and decided to use the idea.
These parades were an effective way to promote stores, and improved
their status. By the 1920s, the fashion show had been used by retailers
up and down the country. They were staged, and often held in the shop’s
restaurant during lunch or teatime. These shows were usually more theatrical
than those of today, heavily based upon a single theme, and accompanied
with a narrative commentary. The shows were hugely popular, enticing
crowds in their thousands – crowds so large, that stores in New York in the
fifties had to obtain a license to have live models. Nowadays, access to
New York Fashion Week is by invitation only, and only fashion magazine
editors, fashion magazine journalists, models (and ex-models)
and celebrities are invited.
Other buyers are restricted to the showrooms and stores, and the
articles in the magazines. The dominance of the big four has been
criticised for benefiting industry participants. For example, buyers,
journalists, models and celebrities can limit their travel and simply move
from one city to the other over the four week period. This arrangement
has been criticized for stifling manufacturing employment in the UK
and design talent in emerging fashion hubs such as Los Angeles.
Fashion Week Schedule
New York, London, Milan and Paris each host a fashion week twice a year with
New York kicking off each season and the other cities following in the
aforementioned order.
There are two major seasons per year – Autumn/Winter and Spring/Summer.
For Womenswear, the Autumn/Winter shows always start in
New York in February. Spring/Summer shows start in September
in London. Menswear Autumn/Winter shows start in January in Milan
for typically less than a week followed by another short week in Paris.
Menswear Spring/Summer shows are done in June. Womenswear Haute
Couture shows typically happen in Paris a week after
the Menswear Paris shows.
Over the past few years, more and more designers have shown
inter-seasonal collections between the traditional Autumn/Winter and Spring/Summer seasons.
These collections are usually more commercial than the main season collections and
help shorten the customer’s wait for new season clothes. The inter-seasonal
collections are Resort/Cruise (before Spring/Summer) and Pre-Fall (before Autumn/Winter).
There is no fixed schedule for these shows in any of the major fashion capitals but
they typically happen three months after the main season shows. Some designers show
their inter-seasonal collections outside their home city. For example, Karl Lagerfeld
has shown his Resort and Pre-Fall collections for Chanel in cities such
as Moscow, Los Angeles and Monte Carlo instead of Paris. Many designers
also put on presentations as opposed to traditional shows during Resort and
Pre-Fall either to cut down costs or because they feel the clothes
can be better understood in this medium.
Some fashion weeks can be genre-specific, such as a
Miami Fashion Week (swimwear), Rio Summer (swimwear),
Prêt-a-Porter (ready-to-wear) Fashion Week, Couture
(one-of-a-kind designer original) Fashion Week and Bridal
Fashion Week, while Portland (Oregon, USA) Fashion Week
shows some eco-friendly designers.
Quote of the Day: 4 Feb. ’11~Virginia Woolf
“There is much to support the view that it is clothes that wear us and not we them; we may make them take the mould of arm or breast, but they would mould our hearts, our brains, our tongues to their liking.”~Virginia Woolf
Woolf was an English author, essayist, publisher, and writer of short stories, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century.
L’Histoire de Mode #1~Stiletto
Stiletto Heels
A stiletto heel is a long, thin, high heel found on some boots and shoes, usually for
women. It is named after the stiletto dagger, the phrase being first recorded in the early 1930s.
Stiletto heels may vary in length from 2.5 centimetres (1 inch) to 25 cm (10 inches) or more if a
platform sole is used, and are sometimes defined as having a diameter at the ground of
less than 1 cm (slightly less than half an inch). Stiletto-style heels 5 cm or shorter are called
kitten heels. Not all high slim heels merit the description stiletto. The extremely slender
original Italian-style stiletto heels of the late 1950s and very early 1960s were no more
than 5mm in diameter for much of their length, although the heel sometimes
flared out a little at the top-piece (tip). After their demise in the mid-late 1960s,
such slender heels were difficult to find until recently due to changes in the way
heels were mass-produced. A real stiletto heel has a stem of solid steel or alloy. The
more usual method of mass-producing high shoe heels, i.e. moulded plastic with an
internal metal tube for reinforcement, does not
achieve the true stiletto shape.
