design history

I’m slipping off and attending an exciting celebration on Thursday, so my next post will come on Friday. The National Museum of the American Indian in lower Manhattan will be holding an awards event, A Single Thread: Celebrating Native American Design and Style. Five native artists will be honored for their accomplishments, and most of them work in textiles and adornment. I know three of the artists personally, so this will be a fine time to let them know how much their contributions to the arts are appreciated.

Joe Baker, from the Delaware Nation, is one of those natives who has achieved astounding success in the fine arts, with his paintings receiving significant awards. Joyce Growing Thunder Fogarty (Assiniboine/Sioux) is a model for future generations of Plains artists working with beading and dressmaking. Dorothy Grant (Haida) has established her own brand as a purveyor of stylish clothing rendered with Northwest Coast designs. I bought a jacket, embellished with a totemic raven figure, from her in Vancouver years ago that I literally wore to pieces. Veronica Poblano is one of Zuni Pueblo’s most talented jewelers—a huge compliment since Zuni is known for having a large pool of talented lapidary workers and silversmiths. And Denise Wallace’s (Chugach-Aleut) exquisite jewelry-making incorporates the finest of ivory and fossilized bone work, while paying tribute to her cultural heritage.

The influence of ethnic design on clothing has grown greatly since the last quarter of the twentieth century. But I’m still surprised and irritated that Native American design doesn’t get more acknowledgement than it does. Does anyone have any ideas why this is so?

“There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.”
-Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

What about the impact of the great modern art movements on fashions of the times? Perhaps the most influential of those movements was Cubism. Fortunately, a long-sighted costume historian addressed this topic in a small but influential exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum’s Costume Institute back in 1998. Richard Martin organized “Cubism and Fashion” to contrast the striking similarities between clothing silhouettes from 1908 to 1925 and the artistic revolutions of that period. Marshalling the formidable resources of the Costume Institute, his exhibition permits viewers to see the direct and subtle transformations in modern dress. High and low (popular) culture contributed to these changes, but the designers involved were powerfully impacted by the artistry of their times.

What is remarkable is how designers did not stay satisfied with the status quo, but were willing to take risks. Being avant-garde in those days meant finding a clientele that would be open to changes in apparel, often well before the mainstream could acknowledge that those changes were appropriately modern. My research on modernity in clothing shows that the avant-garde stance of the early twentieth century was very important in developing those freedoms we appreciate today. Brave, too, were those designers and clients who adopted other movements, such as Surrealism, and purchased garments that were wearable art.

If everything old is truly new again, this means we need to keep our eye on today’s avant-garde clothing designs for a hint to the future…

p.s. Want some good current exhibitions on fashion? Go over to The Museum at FIT and view “Arbiters of Style: Women at the Forefront of Fashion,” and the special exhibition “Gothic: Dark Glamour.” I’d love some reactions to the latter.

“Art Deco Design: Rhythm and Verve” is duly installed and opens this Friday, the 12th. It is always thrilling to see something that has been mentally visualized turn into physical reality. That’s one of the pleasures of being a curator. There are the hours of planning on paper, of restless paging through plate books, consulting reference tools, and then making decisions that can all too easily evaporate over time. Above all else, there is the necessity of distilling the exhibition’s premise into several clear, presentable ideas.

I remember when I started this blog that I promised how I’d take readers through some of the ideas taking shape for the exhibition. Dealing with Art Deco quickly made me realize how our own perceptions of modernity really began in the 1920s and 1930s. Then there were the ways in which the French conceived of Art Deco as a style, and how other countries, particularly the United States, made their own contributions to the style.

At long last, I’m no longer standing in my own inner world. When the exhibition opens, you, too, can gaze at the colorful images that parade within the Wachenheim Gallery, and hum along with the bouncy music of those decades. Please visit and get a feeling for what happened to modern design in that not-so-long-ago era.

