Above all else...

Jacqueline de Ribes  

by 

Richard Avedon 

Shortly after meeting Diana Vreeland, de Ribes was photographed for the Beauties of Our Time feature which appeared in Harper's Bazaar, April 1956. On working with Vreeland, de Ribes recalled -

 She taught me that day to be very self-confident, and she told me something very important: 
Whatever you are going to decide for yourself is going to be the the right thing. Don't get influenced. -

from,  Diana Veeland: The Eye Has To Travel

Now playing: Nona Hendryx - Now That I Know Who I Am

Talisman

From Lucien Lelong's  collection of Chinese objects and textiles,

A celadon jade Hand of Buddha

A pale grey jade Hand of Buddha

A banded agate snuff bottle

A 19th century wooden ruyi

Lucien Lelong (1889-1958)

The half-forgotten French couturier who greatly influenced modern fashion.

Amongst his apprentices were Christian Dior, Pierre Balmain and Hubert de Givenchy.

Silk Evening Dress, 1927–29

Coat and Skirt
 Spring/Summer 1937

...French fashion was entering a decade of crisis.

Protectionist economic policies in America saw a 90 per cent import tax levied on French couture. The effect was a flood of cheap copies from American factories. And by now American women were taking fashion inspiration not from Paris but from Hollywood and the designs of studio costumers such as Edith Head and Adrian.

Paris struggled on, but when war was declared on 3 September 1939 the couture houses closed down, some for ever. Mainbocher and Schiaparelli left for America. Vionnet never reopened. Lelong was now president of the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture and, after the invasion, it was his job to negotiate with the occupying German regime. The Nazis wanted to move Paris lock, stock and barrel to Berlin by any means, including violence. On 20 July 1940 five Nazi officers arrived at the headquarters of the Chambre Syndicale on an 'inspection'; five days later they broke into the building and requisitioned the archive.

Under the Nazi plan the Paris ateliers would be moved to Germany or Austria, where they would train a new generation of German dressmakers. The designers would also be moved. Within a generation, the Nazis expected, couture would be German, not French. It was a breathtakingly arrogant ambition to believe that they could appropriate a whole industry.

Lelong pointed out that the plan was unworkable. French fashion was dependent on thousands of skilled artisans in tiny ateliers, each specialising in one small detail of finish, such as embroidery. The skills, he explained, were unteachable. You could not transfer them, and it took decades to reach the necessary levels of craftsmanship. The intransigence of the Germans was nothing compared with that of French couture. Lelong asserted the right of each country to produce its own fashion and argued that it was their home environment that allowed the workers to do what they did. The Nazis backed down and returned the archive, and Lelong negotiated to keep a supply of fabric that would maintain production. The only fall-back the occupiers had was to conscript into the army its labour force. They started by demanding 80 per cent; Lelong got it down to five per cent.

Initially, after the liberation, there were murmurs that Lelong had been a collaborator, though it was Chanel who had spent the war living with a German officer. His case came to trial, but he was acquitted. The judge ruled that Lelong had co-operated only minimally with the Nazis to save France's cultural heritage and the jobs of its workers.

From,  Lucien Lelong: the man who saved Paris by Linda Grant
21 November, 2008
The Telegraph

Man Ray, 1937

Model in a Lucien Lelong gown, seated in a wheelbarrow by Oscar Dominguez

Lelong's muse and second wife, the famously beautiful Natalie Paley

Lucien Lelong by Jacqueline Demornex

Now playing: Air - Talisman

From Japan's Golden Age

HIH the Princess Nori (Nori-no-miya Sayako naishinnō), the only daughter of HIM Emperor Akihito and HIM Empress Michiko, in the formal court ensemble  jūnihitoe (a twelve-layered kimono style dating from the Heian period, 792-1192) at the Tokyo Imperial Palace, November 2005.  One of her final acts as a member of the Imperial Family before becoming Mrs. Kuroda Sayako.

Now playing: Yoshida Brothers - Takeda No Komo

The right light

Isabella Blow (Isabella Delves Broughton)
The Head of Isabella Blow

by Tim Noble and Sue Webster

2002

The Head of Isabella Blow was donated to the National Portrait Gallery in 2009 by the artists and Blow's estate. The work (which must be spot-lit for the subject's silhouette to be visible) is comprised of taxidermic magpies, rooks, hooded crows, a rattlesnake, a raven, a robin, a carrion crow and a black rat.  Other materials also used include fake moss, wood, a lipstick tube and a Manolo Blahnik shoe heel.