Relatively thin high heels were certainly around in the late 19th
century, as numerous fetish drawings attest. Firm photographic
evidence exists in the form of photographs of Parisian singer Mistinguett
from the 1940s. These shoes were designed by Andre Perugia, who began
designing shoes in 1906. It seems unlikely that he invented the stiletto, but
he is probably the first firmly documented designer of the high, slim heel. The
word stiletto is derived from stylus, meaning a pin or stalk. Its usage in footwear
first appeared in print in the New Statesman magazine in 1959: “She came …forward,
her walk made lopsided by the absence of one heel of the stilettos”.
High heel shoes were worn by men and women courtiers. The design of the
stiletto heel originally came from the late Kristin S. Wagner but would
not become popular until the late 1950s. The stiletto heel came with the advent of
technology using a supporting metal shaft or stem embedded into the heel, instead
of wood or other, weaker materials that required a wide heel. This revival of the
opulent heel style can be attributed to the designer Roger Vivier and such designs
became very popular in the 1950s.
As time went on, stiletto heels became known more for their erotic
nature than for their ability to make height. Stiletto heels are a common
fetish item. As a fashion item, their popularity was changing over time.
After an initial wave of popularity in the 1950s, they reached their most refined
shape in the early 1960s, when the toes of the shoes which bore them became as
slender and elongated as the stiletto heels themselves. As a result of the overall sharpness
of outline, it was customary for women to refer to the whole shoe as a “stiletto”, not
just the heel, via synecdoche (pars pro toto). Although they officially faded from the
scene after the Beatle era began, their popularity continued at street level, and women
stubbornly refused to give them up even after they could no longer readily find them in
the mainstream shops.
A version of the stiletto heel was reintroduced as soon as 1974
by Manolo Blahnik, who dubbed his “new” heel the Needle. Similar heels were stocked at
the big Biba store in London, by Russell and Bromley and by smaller boutiques. Old,
unsold stocks of pointed-toe stilettos, and contemporary efforts to replicate
them (lacking the true stiletto heel because of changes in the way heels
were by then being mass-produced) were sold in street fashion markets
and became popular with punks, and with other fashion “tribes” of the
late 1970s until supplies of the inspirational original styles dwindled in
the early 1980s. Subsequently, round-toe shoes with slightly thicker
(sometimes cone-shaped) semi-stiletto heels, often very high in an attempt
to convey slenderness (the best example of this being the shoes sold in
London by Derber), were frequently worn at the office with
wide-shouldered power suits.
The style survived through much
of the 1980s but almost completely disappeared during the 1990s,
when professional and college-age women took to wearing shoes
with thick, block heels. However, the slender stiletto heel staged
a major comeback after 2000, when young women adopted
the style for dressing up office wear or adding a feminine
touch to casual wear, like jeans. Stiletto heels are particularly
associated with the image of the femme fatale. They are often
considered to be a seductive item of clothing, and often
feature in popular culture.
Stilettos give the optical illusion of a longer, slimmer leg, a smaller foot,
and a greater overall height. They also alter the wearer’s posture and gait,
flexing the calf muscles, and making the
bust and buttocks more
prominent.
All high heels counter the natural functionality of the foot,
which can create skeleton/muscular problems if they are worn
excessively. Stiletto heels are no exception, but some people assume
that because they are thinner they must be worse for you. In fact, they are
safer to wear than the other extreme of high heel fashion, the platform shoe.
Despite their impracticality, their popularity remains undiminished – as Terry
DeHavilland (UK shoe designer) has said, “people say they’re bad for the
feet but they’re good for the mind. What’s more important?”
Stiletto heels concentrate a large amount of force into a small area.
The great pressure under such a heel (greater than that under the feet of an elephant.)
can cause damage to carpets and floors. The stiletto heel will also sink into soft
ground, making it impractical for
outdoor wear on grass.
Samples:
Ed Hardy
Dior
Jimmy Choo, Cole Haan, Sergio Rossi, Burberry, Louboutin, Guess, MIA, Madden
Balenciaga
Ducati
DeSquared F/W 10 (look familiar?)
