What's Old In Charlotte, NC: Dior, Balmain and Saint Laurent

A trifecta of vintage designer dresses is now on display at the Mint Museum's Randolph branch.  Exhibition highlights include gowns of "elegance and ease" by all three designers.  Check their website for more info on this beautiful exhibit of vintage clothing, open through January 12, 2014.

History Repeats Itself: Vintage Balenciaga 1945

You don't have to look outside the fashion world to see where designers get some of their inspirations... you just have to look into the past.

 

This sketch is not by Claude Montana or Giorgio Sant Angelo.  It's not even 1985.  It's 1945, and the designer is Cristobal Balenciaga.

 

The exaggerated shoulder with its stitched detail is the only hint of Balenciaga's encompassing cocoons and capes that would arrive in the following decades.  Yet this practical and rather anonymous design of his became a quintessential look of late 80s & early 90s boutique lines. 

 

Dresses like this were produced by the thousands about forty years after this particular one was sketched.  It's a classic example of history in repetition... something vintage clothing collectors know all about.

 

Photo Source: Balenciaga Paris edited by Pamela Golbin.

100 Years Ago: Fashion on the Titanic

It was a century ago this evening that an epic tragedy, the sinking of the Titanic, began. Among the first-class passengers aboard that famous ship was Lady Duff Gordon, also known as Lucile, a British couturier. She survived the disaster, but not without scandal.

Lady Duff Gordon photographed about the same time as the 1912 tragedy; at right, a 1917 robe du soir in her signature style.

Another Titanic passenger was Edith Russell, an American fashion reporter who recounted her experience for the BBC in 1970.

Ms. Russell remembers that at the moment the iceberg struck, she was entering her state room. At that moment she heard only a series of bumps, and called a friend nearby to go on deck and investigate. At first, her companions were amused by the iceberg's presence and made snowballs from the iceberg's shavings. At the time, she was wearing a white satin evening gown as the guests had just enjoyed an evening gala. After the impromptu snowball gaiety, Ms. Russell soon re-entered her state room and went to bed.

In the middle of the night, she was awakened by a man and was told to arise and leave the ship. Ms. Russell had only one dress suitable to be worn at the moment - it was a woolen sheath dress with a hobble skirt, "only half a yard" width at the hem and very difficult to walk in. She also wore a wool cap, a thin broadtail coat and two fox furs, with silk stockings and velvet slippers with diamond buckles.

An example of a hobble skirt from a 1913 fashion illustration.
The severely narrow width was considered a status symbol of well-kept women at the time.

Before leaving her state room, she took time to lock all the trunks and windows and then waited rather grumpily in a chair on deck, believing the precautions to be unwarranted. In those locked trunks were a large number of French couture fashions bound for American clients. In contrast to that safety measure, Ms. Russell chose to leave all her jewelry and money in the ship's safe, believing she would return in the morning to the ship. This assumption caused her to continue afterward in three years of "acute starvation" upon arriving in America, as she'd lost a large sum of money due to the hasty decision.

Before leaving the Titanic on that fearful night, Ms. Russell in her hobble skirt felt assured that this unsinkable ship was nothing to abandon. Upon hearing that she urgently must board a lifeboat, she relayed to a sailor that there was simply no way she'd be able to step into one with such a narrow skirt - "Not me, I'm not an acrobat" she said unsteadily.

The sailor and another gentleman proceeded to literally throw her "head foremost" into the lifeboat, where she was the next-to-last passenger accepted on the very last lifeboat. Despite her fashionably narrow skirt and its (literally) hobbling effect, she survived the ordeal and arrived nearly empty-handed in New York, sans money, jewelry or her clients' couture designs.

Such a massive disaster makes the loss of sundry clothes seem so very trivial, which it is. These luxurious trappings are, however, part of what makes the Titanic tragedy so riveting for so many, as extant jewelry and similar remnants line the halls of many a Titanic museum exhibit. And for those experiencing the event in pre-World War I society, the heartbreakingly somber stories and the dramatic losses, both human and material, seemed to mark the end of the Gilded Age.

