Ann Lowe: American Couturier
For the third year I once again have written reviews of the books nominated for the Costume Society' of America’s Millia Davenport Publication Award. The award “recognizes and promotes excellence in the publication of costume, dress, appearance, and fashion related scholarship. The award is given annually to a newly published book or exhibition catalogue that makes a significant contribution to the above studies, reflects original thought and exceptional creativity, and draws on appropriate research methods and techniques. . . . The award, is named in honor of Millia Davenport (1895-1992), noted costume scholar, theatre designer, and founding member of the Costume Society of America. Her theatre work brought her international acclaim. She established and catalogued the library at the American Folk Art Museum. Her major published work, The Book of Costume (1948), was a pioneering visual history of Western fashion from ancient civilizations through the late nineteenth century.”
The following are my reviews, beginning with the outstanding book on Ann Lowe which is this year’s winner.
Ann Lowe: American Couturier
by Elizabeth Way and Margaret Powell
My excitement for Ann Lowe: American Couturier is generated by the compelling biography, a remarkable story, regardless of race and resulting neglect, but those are part of the story too. With contributions from multiple authors this outstanding monograph combines biography, fashion history, costume conservation and most appealingly social history, specifically the social history of a certain segment of the American upper class who were the designer’s clients. The ample documentary illustrations give a view into that world as well as Lowe's personal and professional world. Margaret Powell’s first chapter, primarily biography is riveting. Sadly Powell did not live to see this publication of her master’s thesis. Elizabeth Way’s second chapter, the fashion history, focuses on what Lowe’s dresses looked like and unnecessarily repeats much of the biography in chapter one. Way’s chapter on the legacy of Ann Lowe, drawing purported correspondences between Lowe’s work and that of various contemporary African-American fashion designers is least relevant to the story so beautifully told and illustrated in the first two chapters. Nevertheless it fell upon Way to convert Powell’s thesis into the beautiful book that lovingly restores Ann Lowe’s name to the history of fashion and she has done so in an exemplary way, curating the exhibition at Winterthur for which this book served as catalogue. Sections on the conservation of Lowe’s work and the re-creation of Jacqueline Kennedy's wedding gown give a detailed look at the work of a master seamstress and include historical perspective on dressmaking history and other documented details (“Lowe met Dior in Paris in 1947 and we know that he admired her work”). You can read more about Ann Lowe at the Winterthur website: https://www.winterthur.org/ann-lowe-american-couturier/
The other nominees included:
Fashion Killa: How Hip-Hop Revolutionized High Fashion
by Sowmya Krishnamurthy
I read Fashion Killa with great interest as I was present and an active participant in the early years of hip-hop, when it was called rap. In the early 1980s I was a regular on Friday nights at the Roxy, where it has been said, rap first began to “cross over” into mainstream culture. The Roxy crowd was far from mainstream, being young and fashion and music conscious in the extreme, but approximately 40% of the crowd there was white and the milieu was one of extraordinary cultural ferment. In the mid 1980s I wrote about fashion and culture for the East Village Eye, the alternative newsmagazine in which the word “hip-hop” was first published, in a 1982 article by Michael Holman. I was very surprised that Krishnamurthy does not mention the Roxy or cite Holman's article. Nevertheless her book is good and reveals a lot of otherwise obscure history. The most interesting aspect is the author's analyses of the interactions of hip-hop culture with fashion branding and luxury brands in particular and explores, in great detail, how hip-hop stars and fans went from the streets of the Bronx to the salons of the haute couture. The Street Fashion and Luxury Fashion categories have overlapped in a most fascinating way, that Ms Krishnamurthy describes. Illustrations are disappointingly minimal. Since the focus of the book is the end of the last century and the beginning of the current one the majority of the citations are from the internet, a trait that at one time I would have held against an author but do not do so in this case. The author makes a strong case for the powerful role that African-American pop culture has on and across contemporary fashion.