And do not imagine that I’m not mindful of what a sad anniversary this day is. September 11, 2001 didn’t receive the emotional resolution that Pearl Harbor created, when the nation immediately girded itself for war. My teenaged father, like so many others, lied about his birth date in order to enlist, and spent four years in the South Pacific. Our war on terror has taken a different form altogether. Sometimes, in the morning, when I’m stopped on the corner at Fifth Avenue, waiting for the light to change so I can cross and go to the Library, I’ll screw my eyes shut and look south, opening them in the hopes of getting a glimpse of the Twin Towers. Inevitably, even after seven years, what I see when I open my eyes is the terrible yellow dust of that week, and a void that can never be filled…

Early last month, the media caught on to a startling development. The Men’s Dress Furnishings Association, formerly the Neckwear Association of America, announced that it was disbanding. This event was seen as the death rattle for the necktie, that universally-donned item of masculine dress.

I predicted the death of the necktie in “A Rakish History of Men’s Wear.” My prediction was based on the variety of research I did for the exhibition, where I found various opinions, academic and industrial, that seemed to confirm a move away from regular wear. The general consensus centered on the growth of the casual sportswear industry for men, and the eternal quest for physical comfort. In terms of quantifying the necktie’s loss of popularity, however, I’ve found myself more at a loss. Until now—I recently went shopping for my husband at Lord & Taylor and discovered that the store’s square footage of sales space for ties had greatly diminished...

Men have been wearing something distinctive around their necks since at least Tudor times. From starched linen ruffs, tight neck collars, and intricately-tied cravats, to the four-in-hand and Windsor tie, neckwear was an essential part of male dress. Yet garments can become defunct over time. A good example can be found in breeches, those trousers worn to just below the knee. The French Revolution and the subsequent Napoleonic Wars allowed men to discover that long pants were more comfortable and effective, but breeches survived to almost the middle of the 19th century. They were worn mostly by older men, and still appeared at royal court events, before fading away. Today, we see a vestige of the breeches garment used in sportswear.

Will the necktie survive? The situation reminds me of Yoda’s statement in The Empire Strikes Back: “Very difficult. Future always in motion…”

While on vacation, I realized how much we take nylon fabric for granted. Yet this most twentieth-century of creations was the first fiber to be synthesized from petrochemicals. While rayon and acetate are older by a few decades, the development of nylon set off a fashion frenzy. Eight years after its introduction, nylon hosiery was a highlighted product at the San Francisco Exposition of 1939. Women clamored for this new stocking material, which proved stronger and cheaper than silk stockings. Special types of nylon fibers appeared from the 1960s on.

Nylon was the must-have synthetic until 1969, when polyester made its debut. If you want to learn even more amazing facts about this fiber, check out Nylon: the story of a fashion revolution.

On an earlier post, I had a comment asking when the pantsuit was invented. Some people are rushing to say Saint Laurent did this, but the truth may be a little less obvious. Both Ralph Lauren and Calvin Klein had a great deal to do with regularizing feminine skirt suits. I’ll look into this, along with a request for information on the origins of the navy blazer, and report back later this summer.

Programming is great. Not only do I get to select the programs I present, I am then rewarded 10 fold by attending interesting and entertaining programs and I get paid for it! What could be better? About a year ago I happened to be reading Christopher Gray’s Streetscapes column in the Real Estate Section of the Sunday New York Times. It is the first column I read in the Sunday paper. Generally the focus of the Streetscapes column is a building. However on Sunday, April 29, 2007 Christopher Gray did something quite different. On that day the Streetscapes column was devoted to a man, Paul Shaw. Mr. Shaw is a designer and design historian, specializing in architectural lettering.

The subject of the article was completely new to me and I found it fascinating, exciting even. In the article Christopher Gray went on a walking tour with Paul Shaw whose focus was on letters: letters on buildings, in the subway and on monuments, letters which appear everywhere in the city. After reading the article I had experienced a visual revelation, allowing me to see beyond my pedestrian eyes. I found myself looking anew at buildings, monuments and signs that before I would glance over.

