Required Reading

This week, as I was delicately vacuuming a textile one inch at a time, I tried to think of a way to work textile vacuuming into a blog post. I thought about it for a long time (I was vacuuming for about an hour) but didn’t come up with anything. Later, when I was stitching support gauze to a rip in said textile, it occurred to me that my reading list for the semester might be a better topic. So now I’m using vacuuming as a segue into that! Boom!

[were you aware that segue was spelled like that? I certainly wasn’t]

On the first day of 20^th Century Fashion our professor handed out three long lists of recommended and required reading. These aren’t books that we have to buy or things we’ll be directly tested on, but she considers them crucial to building a foundation of knowledge. Most of the books are primary sources, so we are hearing the story directly from the people who lived it. The number on the required list works out to about one book per week. That sounded intimidating a first, but I’ve been reading on the train and so am right on track (see what I did there? train? track? eh? eh?). Here is what I’ve learned so far:

Book #1: Cecil Beaton The Glass of Fashion

This is a weird, elegantly written book. Beaton describes fashion as “the whole art of living,” and so writes about people who live fashionably through clothing, deportment, home décor, or just existing. His depictions cover several decades and really give you a feeling of each era. This quote sums up his whole message:

"No one is exempt from the fashionable expression of his age. No one, indeed, but a fool could fail to be aware, for better of worse, of the picture of life offered through the various popular media. Oddly, the works of popular culture are often even more moving than those serious artistic efforts which will outlast them. That which is eternal, a Michelangelo statue or a Mozart opera, goes far beyond the nostalgia of the moment. Only in shoes or feathers or films, do we find the whole expression of a movement in time that was a particular moment of our lives and is now gone forever."

Book #2: Paul Poiret King of Fashion: The Autobiography of Paul Poiret

Paul Poiret is one of those names that meant nothing to me six months ago, but whom I have since learned is kind of a big deal. He was one of the designers who invented modern fashion for women (he helped us get rid of the corset, ladies!) and was hugely influential in 1910s. And boy, does he know it. Sure, there is a narrative to the autobiography (his early years as an apprentice to an umbrella maker! affairs with married patrons! throwing exotic “Arabian” themed parties!) but the real story here is Paul Poiret’s gigantic ego. He name-drops famous people who apparently wouldn’t have existed without his nurturing influence. He lists all of the things he did that caused sensations and/or changed the world forever. He even has a long section in which he visit America and tries to impart a few grains of knowledge to that sad country. Here is just a taste:

“I have been the hearth of many things, or rather, I should say, the fire that has lit up many hearths.”

Unfortunately for him [spoiler alert!] he wrote the book after some terrible business decisions led to his complete ruin. His last years were spent in poverty.

Book #3: Elizabeth Hawes Fashion is Spinach

Elizabeth Hawes is the only writer, so far, that I would enjoy having lunch with. Hawes was a New York designer who started her career in Paris. She was writing during the 1930s and was terribly frustrated by the fashion system of her time. Everyone was obsessed with Paris couture, and all the ready-to-wear companies only seemed interested in making Paris copies. Hawes envisioned a world in which women would have access to good quality clothes at various price points, and that they could create personal style that was appropriate for their own lives. Her critiques of the industry are perceptive and witty. She is passionate about clothing and good design, but she has a refreshing sense of humor about the whole thing.

“Fashion is that horrid little man with an evil eye who tells you that your last winter’s coat may be in perfect physical condition, but you can’t wear it. You can’t wear it because it has a belt and this year ‘we are not showing belts’…Fashion is apt to insist one year that you are nobody if you wear flat heels, and then turn right around and throw thousands of them in your face. Fashion persuades millions of women that comfort and good line are not all they should ask in clothes.”

Book #4: Bettina Ballard In My Fashion

I figured out near the end of the book that Bettina Ballard was eventually a fashion editor for Vogue, but until then I enjoyed the story of her journey up the ladder. However, as the book went on she became less and less relatable. I think it started when she employed a lady’s maid, and really got bad during her description of WWII. Almost on accident she left France before the occupation began (she laments not knowing what that was like) and then takes up a job with the Red Cross during the war. I wasn’t clear what kind of job she actually had, but it somehow gave her a pretty insulated war experience. When she returns to Paris in 1945 she seems surprised to discover that people had had a rough time of it. She meets with an old friend whose husband is thought to still be in a concentration camp, whose son was marched somewhere and shot, and who herself spent time in prison. Ballard feels bad for not suffering during the war and so walks the five miles home in her high heels. Wow Bettina. Way to even the score.

Book #5: Elsa Schiaparelli Shocking Life: The Autobiography of Elsa Schiaparelli

Like Paul Poiret, Schiaparelli is a terribly important designer that I had previously never heard of. She is actually self-deprecating and humble at times, but that is sort of negated by the fact that she writes about herself in the third person. You get a pretty good idea of the tone from page 1:

“I merely know Schiap by hearsay. I have only seen her in a mirror…Intensely human, she both despises and loves human beings: those whom she dislikes find themselves looked right through as if they were transparent.”

Also, she named her daughter Gogo. Can you do that to someone?

So if you are interested in becoming a fashion expert like Clara, here are copies of the reading lists (with some scrawled notes). Clara thinks that you can click on the pictures to see enlarged versions.

(Update: mystery of underlining in previous post remains unsolved. Have long ago abandoned hope of figuring out how to create/undo paragraph indenting.)