Designing Hollywood: Studio Wardrobe in the Golden Age
by Christian Esquevin
The author is a librarian and, like a library, his book is packed full of information but short on interpretation. The information in Designing Hollywood is coherently organized, with an excellent introductory chapter and subsequent chapters each examining a different film studio, beginning with the earliest, Universal Studios. In the introductory chapter the author explains that “the foundational purpose of costume was to help the actor portray a character and to advance the plot,” and he helpfully explains the steps in the design and production of film costumes. Much (but not all) of the text of the studio chapters is made up of facts and dates and anecdotes that are strung together with insufficient narrative, however. The author mentions occasions when a fashion depicted on film led to a trend in the real world but he neglects to expand on the topic of film fashion’s influence on popular fashion and culture, other than a meditation on glamour in the introductory chapter. Nevertheless the book is very appealing and beautifully designed and illustrated, entirely with period black-and-white photographs of the stars and color reproductions of original costume design renderings. No surviving costumes are illustrated. The endnotes show a wide variety of sources including, commendably, many unpublished oral histories.
A Dark, A Light, A Bright: The Designs of Dorothy Liebes
Edited by Susan Brown and Alexa Griffith Winton, Contributions by John Stuart Gordon, Emily M Orr, Monica Penick, Erica Warren and Leigh Wishner.
A Dark, A Light, A Bright: The Designs of Dorothy Liebes is a much needed and welcome publication but not for the reasons laid out by Winton in the introduction, in which Liebes is described as “little known” and “absent from history books.” While it is true that the subject is not universally known she is revered in design circles and her work has been included in a number of the seminal publications on 20th century design. Design Since 1945 published in 1983 by the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Design 1935 - 1965: What Modern Was, published in 1991 by the Musée Des Arts Decoratifs de Montreal AND Landmarks of Twentieth Century Design, published in 1993, are just three books on my own shelves that include Liebes in the pantheon of the 20th century’s great designers. It is true to say, though, that a few pages in a few books do not equal the beautiful and exhaustive monograph we now have. It is difficult to evaluate a multi-author book and this one has many, each addressing different aspects of Liebes' work: in hand weaving; in machine weaving; in interior design; in fashion; in her studio; and as a world traveler. The job of editing is well done here, as the tone of the writing throughout is directed towards the well-educated lay person. Liebes was well-known and respected in her lifetime so there is a vast amount of photographic evidence documenting every aspect of her work that beautifully illustrate this monograph. The cliche “lavishly Illustrated” accurately describes this book. Outstanding bibliography.
Real Clothes, Real Lives: 200 Years of What Women Wore
by Kiki Smith
Real Clothes, Real Lives is an outstanding undertaking as a publication, and documents the remarkable Smith College Historic Clothing Collection, gathered over the last 40 years by the author, a professor of costume design at Smith College. Kiki Smith describes the clothes that she has collected as those “worn by women who were not photographed for the society pages or featured in fashion magazines,” Nevertheless those women saw themselves, aspirationally, within the pages of those very magazines and the mediation between fantasy and reality is one of the primary revelations of this book. The text is coherently organized into general categories: clothing for the home; for public life; for rites-of-passage; for work, etc.. Within those categories the examples are arranged chronologically, giving coherence to the visual narrative of the book. Smith describes the collection as “a liberal arts archive that advances the academic inquiry of women of diverse economic and social backgrounds through the study of their dress from the 19th century to today .” This resource is made particularly effective by illustrating multiple examples of a particular archetype: “one 1895 wrapper tells you about its shape and fabric, but three or more let you determine what is characteristic of the style as well as what is distinct about each example.” Lack of citations excluded this otherwise worthy book from consideration for the award.