I knew Paul Shaw would present a wonderful program and decided to invite him to come speak at the library. I contacted Christopher Gray and inquired about Mr. Shaw. Christopher confirmed my thoughts about Paul Shaw and happily provided me with contact information. After receiving Mr. Shaw’s email address I wrote a lengthy email to him, introducing myself and what I do, followed by a polite request for him to come speak at the library. My wishes were granted with a response of “yes, I’d be happy to speak at the library!”

Months went by and then came the creation of the promotional materials for the program. There was further correspondence between Paul and I about content and title of the program. Initially there was some confusion between Paul and I about what the title should be for the program. Paul’s title was, how should I say, not the most exciting it should be to attract an audience. Paul’s title seemed geared to a specific audience, with perhaps more expertise in the field of typographic design, definitely not appropriate for a general audience. We went back and forth on this discussion for a few more emails till Paul understood what I had been politely trying to tell him. We want people to come to the program, not avoid it. “Oh” he said. “You want something more jazzy sounding.” “Yep, exactly!” I said. The next title fell right into the perfect range of jazzy/sexy. Then came the wrangling with the look of the flyer. Naturally Paul wanted to see everything and I was happy to oblige. He is a designer and I was told by my supervisors to expect it. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it can be problematic. We create an effective, nice looking flyer, with an already established template. It was initially created with lots of input from present and former employees. Hence we produce a solid looking flyer. Many of our patrons have told me how handsome the flyers look and I take this as a good sign. Paul made some comments and some changes and I tried to appease his requests. Finally we came to an agreement on an appropriate flyer that he could be happy with. Phew!

The night of the event we got our biggest crowd ever, 135 attended. And Paul Shaw did not disappoint. If ever there was a blockbuster program, this was it! Paul worked hard on his presentation, you could tell. He had us on the edge of our seats. He presented a program in three parts: letters in the subways, letters on apartment buildings and finally letters on department stores (Paul Shaw counts Lord & Taylor as a former client). Interesting stories, as well as a bit of design theory and history melded into a fascinating and visually exhilarating experience. It's all in a letter, I just never knew how much. Paul Shaw will be coming back in the fall to do another program. I hope you can attend!

Generally in the same subject area, I have included a review of Helvetica, Gary Hustwit’s 2007 documentary that uses the legendary typeface to weave a broader story about typography, graphic design and visual culture in the last half-century.

Francis Bacon had a studio showroom in South Kensington that was reproduced in a 1930 issue of The Studio. He was one of three designers profiled for “The 1930 Look in British Decoration,” and his interior is sparsely geometric and modern, not the lavish French Art Deco style, but much more Breuer and Bauhaus. I asked Mark Stevens for some clarification about the motives behind Bacon’s visual leanings.

PAB: Does it make sense to you that he artistically gravitated toward the more austere modernistic aspect of the period?

MS: I think his desire was to find what was most radical or “advanced” in the period. A pared-down style probably seemed more challenging than more lush style did. Pared-down furniture was also probably easier – and less expensive – to make.

PAB: What about those white rubber curtains?

MS: Texture and touch was important to him from the first. Later, he would become a master of the flesh, with a truly tactile sense of the body. He often wore a leather jacket.

PAB: Certainly the early 1930s were a time of economic struggle in Britain, and by 1932-3, Bacon was moving away from design and into painting. Do you think that once he became acclaimed as a painter, he found his old work in the decorative arts to be an embarrassment?

MS: English society was not particularly interested in advanced continental design, and Bacon’s business was probably not very successful. Most of his customers were friends. For example, the Australian novelist Patrick White bought a desk. But I think Bacon, in his twenties, simply became more and more interested in painting as he grew older. He was already painting as a teenager in the late 1920s.

PAB: In interview after interview when he was older, Bacon consistently belittled his youthful experience as a designer. Why did he do this?