References:
Lady Duff Gordon photo - http://www.legag.com/titanic/person/cosmo.htm
1917 Lucile dress - Fashion: the Kyoto Costume Institute : from the 18th to the 20th century, Taschen.
1913 fashion illustration -Men and Women: Dressing the Part by Claudia Brush Kidwell & Valerie Steele

Little Known Labels: Nat Kaplan

The Nat Kaplan label is quietly one of the priciest labels we've seen in vintage deadstock, with hangtags in the hundreds of dollars per dress. When you apply inflation to those vintage dollars, these are expensive designs, ranging to prices that equal thousands of today's dollars.


The Nat Kaplan look is conservative but occasionally sexy, meant for ladies who lunch and who had large budgets for clothing. Most of the items are either dresses or suits, impeccably elegant and impressively tailored and finished. The items above are pure silk dress and coat sets from the 1960s.

Nat Kaplan's labels are either "Nat Kaplan/ New York" or "Nat Kaplan/ Couture", which were probably two distinct lines from the same New York-based company. The hangtag below has a 1960s price of $250. In vintage clothing shops, today's retail of the same item is usually much less than the original vintage price.


In the late 1960s and 1970s, this company focused increasing on synthetics (as did much of the fashion world), but its prices remained just as high. Often the finishing was more likely done by machine during these years, but sometimes hand-finished details were expertly executed in a 100% polyester garment.

We usually see Nat Kaplan garments mixed into the same deadstock racks as haute labels like Oleg Cassini, Pucci, Estevez, Mollie Parnis, Diane von Furstenberg and similar designers. The look is just as chic, but this label is still little-known among vintage fashion collectors - a prime name to start seeking out.

Find our latest selection of Nat Kaplan originals and start your own haute label collection!

Eye Candy: Malcolm Starr Circa 1967

Malcolm Starr was a high-end name in the 1960s, and it's a label still sought-after today by vintage fashionistas in the know. This glamorously avant garde pose was taken in 1967.

The gown is crepe-backed satin with pave` bands of beadwork. Originally sold at Miss Bergdorf of Bergdorf Goodman. Ring by David Webb.

View our current selection of Malcolm Starr for your own elegant vintage find!

Reference: Bazaar, September 1967

A Suit of Clothes

Once upon a time, a gentleman did not wear a suit. He wore instead “a suit of clothes”. This rather elegant phrase was abbreviated only with the rush and bustle of the Industrial Revolution. And beginning early in the 20th century, ladies borrowed the idea of a man’s suit for themselves.

The look was powerful, wonderfully sexy, and ever-fabulous. Here, for your viewing pleasure, are a few of the many beautiful suits and designer labels we’re to post in the next day or so:

Incredibly fine Lilli Ann, circa early 1950s.

A full view of Lilli Ann suit.

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For a cougar on the prowl. This suit is all-silk and simply sumptuous.

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A beautiful black cocktail suit by St John. Just add martini!

This update includes high-end labels like Chanel & Gucci, loads of St John and classic-to-kitsch business wear with many a “suit of clothes”. We have added links to these beauties. Click to view!

Interview with Janine Pons, Model in Paris 1948-1950

"They showed you how to walk, that was it!" she exclaims. Janine Hinderling walks graciously across her living room to demonstrate. She glides effortlessly with a smiling face, her arms slightly arched with a dancer's poise. Just as she did in 1948, showing collections in Paris through one of the earliest modeling agencies. Print dress "from a house". Picture taken in July 1948.