L’Histoire de Mode~Naturally Colored Cotton
Naturally colored cotton is cotton that has been bred to
grow on the plant to have colors other than the yellowish off-white
typical of modern commercial cotton fibers. Colors grown include
red, green and several shades of brown. The cotton’s natural color
does not fade. Yields are typically lower and the fiber is shorter and
weaker but has a softer feel than the more commonly available “white” cotton.
Since it doesn’t have pesticides, chemicals, bleaches or artificial dyes,
fewer allergies and respiratory problems are found. This form of cotton
also feels softer to the skin and has a pleasant smell. Naturally
Colored Cotton is still relatively rare because it requires specialized
harvest techniques and facilities, making it more expensive to harvest
than white cotton. By the 1990s most indigenous colored cotton landraces
or cultivars grown in Africa, Asia and Central and South America were
replaced by all-white, commercial varieties.
Naturally colored cotton is believed to have originated in the Americas
around 5000 years ago in the Andes. Naturally colored cotton today mostly comes
from pre-Colombian stocks created by the indigenous peoples of South
America (Vreeland, 1999). Mochica Indians could be attributed with growing naturally
colored cotton of myriad hues, which they maintained for over the last two
millenniums on the northern coast of Peru.
Naturally colored cotton comes from pigments found in
cotton pigments and produce shades ranging from tan to green
and brown. Naturally-pigmented green cotton derives its color from
caffeic-acid, a derivative of innamic acid, found in the suberin (wax)
layer which is deposited in alternating layers with cellulose around the outside
of the cotton fiber.While green colored cotton comes from wax layers, brown
and tan cottons derive their color from tannin vacuoles in the
lumen of the fiber cells.
The naturally colored cotton has a small fiber and is not suitable
for heavy machine spinning. During the World War II the insufficient supply
of dye led to the cultivation of green and brown cotton in the Soviet Union.
The US government also showed interest in cultivation of naturally colored cotton
but later aborted the project due to low yield and short staple length.
“Later on US government instructed a famous agronomist, J.O.Ware, to study the Soviet cotton plants to determine whether they were commercially viable in the U.S. Ware and his colleagues concluded that the green and brown cotton plants yielded too little lint that was too short in staple length. Colored cotton was officially regulated to obscurity. Only in a few places where people still entranced by its possibilities.”
Due to smaller fiber, it becomes unpractical to use naturally colored cotton
for clothing manufacturers. But now, colored cotton is literally squeezed in with the conventional
white cotton to make its fiber longer and stronger than other naturally colored cotton to be
used in typical looms. Since this hybrid cotton fiber is stronger, it is
being used by Levis, L.L. Bean, Eileen Fisher, and
Fieldcrest for clothes like khakis.
A new arrival on the Western fashion market, naturally pigmented
cotton originally flourished some 5,000 years ago. Its revival today
draws on stocks first developed and cultivated by Indians in South and
Central America. Recent commercial cultivation currently uses
pre-Colombian stocks created by the indigenous peoples of South America.
Commercial cultivation still continues in South America as many big US
companies such as Patagonia, Levi Strauss and Esprit are buying naturally
grown cotton along with white cotton which requires significant
amount of insecticides and pesticides.
As mentioned the naturally colored cotton had smaller fiber which were
not suitable for mechanical looms used today, therefore kept naturally
colored cotton to enter in the commercial market. In 1982, Sally Fox
a graduate in Integrated Pest Management from University of California with a
Masters Degree started researching on colored cotton and integrated her knowledge
and experience in technology and introduced first long fiber of naturally colored cotton.
Sally Fox later started her company, Natural Cotton Colors, Inc. and got patents in different shades
including: green, Coyote brown, Buffalo brown, and Palo Verde green under FoxFiber®.
Later on the technology was further improved by a cotton breeder Raymond Bird in 1984.
Bird began experimenting in Reedley, California with red, green and brown cotton to
improve fiber quality. Later on Raymond Bird along with his brother and C. Harvey
Campbell Jr., a California agronomist and cotton breeder, and formed BC Cotton Inc.
to work with naturally colored cottons. Naturally colored cotton usually
come in four standard colors – green, brown, red (a reddish brown)
and mocha (similar to tan).