MS: Many artists like to imagine that they spring fully-formed into the world. They do not enjoy acknowledging that they were ever confused or uncertain.

PAB: The 1920s was the age when modernity shone with such new promise. Do you think this affected Bacon, even though his time as a designer was short?

MS: I doubt Bacon was ever very optimistic about the promise of modernity or that he took seriously the utopian aspirations of modernist design. But he remained interested until the end of his life in creating an environment that represents more than just a fashionable interior and, instead, embodies a powerful worldview. Today he is celebrated for establishing what may be the most chaotic and messy space ever inhabited by a sane artist. In fact, after his death, the artist’s studio – litter and all -- was placed on public view in Dublin. I’m sure that Bacon, who had an appealing sense of humor, occasionally smiled at the contrast between his mature working space and the clean, honed clarity of his youth.

Bacon (1909-1992) is known for being a self-taught “force” in modern figurative painting. His subjects often provoke unease in viewers for their gritty, fleshy looks at the human figure laid bare psychologically. Therefore, I was greatly intrigued when I learned that Bacon could be counted among those fine artists (like Raoul Dufy) who had early stints as designers during the Art Deco years.

I turned to Cullman Center scholar Mark Stevens, who is currently at work, with Annalyn Swan, on a definitive Bacon biography, to give me some insight into what effect those years might have had on Bacon.

PAB: Bacon spent most of 1927 in Paris, where he was exposed to the height of Art Deco artistic energy. When he returned to London, he started up as a furniture and rug designer. Do you think his experiences in Paris led to this development?

MS: Before Bacon went to Paris, he spent time in radical Berlin. There he would have seen the most advanced furniture and rug design, and he also came to know elegant and raffish people interested in whatever was new. In Paris, he discovered Picasso.

PAB: One of my reference books up at the Art Desk says that Bacon considered his furniture designs to be “extremely bad copies of Le Corbusier.” Other books, however, state that his furniture and rug designs were actually quite good.

MS: I wouldn’t call them either extremely bad or extremely good. Remember, he was barely twenty years old. He had no formal schooling in art or design. When considered in that light, his work is remarkably precocious. Historically, however, it just amounts to an interesting example of period design. His pieces have flair, but are not especially original.

PAB: Bacon himself called his designs unoriginal and heavily influenced by contemporary French design. However, doesn’t his work seem to reflect a variety of influences from the period, including English and German modern trends?

MS: I’m not an expert in the design of that period – yet! -- but, yes, he seems to draw upon a variety of sources. Creating a pastiche is what most young artists do.

PAB: Did his early work with interiors help him with his later paintings?

MS: In his paintings, Bacon often sets his figures in an abstract geometric space that may well recall his immersion in the edgy designs of the twenties and thirties. The furniture in some paintings is also reminiscent of his early designs.

The Library is home to the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers. Every year, a new group comes in with fascinating projects, and work extensively with the Research Library’s collections. This year, we were privileged to have well-known art critic and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Mark Stevens as a fellow. Mark, who has written about Willem De Kooning, is working on a biography of the famous twentieth century English painter Francis Bacon.

During my research into the Art Deco years, I ran across the fact that Bacon was a furniture and rug designer from 1929 to 1933, and had been influenced by travel to Berlin (1926) and Paris (1927). He lived and breathed the artistic atmosphere of that fascinating era, only to break off his design work and turn to figurative oil painting fulltime. Knowing that Mark has been working away downstairs, I couldn’t resist the opportunity to question him about Bacon’s early years. The next several posts, on April 29 and May 1, brief interviews with Mark Stevens, will recount what I learned from him.

Ancient peoples, especially the Egyptians, understood that perfume was both a luxury and a necessity. I’m running low on one of my favorite perfume scents. Fortunately for me, I won’t have to head out to one of the rather intimidating old-time New York emporia featured in the illustration below.

I only have to trot up the street to Saks!