Her membership card to the agency, marked as valid from 1948 to 1950, looks quite fresh for its age. Hinderling (nee Pons) explains that easily. Modeling was not a big deal for Janine: "I just want[ed] to pass collection, and then I wanted to go skiing or do something else. Her casual remark belies the grace of her walk and the reminiscent gleam in her eye. Hinderling strode through the salons of many fashion houses including the renowned Jacques Fath in those three years. Agency card from Association Amicale Des Mannequins De Couture De Paris "I didn't like to stay in one house too long, just what we call a collection for a couple of months, three months. When I [got] back to Paris, my girlfriend was also a model, Vivian, and she's the one who started me on that." Janine worked from late 1948 through sometime in 1950. Because Janine was a house model, the pictures she has are only amateur. "Some girls got into magazine and [took professional] pictures. I never did, I was not interested." Fellow models from a "presentation de couture" (Janine is on the right). The handwritten caption nearby translates to "we were well-received." She flitted through her early twenties wearing dresses from fashion houses both large and small in Paris. Her scrapbook is filled with pictures of them. "This was from a house" she points out. "And this one." Which house many of the frocks came from is a distant memory, though a few were identifiable. She recalled one Jacques Fath dress she had, black with a big collar, that she wore on New Year's Eve to the Ball de la Glace. The compliments she got that night are still fresh to Janine. On seeing a vintage magazine print of a dramatic Fath design she notes "that was typical of him. All those collars!" "Je suis mannequin - chez Andre Ledoux" I am a model - at the house of Andre Ledoux. Janine was a mannequin for Fath in one collection in 1949. Her contact with houses was primarily through the premier. "In those big houses, [where] there was a big name like Christian Dior, the premier was the one in charge of everything. She would make the pattern, she would oversee all the sewing girls." Janine did not work directly with Fath, as the premier was responsible for executing his designs on live models like Janine. She also recalled her friend Maggie who sewed at Fath and Dior; for Fath she created clothing for his pret-a-porter line, one of the earliest such lines with a designer's name attached. In looking through her photographs, she points to a simple open-front casual jacket. "This jacket was made by my friend Maggie, [which] she made for Jacques Fath for his ready-to-wear." "That was a real nice dress, it was white and blue," she indicates, looking at the Ledoux dancers' print frock she wore in 1948. Another house she passed collection for was Andre Ledoux, primarily showing beach and casual wear at his location on the Place de la Madeline. "Ledoux we would see sometimes," meaning he was in contact with models more directly than Fath or other larger names. "I remember one of the models at Andre Ledoux, she had worked for Casino Paris... the Folies Bergere." Janine referred to the famous striptease establishment with a candid affirmation that she could never have done such work. The role of a model by her time was better respected than burlesque dancers, though in the generation before hers, the connection between models and striptease girls had been quite strong. "Betty - Mannequin chez Paquin" Betty - A model at the house of Paquin. Janine notes she was a beautiful girl and a natural redhead. Janine recalled another time when the staff of Jeanvieve Brunet's fashion house was leaving for a show at a Parisian casino, and Brunet's own car would not start. "Now we've seen everything!" she thought as a fellow model drove the girls and the designer herself to the show. One particular model who passed collection at this showing had a trick of re-arranging her hair for every outfit. "I can still see her. She wasn't that tall. She wasn't very bright. But she was very famous." That model's name escapes Janine, though the memory is still vivid. Despite her frank remarks, Janine had no rivalries or particular ambitions to become famous among mannequins. From a fashion show at Bon Marche (a Parisian department store) in 1950. Janine is wearing an evening gown at far right. In one collection, there were usually eight to ten models showing the designs and about the same number of designs shown per model. Models were expected to smile, look directly at the clients and show as pleasing an attitude as possible. Janine explains, "You had to be very nice." She presented collections in fashion houses and at casinos, as well as showing directly to individuals. "[The designer] would have some client, and you would come and stand in front of the lady, and you'd turn around you know, and she could really look." A collection progressed from day to night: "You had from the everyday thing to a little cocktail thing to the evening thing." The shows were harried but Janine had help changing clothes behind the scenes. From the house of Maria Loison about 1951. At the fashion house, preparation for a collection was less frenzied. "Everything was made on us, draped and you know, fixed up. So you could borrow it and you could buy it for cheap at the end of the collection because it was made on you." She says the cost was "practically nothing" for a sample design, something comparable to a forty or fifty dollar purchase in American dollars today. Such samples were couture, made for the model's figure specifically and not saleable to the house's own clientele. "The people who came to buy, you know it was very expensive, it was like princesses and movie stars and people who had a lot of money, it was made on them too." As a young lady in the 1940s, she experienced a very different culture of beauty than women today. While at the agency, she worked for Carven promoting Magriffe perfume, and before her days as a model Janine studied make-up and skin care quite seriously at Lancome. In 1946 she toured the United States as a "perfume ambassador". Her tour helped educate women on how to wear the latest perfumes from Paris. It was a complex undertaking at the time according to this excerpt from a 1946 article: "Blondes, says this French expert, should use flower fragrances. Dark-eyed, dark-haired women require the more exotic types of perfume, with a base of musk and amber. 'Some perfumes are for the day and some are for the evening', explained Mademoiselle Pons. 'Lighter perfumes should be used in the morning hours. In the afternoon, a slightly heavier fragrance can be used; but the pervasively fragrant perfumes should be reserved for evening. One does not used the same kind of perfume with a tailored morning costume that one would choose for a luxurious evening gown', according to this merry-eyed girl from France." Janine married wearing a gray wool dress made by the premier of Dior's house in 1950. Her hat was from the premier at Bon Marche. After her marriage in 1950, Janine settled in the U.S. and soon found American fashion to be a different shopping experience. She had first left Paris in 1946 for Lancome without a single pair of stockings (they cost $15 a pair at the time) and only one pair of shoes, bought using a ration coupon due to restrictions imposed by the war. In the U.S., she was astounded by the sheer quantity of merchandise available compared to war-ravaged Paris. Yet the standards of American clothes were quite a contrast to the Parisian houses she knew. She quietly decried the standard machine-sewn dress hem, continuing to rip out and hand-hem all her U.S.-bought clothing for years after leaving her native France. Madame Janine Hinderling today, with a youthful portrait of herself in skiing clothes, probably her favorite attire in the 1940s. Janine continues to experience joie de vivre with her family and friends. She celebrates her 80th birthday this August. ---April Ainsworth