There is experimental evidence to demonstrate that
naturally-pigmented cottons, especially green cotton, have excellent
sun protection properties, when compared with unbleached white
cotton that needs to be treated with dyes or finishes to obtain similar
properties. It is hypothesized that the pigments in naturally-pigmented
cotton fibers are present to provide protection from ultraviolet radiation
for the embryonic cotton seeds, however they can also provide protection
from the sun’s harmful rays for consumers who wear garments manufactured
from these naturally-pigmented fibers. The UPF values of the naturally-pigmented
cottons examined in a university study remained high enough, even after 80 AFUs
(AATCC Fading Units)of light exposure and repeated laundering, that the fabrics
merited sun protection ratings of “good” to “very good” according to ASTM 6603
voluntary labeling guidelines for UV-protective textiles.
Naturally colored cotton is unique and exceptionally different from
white cotton as it does not need to be dyed. According to, agronomists the cost
of dying could be up to half of the value, and also environmentally friendly,
as it eliminates disposal costs for toxic dye waste. According to Dr. Frank
Werber, National Program Leader for Fabric and Materials, Agriculture Research
Service, USDA, naturally colored cotton is ecologically valid as well as economical.
Elimination of dyeing in production could save from $.60-1.50 per pound of fabric.
Naturally colored cotton is also resistant to change as compared with the
conventional dyed white cotton. After laundering, the color becomes
stronger and more intense, a characteristic documented during research
studies at Texas Tech University. The length of time required to “bring out” the
color varies with color and variety. Eventually, the colors may start to return
to their original color. Some naturally colored cotton darkens with
exposure to the sun. However, green is less stable and fades
to tan when exposed to sunlight.
Due to the non-industrialized product naturally colored cottons
yield less per acre, but growers are paid higher prices for their harvest.
In 1993, colored cotton prices ranged from $3.60 to $4.50 per pound
compared to conventional white cotton at $.60 to $.90 per pound.
L’Histoire de Mode~Levi Strauss
Strauss was a German-Jewish immigrant to the United States who founded the first company to manufacture blue jeans. His firm, Levi Strauss & Co., began in 1853 in San Francisco, California.
Levi Strauss
Levi Strauss was born in Buttenheim, in the Franconian region of Bavaria, Germany, to Hirsch Strauss and his wife Rebecca (Haass) Strauss. At the age of 18, Strauss, his mother and two sisters sailed for the United States to join his brothers Jonas and Louis, who had begun a wholesale dry goods business in New York City called J. Strauss Brother & Co.
The family decided to open a West Coast branch of the family dry goods business in San Francisco, which was the commercial hub of the California Gold Rush. Levi was chosen to represent the family, and after becoming an American citizen in January of 1853, he then caught another steamship for San Francisco, arriving in early March 1853.
Strauss opened his dry goods wholesale business as Levi Strauss & Co. and imported fine dry goods – clothing, bedding, combs, purses, handkerchiefs – from his brothers in New York. He sold the goods to the small general stores and men’s mercantiles of California and the West. Around 1856 Levi’s sister Fanny, her husband David Stern and their infant son Jacob moved from New York to San Francisco to join the business.
In late 1872 Jacob Davis, a Reno, Nevada tailor, started making men’s work pants with metal points of strain for greater strength. He wanted to patent the process but needed a business helper, so he turned to Levi Strauss, from whom he purchased some of his fabric.On May 20, 1873, Strauss and Davis received United States patent for using copper rivets to strengthen the pockets of denim work pants. Levi Strauss & Co. began manufacturing the famous Levi’s brand of jeans, using fabric from the Amoskeag Manufacturing Company in Manchester, New Hampshire.
In the second half of the twentieth century, Levi’s jeans became a symbol of youth culture, being worn by revolutionaries and rock stars. They were famously photographed being worn by many of the young people who helped to dismantle the first bricks when the Berlin Wall was brought down in 1989.
Levi Strauss died on September 26, 1902 at the age of 73. He never married, so he left the business to his four nephews, Jacob, Sigmund, Louis, and Abraham Stern, the sons of his sister Fanny and her husband David Stern. He also left bequests to a number of charities such as the Pacific Hebrew Orphan Asylum and the Roman Catholic Orphan Asylum. Levi’s fortune was estimated to be around 6 million dollars. He was buried in Colma, California
A Levi Strauss museum is maintained in Buttenheim, Germany, located in the 1687 house where Strauss was born. There is also a Visitors Center at Levi Strauss & Co. world headquarters in San Francisco, which features a number of historical exhibits.
