Fashion Prints in the Age of Louis XIV [livre]

Kathryn Norberg and Sandra Rosenbaum, eds., Fashion Prints in the Age of Louis XIV: Interpreting the Art of Elegance (Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 2014), 320 pages, ISBN: 978-0896728578, $46.

Between 1678 and 1710, Parisian presses printed hundreds of images of elegantly attired men and women dressed in the latest mode, and posed to display every detail of their clothing and accessories. Long used to illustrate dress of the period, these fashion prints have been taken at face value and used uncritically. Drawing on perspectives from art history, costume history, French literature, museum conservation and theatrical costuming, the essays in this volume explore what the prints represent and what they reveal about fashion and culture in the seventeenth century.

With more than one hundred illustrations, Fashion Prints in the Age of Louis XIV constitutes not only an innovative analysis of fashion engravings, but also one of the most comprehensive collections of seventeenth-century fashion images available in print.

Kathryn Norberg is a professor of history and gender studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. She has published on French history and is the coeditor of Furnishing the Eighteenth Century: What Furniture Can Tell Us about the European and American Past.

Sandra Rosenbaum is the retired curator-in-charge of the Doris Stein Research Center for Costume and Textiles, a part of the Department of Costume and Textiles, at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, for which she developed and supervised an extensive library of primary and secondary source materials.

Contents.

Silent Partners: Artist and Mannequin from Function to Fetish [exposition]

The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, 14 October 2014 — 25 January 2015
Musée Bourdelle, Paris, 31 March — 12 July 2015

The articulated human figure made of wax or wood has been a common tool in artistic practice since the 16th century. Its mobile limbs enable the artist to study anatomical proportion, fix a pose at will, and perfect the depiction of drapery and clothing. Over the course of the 19th century, the mannequin gradually emerged from the studio to become the artist’s subject, at first humorously, then in more complicated ways, playing on the unnerving psychological presence of a figure that was realistic, yet unreal—lifelike, yet lifeless.

Silent Partners locates the artist’s mannequin within the context of an expanding universe of effigies, avatars, dolls, and shop window dummies. Generously illustrated, this book features works by such artists as Poussin, Gainsborough, Degas, Courbet, Cézanne, Kokoschka, Dalí, Man Ray, and others; the astute, perceptive text examines their range of responses to the uncanny and highly suggestive potential of the mannequin.

Quand l'habit fait le moine. tenues de travail en photographie [exposition]

6 juin au 16 novembre 2014 - Musée de Bretagne

" L 'habit ne fait pas le moine " dit le proverbe, sauf peut-être lorsqu'il s'agit de vêtements de travail... 

D'un seul regard porté à la tenue, on reconnaît souvent la profession d'un individu. Il permet d'identifier un métier, comme de véhiculer des notions plus abstraites de pouvoir, de hiérarchie, de distinction sociale ou d'identité collective. Vêtements de travail et uniformes ont donc parfois des fonctions, parfois des rôles symboliques, mais toujours des significations.

Les photographes des années 1850 à nos jours se sont emparés de cette thématique dans laquelle le lien social transparaît à chaque image. Une sélection de clichés extraits des collections photographiques du musée de Bretagne vous propose de décrypter cet univers codifié.

Soieries: Le livre d’échantillons d’un marchand français au siècle des Lumières [livre]

Par sa grande rareté, le livre d’échantillons reproduit ici pour la première fois et dont l’original est conservé au Victoria & Albert Museum de Londres, présente un intérêt unique. C’est une véritable révélation qui offre une source d’informations capitale sur la création des soieries en France au XVIIIe siècle.

La provenance de ce livre d’échantillons est originale à elle toute seule. En effet, il fut saisi en 1764 par les Douanes anglaises qui luttaient contre les importations illégales de textiles, qu’organisaient des agents français. Nous sommes aussi en plein roman d’espionnage et de contre –espionnage industriel, comme l’explique l’auteur Lesley E. Miller, conservatrice en chef du Département des Textiles et de la Mode au Victoria and Albert Museum. Son texte vivant nous immerge dans la vie quotidienne des soyeux lyonnais des années 1760. Elle apporte un éclairage très documenté sur la fabrication et sur le commerce des textiles à cette époque qu’elle a étudiée pendant plusieurs années. L’auteur brosse également un panorama illustré de la mode et de l’usage des soieries françaises en Europe sous l’Ancien Régime.

Une analyse technique rigoureuse de chacun des échantillons confère à ce livre le caractère d’un ouvrage de référence qui satisfera les attentes les plus exigeantes. Mais c’est le charme immense qui se dégage de la partie « fac-similé » qui fait de ce livre d’échantillons, reproduit intégralement, un véritable objet de séduction. L’original, relié en carton et en parchemin ne pèse pas moins de 8,400 kg ! Source inépuisable d’inspiration, ces centaines de «morceaux d’étoffe » aux noms pleins de poésie, aujourd’hui disparus, touchent par la fraîcheur de leurs tons et la richesse des motifs.

En dehors des spécialistes et des professionnels de la mode et des textiles, ce livre s’adresse également à tous les amateurs des arts décoratifs.

Lesley Ellis Miller, Soieries: Le livre d’échantillons d’un marchand français au siècle des Lumières, translated by Anne de Thoisy-Dallem (Lausanne: La Bibliothèque des Arts, 2014), 272 pages,

Critical Costume 2015. An international conference and exhibition of costume (Helsinki, 25-27 march 2015) [call for papers]

[Deadline for the submission of proposals: 20 October 2014]

What does it mean to study costume in the 21^st century?

