In the time between Mary Quant’s go-go mini skirts and Malcolm Maclaren and Vivienne Westwood’s punk movement, 1965-1974, there was Ossie Clark. With his desire to dress women in ways that they embraced their bodies, draping them in chiffons, and crepes, combining plunging necklines and transparent fabrics all while maintaining the sophisticated glamour of the 1930’s fashions he drew on for inspiration. Let's go back to where it all began;
Born in 1942 in Liverpool, England as Raymond Clark he would later get the nickname Ossie after the Lancashire village, Oswaldtwistle, which is where his family was evacuated to during WWII.
Geometry was Ossie’s best subject in school and had a propensity for understanding the mathematical element of Fashion. It would make sense then that among his artistic inspirations were the designs of Madeleine Vionnet and Charles James. He also noted that his study of architecture at the age of 13 proved invaluable to understanding proportion, height, and volume, which he would execute throughout his designs. Perhaps this could be part of the reason that Ossie Clark dresses always flatter the wearer so well!
Another major influence to Clark’s design legacy would be in 1959 he saw the Pierre Cardin chiffon “peacock” dresses in Paris. When looking at them he describes the dresses being cut as what seemed to be a “spiral line”, this would be evident in much of his later work.
The 60's and 70's were a time of "rebelling against your parents fashion" and one of Ossie's teachers during his higher education highlighted that a wonderful way to do this would be to take the glamour of the 1930's fashion and simply wear it on the streets. Ossie took this to heart, and his designs were meant to be worn, to party in, to run errands, all while maintaining this air of glamour. However, it is because of this that many of his designs are hard to find in perfect condition. But isn't that what our clothes are for? To be truly worn?
Ossie would end up marrying his major collaborator, textile designer Celia Birtwell, for a time. Many regard this as one of the best collaborations in fashion, and I would have to agree. Without Birtwell's designs Ossie's dresses would just be plain fabrics without the punch. Her Art Deco inspiration and botanicals, in the style of US naturalist Audubon, while sometimes incorporating kitschy equivalents in off-beat colors, gave Ossie dresses their impact.
Not to say the sheer cuts and draping of the dresses weren't spectacular as well. After all Ossie was known to be so skilled that he would cut into material without a pattern. If you’re anything like me you grew up being told to measure twice and cut once, I can’t even imagine the confidence and skill that cutting without even measuring would require! A true talent.
Each one of his dresses have a secret pocket just big enough to hold a key and a $5 bill. All that a liberated woman would need Clark thought.
To have an Ossie was to Be Someone, he would produce two collections a year. One would be higher end to be sold at Quorum, Alice Pollock’s King’s Road boutique where Ossie got his start in the design world. And another, a lower priced one for a licensing deal with Radley.
Talent alone couldn't keep Ossie on top though, he had what some referred to as a "volatile personality". This would affect his personal relationships and trials, his designs though steadily remained popular, and the label "Ossie Clark" coveted. Even as the man behind it all slipped into hard times.
In 1996 Ossie was murdered in his own home, a truly tragic end for such an impactful designer on the fashion world. Before his death eh had begun to turn aspects of his life around and was mentoring designer Bella Freud in pattern cutting, and the Ossie influence is very evident in her designs today.
Today labels you can find the Ossie Clark influence in are Marc Jacobs, Gucci, GHOST and Prada.
]]>we have to go back to 1947. To the "Mystère" 1947 fall/winter Dior collection, or the New Look collection as it would soon be dubbed.
This “New Look” referred to Christian Dior’s collection that exaggerated the feminine silhouette with padded shoulders and hips, heavily constructed garments, long skirts, and of course an emphasis on a drawn in waist.
At the time of this collection's launch the popular fashions were lending to silhouettes pioneered and favored by Chanel. Straight lines, a mixture of workwear and men's wear in women’s clothes, and an almost boxy appearance.
There were elements of what this New Look would expound upon, such as exaggerated shoulders and some attention was being drawn to the waist, in the fashion trends before Dior’s collection. But the dominant silhouette of the 30’s and 40’s was an inverted triangle. Broad, dramatic shoulders, narrow waist and narrower hips, and skirts were long and straight.