L’Histoire de Mode~Lolita (JSF pt.3)
Lolita Fashion:
Lolita is a fashion subculture originating in Japan that is primarily influenced by Victorian clothing as well as costumes from the Rococo period. Lolita has made this into a unique fashion by adding Gothic and original design elements to the look. From this, Lolita fashion has evolved into several different sub styles and has created a devoted subculture in Japan. The Lolita look consists primarily of a knee length skirt or dress, headdress, blouse, petticoat, knee high socks or stockings and rocking horse or high heel/platform shoes. Although the origin of Lolita fashion is unclear, it is likely the movement started in the late 1970s when famous labels including Pink House, Milk and Angelic Pretty began selling clothes that would be considered “Lolita” by today’s standards. Shortly after that came Baby, The Stars Shine Bright, and Metamorphose temps de fille. In the 1990s, Lolita fashion became better recognized, with bands like Malice Mizer and other Visual Kei (or visual type) bands coming into popularity. These bands wore intricate costumes, which fans began adopting as their own style. The style soon spread from its origins in the Kansai region, and ultimately reached Tokyo where it became popularized throughout Japanese youth culture. Today, Lolita fashion has grown so much in popularity that it can be found even in department stores in Japan.
Gothic Lolita
Gothic lolita, sometimes shortened to GothLoli (ゴスロリ, gosu rori), is a
combination of the Gothic and Lolita fashion. The fashion originated in
the late 1990s in Harajuku and was promoted by Visual Kei bands such as
Malice Mizer, which brought it to greater popularity amongst fans of
alternative street fashion and followers of the musical style. Gothic Lolita
fashion is characterized by a darker make-up and clothing. Red lipstick
and smokey or neatly defined eyes, created using black eyeliner, are
typical styles, although as with all Lolita substyles the look remains fairly
natural. Though Gothic make-up is associated with a white powdered
face, this is usually considered bad taste within the Lolita fashion. Gothic
Lolita usually uses dark color schemes including black, dark blues and
purples, although black and white remains popular. As with some Western
Gothic styles, cross jewelry and other religious symbols are also used
to accessorize the Gothic Lolita look. Other accessories in the Gothic Lolita
style include bags and purses which are often in shapes like bats, coffins, and crucifixes.
Mana, a Visual Kei artist known for dressing in the fashion, created a style of the
Gothic Lolita fashion which he calls “Elegant Gothic Lolita”, most connected
with the fashion label Moi-même-Moitié, which has grown to be very successful.
To describe the designs of his new label, he encouraged the use of the aforementioned
term Elegant Gothic Lolita (EGL) and Elegant Gothic Aristocrat (EGA).
Sweet Lolita
Sweet Lolita, also known as ama-loli (甘ロリ, ama rori) in Japanese, is heavily
influenced by Rococo styles as well as Victorian and Edwardian clothing. Focusing on the
child and fantasy aspects of Lolita, the Sweet Lolita style adopts the basic Lolita
format and uses lighter colors and childlike motifs in its design. Makeup used in
sweet Lolita is common throughout most Lolita styles. Pink, Peach, or Pearl make
up styles are highly ‘sweet’ and used by many Sweet Lolitas. This look, paired with
a shade of bright pink, red or sometimes nude-pink lipstick, is commonly used as
well. Outfits consist of pastels, fruit themes (cherries or strawberries, or any type
of sugary fruit), flowers (roses, jasmines, lily, cherry blossoms) lace, bows, animal
themes (cats, bunnies, puppies) and ribbons to emphasize the cuteness of the
design. Popular themes in the sweet Lolita are references to Alice in Wonderland,
sweets, and classic fairy tales. Jewelry often reflects this fantasy theme.
Headdresses, bonnets and bows are a popular hair accessory to the sweet Lolita
look. Bags and purses usually have a princess-like design and often take the shape
of strawberries, crowns, hearts, and stuffed animals. Examples for Sweet Lolita brands
are Angelic Pretty, Baby, The Stars Shine Bright and Metamorphose temps de fille. Emily Temple
cute (sister brand of Shirley Temple, a Japanese boutique), Jane Marple, and
MILK are brands that carry more clothing that would be considered more
casual, and are available to purchase at department
stores in Japan.