Early theoretical discourse on costume (Hollander 1975/1993; Wilson 1985/2013; Gaines 1990) underlines the active interrelation between costume, body and character by arguing that “costume assimilates bodily signifiers into character, but body as a whole engulfs the dress” (Gaines 1990: 193).

In the 21^st century, costume practices are now encountered through a multitude of different media: from film and theatre to virtual environments and mediated platforms. Mediation has become a prevalent principle of contemporary life and culture. Yet, the role of the costumed body and of how bodily practices are ‘read’ within and explored through these contexts remains a central question of 21^st century artistic scholarship and practice.

Costume is still a relatively new and emerging research area. However, the study of costume has significantly grown in profile in recent years as a subject worthy of focused academic study, as evident within the growing number of international scholarly publications on costume and the costumed body in the last decade. Most recently, special issues of academic journals, such asCanadian Theatre Review (2012) and Scene (2014, forthcoming), have addressed the agency of costume in live performance as well as in film and other media. In that regard, Critical Costume 2015 is the second event conceived under the banner of Critical Costume, following a research project initiated by Dr. Rachel Hann and Sidsel Bech at Edge Hill University (UK) in 2013 (seewww.criticalcostume.com). The overall aim of the Critical Costume events is to offer a platform for new academic thinking and design practices around the study of costume: with costume conceived as a means of critically interrogating the body in/as performance.

Therefore, Critical Costume 2015 invites contributions from scholars and practitioners that seek toad-dress the implications of research processes, new technologies and media for the study and practice of costuming today and in history.

While we welcome all proposals on the subject of costume, Critical Costume 2015 is particularly interested in contributions from practitioners and scholars that investigate the following:

a) Methodologies for researching costume in live performance, film and media: this includes practice-based approaches, new technologies as a tool for costume research, as well as historical, sociological, ethnographic, anthropological or other cultural perspectives in studying costume practices.

b) Media and mediated costume, and new design practices: costume in media and media in costume; these include digital costume, wearable technology, interactivity, latest technology and special effects, and the dramaturgical implications of interpreting screen-mediated or projected costume.  

c) Costume practices and performances that examine the performative qualities of material (whether physical or virtual), body, flesh, and design.

The event includes

-          an exhibition of artistic work and artistic research,

-          a conference comprised of academic presentations on current research in the field of costume and performance,

-          Flash Talks - short presentations by artists, and

-          film and media screenings.

In that regard, we invite all interested parties to submit their proposals stating which presentation format you wish to be considered for:

• 20min paper presentation (title and 300-word abstract)
• Flash Talk presentations (title and 200-word summary)
• Exhibition or Installation work – physical or mediated object (title and 200-word description)

Note: We welcome applications to present in more than one format.

The event language is English.

 Deadline for the submission of proposals: 20 October 2014

Please submit your proposals online: http://costumeinfocus.com/?page_id=118

 Critical Costume 2015 is curated by Professor Sofia Pantouvaki and hosted by the Costume in Focusresearch group, based at Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture.

 Important dates:

Deadline for the submission of proposals: 20 October 2014

Notification of acceptance: 25 November 2014

Event dates: 25-27 March 2015

For more information, please contact: Prof. Sofia Pantouvaki, email: sofia.pantouvaki@aalto.fi

Twitter: @CriticalCostume

Fashion Tales 2015: Feeding the Imaginary (Milan, 18-20 June 2015) [call for papers]

ModaCult is an academic research centre that has tried, since its creation in 1995 , to support dialogue across disciplines and practices and to compare the languages and expertise of different fashion professionals, both by organizing interdisciplinary conferences and promoting ethnographic research projects. In June 2012 it convened and hosted the first edition of the Conference Fashion Tales, attended by 250 delegates from 38 Countries from all continents.  Today, on the occasion of the Expo 2015 to be held in Milan and significantly entitled ‘Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life’, we invite scholars, curators, media and consultancy professionals, as well as fashion designers and business people, to share ideas, meanings, images and methodologies with particular attention to the ways they feed the social imaginary towards sustainable lifestyles. (...)

To learn more / pour en savoir plus.

Call for papers : dealine = 1st october 2014

War and Clothing. Fashion illustration at the time of the First World War [exposition]

The political upheavals of the period between 1914 and 1919 that shook the world and changed the course of history also left their mark on the silhouette of women's clothing and established the fashion industry as an increasingly important sector of the national economies of the Western world. Overshadowed by Art Nouveau and the so-called Golden or Roaring Twenties and therefore all too often overlooked by fashion historians, the clothes designed during the Great War are distinguished by a surprising vitality and modernity. Many details that had been introduced during the war years as practical innovations - the markedly shorter skirts and dresses, simple sportswear-inspired daywear, new materials such as wool and silk jersey or the penchant for black as a fashion colour - were retained and developed further after 1919.

The exhibition presents fashion illustrations and photographs from the fashion capitals of Paris, Berlin and Vienna. Among the exhibits are the exquisitely designed magazines Gazette du Bon Ton and Der Kleiderkasten as well as the Parisian fashion plate portfolios Modes et Manières d'Aujourd'hui with illustrations by George Lepape and André Marty and La Mode par Fried. The rare prints from the Mode Wien 1914/15 portfolio, published in cooperation with the Wiener Werkstätte, exemplify the characteristic expressive style of Vienna, while original drawings by Annie Offterdinger illustrate the sophisticated designs of the Berlin fashion house Alfred-Marie.

Fashion plates of the period of the First World War are marked by the influence of contemporary avant-garde trends in art such as Cubism, Fauvism and Expressionism. The selection of some 200 items from the rich holdings of the Fashion Image Collection of the Lipperheide Costume Library invites visitors to rediscover the astonishingly modern pictorial language of wartime fashion illustrations.

Berlin, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, 25/09/2014 to 18/01/2015