The packaging of perfume, now more commonly known as branding, is a subtle business in itself. A magnificent overview of this ingenuity is richly represented in an Art title called Masterpieces of the perfume industry. You can find even more good reading by trying the following subject headings: perfume and incense; perfume bottles; miniature perfume bottles; perfume paraphernalia; scent bottles; and even cologne bottles.

Isn’t it interesting that, when searching for books on perfume bottle design, I found the most titles on the subject appeared in the 1980s? I wonder if there is a reason behind this, or if the “me decade” just made it a natural topic for investigation? Sometimes a quick visual metaphor for the 1980s still pops into my mind: Nancy Reagan in a red ball gown and a tiara.

Over the weekend, I was engrossed in a murder mystery set in medieval Cambridge. The suspense centered on men who were sneaking around after dark doing nefarious deeds. They masked their identity with their hat, which went by the name of a liripipe. The author never gave a particularly cogent description of this item, so I looked it up in the Encyclopedia of Clothing and Dress. I learned that a liripipe was a 14th century headdress of an eccentric nature—and an important object of masculine fashion. Worn over a gorget, a form of hood and neckpiece, the liripipe was composed of soft tubes of cloth, up to two feet in length, with drooping points. They could be suspended, worn over the shoulder, or wound round the gorget like a turban. Fashionable men went to great lengths to twist the liripipe like a scarf, and drape it in dashing modes. Villains, on the other hand, as my book demonstrated, used it as a means of concealment.

Speaking of concealment (or not), there was a local television story last week about pork barrel monies in the finally-passed New York State budget. $5000 was approved for a group called Men of Exquisite Taste. Anybody know anything about this intriguing organization?

The cloche hat was all the rage in the Art Deco decades. The bell-shaped cloche had a close fit and narrow, dipped brim suited to the shortened, or bobbed, hair of the young flapper. She was a new incarnation of the modern woman, with places to go and things to do. Why, she’d even smoke cigarettes in public!

Want to have a good laugh? Or maybe purchase something, once the offerings are made clear? Go onto www.20sgangstercostumes.com and get yourself a flapper costume. I think my first memory of this stereotypical dress was during an episode of the original Star Trek television series, when Captain Kirk and his landing party ended up on a planet where everybody dressed and acted like 1920s gangsters and molls.

A colleague of mine at the Library knows a place in the Garment District where you can go and have your own cloche hat constructed for you! You can pick out the fabric and trim, and even watch the hat being blocked. We’ve always meant to go there, but invariably we get distracted by something or other at work. One day we will go—if only to release our inner flapper!

I was so intrigued by the Christian Louboutin exhibition at F.I.T., it led to me rummaging around our catalogue in pursuit of further information. One thing I discovered was an authoritative scholarly work on the shoe industry in Europe, with focus on fashion rivals France and England. Giorgio Riello’s A foot in the past: consumers, producers and footwear in the long eighteenth century offers significant information about the textile and production history of shoes and boots.

In the process of locating this book, however, I began to see how shoe history researchers could become easily confused with their findings. The problem lies in our Library of Congress Subject Headings. The obvious term to use is shoes. Yet there is another term that was adopted at a later date: footwear. To do a thorough search, it helps to search both terms. The tricky part is in the age difference between the terms; shoes will yield more citations because it’s older and been around longer, yet newer, and often more up-to-date works on the subject will only show up under the heading footwear.

Now, for the even more tricky fact! When one searches shoe industry and footwear industry, more citations show up under the newer footwear industry heading. Again, this is undoubtedly because so much more has been researched and written about this subject, as with all costume history, over the last ten years or so.

The exhibition of Christian Louboutin shoes at the Museum of the Fashion Institute of Technology is a must-see for those who love or loath high heels. French designer Louboutin gained fame for learning well from the “everything old is new again” maxim. His shoes have his signature red sole, a convention that may come down from the days of King Louis XIV.

At the same time, despite his historical references to footwear from the late eighteenth through nineteenth centuries (see the illustration above), Louboutin moves his shoe designs from the pretty to the provocative. The exhibition text delightfully suggests the sexual and other connotations that spring to mind when we look at a pair of spiked heels.