Classic Lolita
Classic Lolita is a more mature style of Lolita that focuses on
Baroque, Regency, and Rococo styles. Colors and patterns used
in classic Lolita can be seen as somewhere between the Gothic and
sweet styles; it is not as dark as Gothic Lolita, but not as cutesy as 
sweet Lolita. This look can be seen as the more sophisticated, mature
Lolita style because of its use of small, intricate patterns, as well more
muted colors on the fabric and in the overall design. Designs containing a-lines,
as well as Empire waists are also used to add to the more mature look of
the classic style. Most classic Lolita outfits, however, still stick to the basic
Lolita silhouette. Shoes and accessories are less whimsical and more functional.
Jewelry with intricate designs is also common. The makeup used in classic Lolita
is often a more muted version of the sweet Lolita makeup, with an emphasis placed
on natural coloring. Classical Lolita brands include
Juliette et Justine, Innocent World,
Victorian Maiden, Triple Fortune,
and Mary Magdalene.
Punk Lolita:
Punk Lolita (or Lolita Punk) adds punk fashion elements to Lolita fashion. Motifs that
are usually found in punk 
clothing, such as tattered fabric, ties, safety pins and
chains, screen-printed fabrics, plaids, and short, androgynous hairstyles
are incorporated into the Lolita look. The most popular garments are
blouses or cutsews and skirts, although dresses and jumper skirts
are also worn. Common footwear includes boots, Mary Janes
or oxfords with platforms. Common Punk Lolita brands are A+Lidel,
Putumayo, h. NAOTO and Na+H. Many of the Japanese punk Lolita
fashion brands take influence from London’s famous Camden Town Markets.
Vivienne Westwood, who, though not a Lolita designer, has items
and collections that reflect Lolita sensibilities, especially in her
Japanese collections, is popular in the punk Lolita scene.
Males have known to take up Punk Lolita fashion, and
as well as Victorian style Lolita fashion.
More
Because of the ‘do-it-yourself’ nature of Lolita fashion, many other themes have come out of the basic Lolita frame. These styles are often not as well known as the ones mentioned above, but they do showcase the creative nature of the Lolita fashion, and illustrate how people make the fashion their own. Listed below are just a few examples of the smaller subtypes of Lolita fashion:
- Wa Lolita or Wa rori (和ロリ), traditional Japanese clothing styles with the Lolita fashion.
- Qi Lolita , a similar style but uses Chinese clothing and accessories in place of Japanese.
- Ōji (王子) or Ōji-sama (王子様), meaning “prince”, is a Japanese fashion that is considered the male version of Lolita fashion. Worn by both sexes.
- Hime (姫), or “Princess,” Lolita is characterized by a princess-style look which typically includes a tiara and a bustle back skirt.
- Guro Lolita (Gore Lolita), the portrayal of a ‘broken doll’ or “Innocent Gore” by using items such as fake blood, make-up, and bandages to give the appearance of injury.
- and many many more.
Well this was the last part in our “Japanese Street Fashion” series, I thoroughly emjoyed doing the research & sharing this tiny obsession of my mine & my sisters. If you like this please comment & I will keep doing three part history series on international fashion. Give us feedback so we know what you like.
Thanks,
~Chris J.~
L’Histoire de Mode~Harajuku (JSF pt.2)
This is part two of the three part history series. Yesterday we talked about the main branch, Japanese Street Fashion, today we are talking about Harajuku Fashion Lolita Fashion.
Harajuku:
Harajuku is the common name for the area around Harajuku Station
on the Yamanote Line in the Shibuya ward of Tokyo, Japan. Every Sunday,
young people dressed in a variety of styles including gothic lolita, visual kei,
and decora, as well as cosplayers spend the day in Harajuku socializing.
The fashion styles of these youths rarely conform to one particular style and are usually
a mesh of many. Most young people gather on Jingu Bridge, which is a pedestrian bridge that
connects Harajuku to the neighboring Meiji Shrine area.