  

Poetry is something in-between the dream and its interpretation. - Lou Andreas-Salomé

Impetus, The House of Edward

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Gone, never to be forgotten

You can't buy a muse. It's like a love affair with somebody.

Isabella Blow

McQueen & I

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Iron butterfly

Portrait by Richard Avedon

Kimono style evening dress

Hanae Mori, doyenne of Japanese fashion.

And master of the print.

But to be a woman? It seemed to mean being a woman at the beginning and being a woman forever.

— Yukio Mishima

And I am all forgotten.

Mrs. Arthur Henry Paget (1853-1919), 1891

Watercolour on ivory 

The subject is dressed as Cleopatra, the costume she wore to the 1875 Delmonico Ball in New York City. In mock ancient Egyptian costume, including a headdress in imitation of Egyptian pharaohs, she is posed against a background of palm trees, a river, and distant pyramids.
New York Historical Society - ALLURE OF THE EAST: ORIENTALISM IN NEW YORK, 1850–1930

Mrs. Paget would attend The Duchess of Devonshire's Ball in 1897 also dressed as Cleopatra. 

Of all the private entertainments for which the Jubilee has provided the occasion, none is comparable with the magnificent fancy dress ball given last night at Devonshire House by the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire. Amid all the public excitements of the last few weeks, when the world, one might have thought, has been sufficiently occupied with the procession, the two reviews, and the garden party, the inner circle of what is still called society has preserved in the background of its mind an anxious preoccupation - namely, how it was to appear at Devonshire-house, supposing it was fortunate enough to be asked. Never in our times has so much attention been paid to old family pictures, never have the masterpieces of portraiture in the National Gallery been so carefully studied, while for weeks past the Print-room at the British Museum, commonly given up to quiet students, has been invaded by smart ladies and gentlemen anxious to search the prints and drawings of the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries for something in which they could obey the Duchess's summons to appear "in an allegorical or historical costume dated earlier than 1820". Never in our time have the costumiers been so busy, and the houses so well-known to everybody who has ever organized private theatricals, such as Messrs. John Simmons, of the Haymarket, Messrs Nathan, and Messrs Alias, have been driven districted with orders and counter-orders. As usual on such occasions, the gentlemen, it is said, have proved far more exacting than the ladies; for the stronger sex, when once it makes up its mind to desert the sobriety of plain broadcloth, knows no limit to its requirements or to its suddenly developed fastidiousness. But, whatever may have been the anxieties and the difficulties of the preparation, there can be no doubt as to the splendour and beauty of the result. It is 23 years since a ball of similar design and magnificence was given. We are referring to the famous ball at Marlborough House on July 22, 1874. Many of those who were present last night were present also at the earlier festivity, and those who were, or those who have read the full account that was published in "The Times" on the following day, will find it difficult to award the palm for Royal magnificence and good taste. 

BALL AT DEVONSHIRE HOUSE

Saturday July 3, 1897

The Times




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About so much more than a dress

Balenciaga Sari dress

Haute couture, Spring 1964

Lamé brocade with beaded embroidery by Lesage of Paris

The sari distilled by the traditions of couture to its very essence.

Now playing: Innocence - Higher Ground

Grace under fire

The sari, an embellished strip of cloth that is quite possibly the most elegant form of evening dress. On the right woman. On the wrong woman it can be costumey. And as yet I have to see a blond that can pull one off without looking as if she were: a Hare Krishna convert,  a patronising bored housewife doing good works in a Calcutta slum (there was a perfect example in Elle Decor not that long ago, though I think she was actually on her veranda in the Hamptons), or a vapid tramp .

With the right proportions, hair, accessories, and most importantly, intent - one could not possibly go wrong.





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Goddess

 

Makonde body mask

 

Corset of the Tulu diety Sarala Jumadi

 

Yves Saint Laurent crepe georgette evening dresses 

 Copper body sculpture and cuff by Claude Lalanne

Fall/Winter 1969

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