In 1947 the world was coming out of a war and life had picked up pace and clothing, especially women’s clothing, had begun to transition more to practicality for women on the move in the workforce. At the same time there was a longing, a grieving, for how life was before World Wars. This is where we can attribute a portion of the success of Dior’s New Look.
As we all know fashion repeats itself and takes inspiration from the past. So Christian Dior looked to the fashions of the past, specifically fashions from before there were “World Wars”. The Belle Époque Era. An era characterized by wealth, progress, and optimism, as well as opulence in the fashions of the time. Bustles, puffed sleeves, corsets, trains, women wore pounds and pounds of ornate fabrics and trimmings.
You can see elements of this in Dior’s 1947 collection, like the padded shoulders and hips, as well as the sheer volume of fabric used in the garments. Most notable instances of this are the skirts from the collection which could have up to 15 yards of fabric! A perfect example of how this collection was a call to the opulent and excessive era of a world before war. This ”New Look” would become the prevailing and dominant silhouette of the 1950’s, becoming what we think when we think “50’s fashion” to this day for the most part.
Now it was the prevailing silhouette, but it was not the only style gaining immense popularity. In another blog I will go into the backlash from some women over the New Look, Chanel’s return from retirement, and escapism in 1950’s fashion.
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To start, let's go back to Portland in 1910 where John and C.R. Zehnthbauer and Carl Jantzen started the Portland Knitting Company. They were a small operation until 1913 when the Portland Rowing Club came to them with a request. They wanted a swim trunk that would stay up without a drawstring and have a similar knit stitch to that of a sweater cuff.
What they ended up creating was a one piece knit leotard like garment that was less than 10 pounds when fully wet. It was obvious from the start that this design had incredible potential and by 1918 the company had changed their name to be the Jantzen Knitting Mills as their focus would become the “bathing suits” that they had created.
In 1920 The Red Diving Girl made her debut on the Jantzen catalogue, she wore her signature red knit bathing suit, a cap and matching stockings. She was designed by Frank and Florenz Clark.The country quickly fell in love with her, cutouts of The Red Diving Girl would appear in car windshields, and she was featured on billboards leading to beaches in San Francisco, Los Angeles and of course Portland.
By 1923 she would appear as a logo on swim suits with the introduction of Jantzen’s new slogan, “The suit that changed bathing to swimming”. By the end of the 1920’s The Red Diving Girl was a recognizable icon throughout North American, Europe, and Asia. And she also lost her red stockings by the end of the decade as they went out of use by real women swimmers.
The 1930’s saw Jantzen’s celebrity endorsements with names like Lorreta Young, Joan Blondell, Ginger Rogers, and Dick Powell dawning their Jantzens. We also begin to see the shift to flattering women's silhouettes in the company’s swimwear with the Shouldaire being released in 1931. This would allow strap free tanning with an internal drawstring at the bust to be tightened to keep the suit up without the support of the straps.
For the years leading to 1931 Jantzen had built a reputation of quality and practicality, being the ones to pioneer a garment typically meant you’d be at the best at making it, i.e. Levi’s and jeans. Once 1931 came around though and Jantzen unveiled their Shouldaire style suit we would begin to see a shift in the company to focus on quality garments that flattered.
The Shouldaire was a one piece swimsuit that had an internal drawstring at the bust line which allowed the wearer to slip the shoulder straps down to avoid tan lines and still keep their suit secured. The style was very popular!
The “Molded Fit” would soon become the Jantzen suit calling card. Mixing Lastex, a rubberized yarn, into their suits allowed for more form fitting yet still structured suits.
In the 1940’s the company would go on to expand outside of swimsuits and make sweaters, girdles, as well as a wider variety of active wear.
During WWII Jantzen produced a number of garments for the military including swim trunks and parachutes. After the end of the war the preferred material for Jantzen swimsuits would become nylon.
The 1950’s saw a great expansion for Jantzen with commercial air travel and tropical getaway destinations. Their success and reputation would go one to grow and the name Jantzen and the Red Diving Girl would continue to become a beacon for quality, and flattering, swimwear.
Today Jantzen is still in the swimsuit business and at the start of the 2010’s they began to recreate their most popular swimwear styles throughout their decades of operation with a modern twist. So if you want, you can grab a modern Jantzen one piece…but I would say I'm partial to the styles and construction of the true vintage Jantzen suits and the Red Diving Girl.