Alas, I belong to the legion of women who have had to put heeled shoes behind them. It didn’t help that I never had the kind of legs that looked slinky when thrust into a pair of really high heels. Yet this exhibition allows for plenty of fantasizing. To give yourself a preview, in order to get in the mood for a trip to F.I.T., go to Google Images and put in Christian Louboutin’s name. Prepare to be dazzled—and more than a little bit excited…

Part of my daily job is ensuring that people doing costume and fashion history research get the prepping they need for their research. To aid that purpose, I offer classes on this research several times a year. A class is coming up: I’ll offer “Researching Costume and Fashion History” on Thursday March 27 at 12:30 p.m. in the South Court classrooms. The next one will be Thursday, May 8, at the same time and location.

For those far away, or who cannot get away for a class, I do have a Research Guide on our Library website on Costume and Fashion History. It’s a great way to start in. One of the primary hurdles for people doing such research is understanding that library research isn’t as simple as doing a Google search. When you work with library catalogues, including our CATNYP, your best approach is not a word search, but choosing the right subject heading to get to the material you want. And this is a bit dictatorial, for we all use Library of Congress Subject Headings. This means, for example, that searching under the subject heading Fashion History will prove disappointing, when what you really want is Costume—History. Want to know why? Come to my class and I’ll explain...

After a delay necessitated by my jaunt to the Southwest, I can turn my attention now to the latest fashion summaries. I usually find that the New York Times Style Magazine serves as an excellent bellwether for the latest word on fashion musts, pop culture, and targeted consumerism. The February 24 “Women’s Fashion Spring 2008” offers a wrap-up of all the trends in the recent round of spring fashion shows. The results are actually fairly agreeable and promising. First of all, the colors on view are great. Red is one, already foreseen in all the glamorous gowns worn by attendees of the Academy Awards. But I was also struck by the effusive hues of blue, yellow, and mint green that appeared in ads.

To my great pleasure, articles in the magazine offered many takes on everything old is new again, including mentions of Pre-Raphaelitism, Art Nouveau, Art Deco, and retro modernism. Textile designs seemed to be tributes to ornamentation from those periods. An American actress from the 1920s was treated to a flapper evaluation. Big cuff bracelets were in evidence, a satisfying sign to me! Accessories were sensible and attractive, with one huge exception. The platform and stiletto shoes shown in spreads were among the most obscene styles I’ve ever encountered; the milder versions of this footwear had “dominatrix” stamped all over them.

Two exhibition footnotes that appeared must be shared. The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) is having an exhibition on that enigmatic designer, Madame Grès, maker of divine draped and sensual dresses, through April 19; and “Wiener Werkstätte Jewelry” will show at the Neue Galerie here in NYC starting March 27. Got to see that one: the Wiener Werkstätte contributed greatly to Art Deco’s liveliness.

I’m going on hiatus for a week. My destination is Phoenix, Arizona, now fully recovered from its Superbowl hospitality. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Heard Museum Indian Market and Guild Fair, always held on the first weekend in March. An important venue for the sale of American Indian art, like the famous Santa Fe Indian Market, this event draws general enthusiasts, tourists, and dedicated collectors like me. 650 of the best Indian artists in North America gather to sell an array of delectable arts and crafts.

American Indian art draws much appreciation and canny speculation. One of its joys is that you can find quality arts in a wide spectrum of price ranges, from extremely high end to surprisingly affordable. Indian art is also a good collectible investment. I have bracelets and inlay jewelry I bought nearly fifteen years ago that have quadrupled in market value. Pre-1950 Navajo and Pueblo bracelets are almost impossible to find in the antique marketplace, so today’s artists are making their own tributes to their elders’ work. I’m on the hunt for at least two of these contemporary creations, especially since prices are rising fast as demand grows. I’ll let you know later next week how my quest turns out…

My Art Deco research shows that the fashion for a slender woman in artistic depiction evolved roughly in the waning decades of the 19th century. Those familiar with Art Nouveau will remember the elongated feminine models favored by Alphonse Mucha and Gustav Klimt. There is another culprit, however, who endowed the attenuated feminine figure with erotic force. Aubrey Beardsley (1872-1898) created erotic sketches that displayed the human form in a new light. His pen and ink drawings, particularly his plates illustrating the tale of Salome, are rife with sexual angst.