Bibliography: Hinderling, Janine Pons. Personal interview. June 18, 2005. Milbank, Caroline Rennolds (1985). Couture: The Great Designers. New York: Stewart, Tabori & Chang, Inc. Quick, Harriet (1997). Catwalking: A History of the Fashion Model. London: Octopus Publishing Group Limited.

Book Bits: Katharine Hepburn

One of my favorite pastimes is reading biographies, specifically to devour any tidbits about what the subject wore. I recently read Katharine Hepburn's autobiography, and here's what she dished up -

1932: "I had gone to Elizabeth Hawes - New York's highest-priced designer - to have an appropriate costume made to wear getting off the train in California. It was a sort of Quaker gray-blue silk grosgrain suit. The skirt was flared and very long. The coat was rather like a nineteenth-century riding coat with tails. The blouse was a turtleneck with a ruffle around the top of the turtle. And the hat. Oh!

Well, the hat was a sort of gray-blue straw dish upside down on my head... it had been very expensive, the whole costume, and I had great faith in it."

Elizabeth Hawes, 1938

1932: "... I went to Europe fast with Luddy. On the chance that they would call me and tell me that I was a hit, I went to Schiaparelli and got myself a costume to get off the boat in. A three-quarter coat and a skirt and blouse, and a knitted hat of knit 2-purl 2. Very easy to wear... That was my first French outfit."

Schiaparelli, 1930s

1935: "We started to shoot [Alice Adams]. I had bought all the clothes for an insignificant amount of money. The only one which cost anything was from Hattie Carnegie - the party dress. I made it tacky-looking by putting little black bows on it and in my hair."

Hattie Carnegie, late 1930s/early 1940s

1951: "[For The African Queen] I had heard... that the one person to do the clothes was a Doris Langley Moore... She was a charmer and had a lot of all sorts of petticoats and underwear.

So our first meeting with her and Huston and me. He was fascinated by the underwear. I tried on every variety of split-pants, of chemise - and I was terrified that he was going to have me wear nothing but an envelope chemise in the picture".

Resources:

Hepburn, K. (1991). Me: Stories of my life. New York: Knopf.