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The majority of Elsa’s adult life was spent in France where she worked as a freelance fashion designer throughout the 1920’s. In 1927 she opened a small atelier and released her Trompe lœil design on hand-knit pullover sweaters. This would be her first taste of a “viral design”.
Now what is Trompe lœil you may be wondering, well it is a term in the art world that refers to a technique that involves making two dimensional details appear to be three dimensional. So in Schiaparelli’s case she made the knit details of scarves, bows, and collars appear to be three dimensional rather than the flat details in the knitwork that they were.
This may seem like a fairly simple concept and design to us now, since we see it quite often, but it was Schiaparelli who pioneered this design. Being the first one to create a design like this, on a handknit pullover sweater. US Vogue championed this design as a “masterpiece”, making it a very popular design in the US.
Playing off the success of her first independent design Schiaparelli released more knitwear. Then she began to add variety in the form of beach pajamas, swimsuits, and accessories, the motifs would range in variety and color as Schiaparelli experimented with bolder and bolder designs. The world could not get enough!
The success of combining Haute Couture and sportswear led to American textile manufacturing offering Schiaparelli her first licensing agreements.
In 1934 Elsa Schiaparelli adorned the cover of Time magazine, the first female fashion designer to do so. The attention her designs and her vivacious personality gained her even more notoriety in the form of high profile clientele.
If you know anything about Schiaparelli it’s probably the lobster dress, but what led to this iconic design?
After Schiaparelli’s Time cover her collaborations with surrealism artist Salvador Dali would begin. Starting in 1935 with the Newspaper print, where the text of the material was real newspaper articles and headlines about Schiaparelli’s designs. This would also be the first instance of newspaper print being used in textile design for clothing.
Dali and Schiaparelli would often draw inspiration from each other's work, and the lobster dress is a wonderful instance of this. In 1936 Dali made his Lobster Telephone sculpture, which was inspired by the teachings of Freud, and it would serve as Schiaparelli’s inspiration for the lobster dress which Dali would collaborate on.
The lobster motif, positioned somewhat suggestively on the skirt of the dress, is actually a drawing by Salavdor Dali himself. Dali is said to have argued to add more flourish to the lobster but Schiaparelli convinced him that the simplicity of the drawing would work perfectly with her envisioned placement of it on the dress. And she was exactly right.
In June of 1937 Wallis Simpson, American socialite, would pick this dress from the Summer’s Catch collection to wear on her honeymoon and also be photographed for her spread in Vouge.
The Vouge photoshoot, done by Cecil Beaton, would highlight the dress in a two page spread and the photos were also published in Women's Wear Daily. This would all bring much public attention to Schiaparelli’s designs.
The lobster dress has since become a calling card of fashion with many iterations and recreations over the years. Here are some examples;
2012 - Anna Wintor wears a recreation of the lobster dress with a twist from the Schiaparelli x Prada collaboration “Impossible Conversations”
2013 - s/s Thom Brown lobster embellished blazer.
It seemed as though every time the two artists, Schiaparelli and Dali, collaborated the world could never get enough. Starting with the newspaper print(1935) to the lobsters dress(1937) the shoe hat(1938) and the skeleton dress(1938) just to name a few.
Though Schiaparelli was a powerhouse of a designer in her own right, there is no denying her collaborations with Dali produced some of the most memorable pieces of art-fashion.
Other well known collaborations with Schiaparelli are; The Aspirin Necklace with Elsa Triolet(1928), Zsa Zsa Gabor in Moulin Rouge(1953), Andy Worhal illustrated an advertisement for Schiaparelli gloves(1953). And these are just scratching the top of the long list of artist collaborators!
Beyond Collaborators Schiaparelli was inspired by many others in the art world, including Pablo Picaso. Schiaparelli’s widely celebrated black gloves with red python nails was a design inspired by Picaso painting gloves on a model's hands which was photographed by Man Ray, another artist Schiaparelli worked with.
In 1954 Schiaparelli closed the Couture House to focus her life on penning her autobiography, ‘Shocking Life’. Come 1973 Elsa Schiaparelli would pass away in her sleep. The Couture House would remain closed until 2012.
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