Harajuku is also a fashion capital of the world, renowned for its
unique street fashion. Harajuku street style is promoted in
Japanese and international publications such as Kera, Tune,
Gothic & Lolita Bible and Fruits. Many prominent designers and
fashion ideas have sprung from Harajuku and incorporated themselves
into other fashions throughout the world. Harajuku is also a large
shopping district that includes international brands, its own brands,
and shops selling clothes young people can afford.
Harajuku is an area between Shinjuku and Shibuya. Local landmarks include
the headquarters of NHK, Meiji Shrine, and Yoyogi Park. The area has two main shopping
streets, Omotesandō and Takeshita Street (Takeshita-dōri). The latter caters to youth fashions
and has many small stores selling Gothic Lolita, visual kei, rockabilly, hip-hop, and
punk outfits,in addition to fast food outlets and so forth. Omotesandō has recently seen
a rise in openings of up-scale fashion shops such as Louis Vuitton, Chanel, and Prada. The
avenue is sometimes referred to as “Tokyo’s Champs-Élysées”. Until 2004, one side of the
avenue was occupied by the Dōjunkai Aoyama apāto, Bauhaus-inspired apartments built in
1927 after the 1923 Kantō earthquake. In 2006 the buildings were controversially
destroyed by Mori Building and replaced with the “Omotesando Hills” shopping mall,
designed by Tadao Ando. The area known as “Ura-Hara”, back streets of Harajuku,
is a center of Japanese fashion for younger people—brands such as A Bathing Ape
and Undercover have shops in the area.
Harajuku as it is now traces its roots to the end of World War II during
the Allied occupation of Japan. U.S. soldiers and government civilians and
their families lived in a nearby housing area called Washington Heights.
It became an area where curious young people flocked to experience a different
culture and stores in the area stocked goods marketed towards middle and
upper class Japanese and Americans. In 1958, Central Apartments were built
in the area and were quickly occupied by fashion designers, models,
and photographers. In 1964, when the Summer Olympics came to
Tokyo the Harajuku area was further developed, and the idea of “Harajuku”
slowly began to take a more concrete shape. After the Olympics the young
people who hung out in the area, frequently referred to as the Harajuku-zoku,
or the Harajuku tribe, began to develop a distinct culture and style unique to
different groups and the area. From this distinct style grew the culture of
Harajuku as a gathering ground for youths and as a fashion mecca.
The term “Harajuku Girls” has been used by English-language media to describe
teenagers dressed in any fashion style who are in the area of Harajuku.
This fashion infuses multiple looks and styles to create a unique form of dress.
The cyber-punk look takes its influence from gothic fashion and incorporates
neon and metallic colors. However, it isn’t as popular as it was in the 1990s.
Punk style in Harajuku is more of a fashion than a statement. Its fashion mainly
consists of dark colors, plaid, chains, and zippers. Punk style is also one of the
more gender-neutral fashions in Harajuku. Ganguro is a style that symbolizes the
average American teenager. The term translates to ‘black-faced’.
The basic look is what Westerners would call a ‘California girl’,
with bleached hair, dark skin, fake eyelashes and nails. It is not
clear how Ganguro came to be. Many assume it originated in
the early 1990s, when singer and performer Janet Jackson was popular.
Cosplay is more of a costume-based style. A cosplay enthusiast
will usually dress as a fictional or iconic character from a band, game,
movie, anime, or manga. Ura-Hara is another section of Harajuku,
which caters to a mostly male population interested in a hip-hop,
graffiti, and skater fashion and culture. Ura-Hara is seen as the
opposite of Harajuku in that it’s more hidden and reserved.
In addition to Harajuku is its counterpart, known as
Visual Kei. this refers to the style of bands and their fanbase.
The term Visual Kei literally means a ‘visual style of music’.
The melodies of the music these bands perform often resemble
eighties rock, heavy metal, or techno; in some cases, the sound is a
good mix of the three. The fashion began in the 1980s, when American
metal bands were popular. Japanese fans loved how their idols would
dress frantically and paint makeup wildly on their faces, so they began
to emulate their style. This mimicking is also known is costume play, or cosplay.
Some countries have embraced this culture and arrange meetings under the
same fashion as their Japanese counterpart. For example, in Colombia they are frequently
held at the surrounding area of the Virgilio Barco Library in Bogotá.
Samples:
1930bychrisjackson 