Beardsley’s drawings for The Yellow Book (1894-1897) were masterful renderings of his contemporary society. The matron illustrated above has opulent curves that lose out against the growing movement toward Modernism. Anything angular, elongated, and suggestive of lithe speed fit the new Modernist aesthetic. And as Ann Hollander noted in her Seeing Through Clothes, this Modernist viewpoint was teaching people to see themselves as shapes, even those angular and geometric in nature.

Beardsley helped this trend by using differing body types in his erotic drawings in a satirical fashion, and having the very slim figures be the sexually charged objects of desire. One of the best biographies of his life, which can be found in the Art Division, has an apt title: Aubrey Beardsley: A Slave to Beauty.

The archetype of the brash young Flapper woman hovers around our consciousnesses. Some of us remember a delightfully out-of-place Julie Andrews in the fluffy film, Thoroughly Modern Millie. Our post-1970s feminism doesn’t allow us to take in the indignation that the flapper of the 1920s provoked. She smoked cigarettes, drank whisky, drove cars, and most unnerving of all – wore short skirts! Yet even that last fact was less shocking than it sounds. 1920s hemlines went up and down, staying mostly around the mid calf. They reached their highest point in 1926, and that was just below the knee.

A boyish figure worked best for the flapper style. Bobbed hair, dropped waistlines that rested on the hips, strapped and chunky heels, a string of pearls – you were in full mode. The Art Deco makers of figurines took up this body type with a vengeance. Many a slim Diana and Atalanta, straining for the race, can be found poised in ceramic and bronze. My grandfather Louis, who worked for the Thomas Edison Company, had one of these lithe figurines on his living room cocktail table, She wore a grass skirt and a string of pearls that failed to successfully cover her petite bosom. I didn’t realize until I was much older that the model for this outré (to a little girl) design was Josephine Baker.

F. Scott Fitzgerald provides the best portrait of the woman behind the flapper. His short stories, Flappers and Philosophers, tell us much about the sensitivities of men and women in the 1920s and 30s.

2008 is the thirtieth anniversary of the publication of Ann Hollander’s Seeing Through Clothes. This publication is a significant one: it opened the door to a variety and versatility of subsequent academic research on clothing and dress. Refreshing, too, was Hollander’s intermixing of fine art, film, popular print, and advertising imagery. The author also dealt frankly with the implicit sexual and popular culture penchant for certain body types during historical periods. Her take on the modern era is fabulous. Here’s one line: “The rise of decorative art and decorative design permitted the citizens of Western Europe to accustom their eyes to visions of themselves as shapes.”(page 336)

My eye was caught by a small article in last Sunday’s New York Times Sunday Styles section. A youthful artist, Karen Kilimnik, who recently exhibited a small showing of paintings of blue skies, confessed to a deep love for the English perfume maker Penhaligon’s Bluebell scent. Way to go, Karen! She frankly admits to be drawn by the blatant English heritage packaging, but the exquisite smell, “like fresh-cut grass,” is the main attraction.

I’ve been wearing Penhaligon perfume since the days of Princess Diana’s wedding, and yes, I agree with Karen’s suspicions that the story of Diana’s love for Bluebell could be bogus. But then, I’d rather it wasn’t. You’re looking at a woman, after all, whose wedding ring is a reproduction of Diana’s famous sapphire engagement ring…

Fairy tales or not, Penhaligon is my idea of a successful brand that provides the wearer with a distinctive scent and romantic context.