India in Fashion
by Hamish Bowles, with contributions by Dr. Vandana Bhandari, Suzy Menkes, Dr. Sarah Fee, Priyanka R. Khanna
India in Fashion is an exquisite book, utterly overflowing with beautiful imagery and solid scholarship. It is, however, very loosely organized, and feels like a series of highly intelligent magazine articles, some of the chapters with texts only two pages long, but complemented by multiple pages of illustrations. The subject is so broad as to be impossible to contain in a single volume. Many instances of the impact of Indian dress and textiles on the fashionable imagination are absent from this collection: examples by Balenciaga, Ann Lowe, Tiger Morse and other designers didn’t make the cut. I was particularly surprised that Tiger Morse was not discussed since she traveled to India to buy fabric and her trip was documented in an article in Life Magazine, photographed by Mark Shaw (the subject of an exhibition I curated). Jacqueline Kennedy's trip to India is discussed by Caroline Reynolds Millbank in her chapter on the sari in Western high-fashion. It was Tiger Morse who directed Jacqueline Kennedy to her resources in India and suggested that Kennedy be photographed on an elephant as Morse had been. Milbank discusses Mainbocher and his use of sari fabrics but neglects to illustrate any examples of his adaptations. Another designer that I was surprised not to see in this book was Faie J. Joyce who designed the Taj of India line of shoes and accessories in the 1960s. Several of the chapters examine the reverse flow of influence, from the West to the East, and in that regard I was very surprised that the saris of Princess Niloufer, now in the Museum at FIT, were not illustrated or discussed, although the chapter by Amin Jaffer illustrates and discusses other excellent examples of cross-cultural fashion. The chapters on Yves Saint Laurent, Dries van Noten, John Galliano, and Jean Paul Gaultier are good contributions and are complimented by chapters on contemporary Indian designers, all lavishly illustrated. Two of the latter chapters are written by Suzy Menkes, a grande dame of fashion reportage. Disappointingly there is no bibliography but a glossary is present and helpful.
Threads of Power
Edited by Emma Cormack and Michele Majer with contributions by Barbara Karl, et al.
I admit I am biased towards Threads of Power because I saw the spectacular lace exhibition it accompanied at the Bard Graduate Center. The book is as extraordinary as the exhibition however the photographs do not do justice to the exhibited examples from the collection of the Textilmuseum St Gallen, Switzerland. There are almost no true close-up photographs, of the type that are so effective in A Dark, A Light, A Bright, the Textiles of Dorothy Liebes. The illustrations are otherwise spectacular and include a wide variety of artistic and documentary sources. The book is both a history of lace and a series of chapters by multiple authors (22 in total!) on topics of current interest in the lace field, specifically lace in the New World, and subjects that are relevant to the collection itself, specifically machine production of lace in Switzerland today. a glossary is provided and it is most welcome. This is likely to be the definitive book on lace for a generation.
Fashioned by Sargent
by Erica E. Hirshler with Caroline Corbeau-Parsons, James Finch, and Pamela A. Parmal
Cross disciplinary studies such as Fashioned by Sargent are truly worthy of consideration for the Davenport award–they reach across categories and connect with a broader audience than a book directed at a fashion audience only might. Fashioned by Sargent is a work of art history, social history and fashion history. It potentially could reach those broader audiences, but it is not by any means addressed to a popular readership. It is a highly sophisticated book directed at an intellectually sophisticated audience. Fashioned by Sargent has 14 contributors. Erica Hirshler is presented as lead author and presumably she acted as chief editor, a prodigious responsibility given so many collaborators, which she appears to have managed successfully, as the book is streamlined and coherently organized. The chapters are, thankfully, relatively short. Densely researched, the footnotes contain much commentary as well as a lively mix of citations. Lack of a bibliography is a significant drawback. The Sargent machine keeps up its productions capabilities.
Dressing Up
by Verity Wilson
Dressing Up has a very limited audience in the US. This is not a reason to disqualify it, but it does prevent it from having that “star quality” that one expects in a Davenport award winner. In 2022 an an honorable mention was given to Sweet and Clean: Bodies and Clothes in Early Modern England, a book that, similarly, had a limited audience but was an outstanding work of scholarship. I had some difficulty reading Dressing Up: the very narrow topic has little appeal to me and the dense and tedious writing did not increase its appeal. Wilson frequently uses terms, and refers to practices, that are uniquely British and does not clarify them for a broader audience. The use of such terms, and reference to practices, is wholly appropriate for the subject, and the author’s audience is most definitely people with native familiarity. The book is beautifully designed and wonderfully Illustrated with period photographs. The single photograph of a surviving costume left me wanting to see more. Citations and bibliography are extensive and reveal an extraordinary depth of research.
The Dress Diary
by Kate Strasdin
The Dress Diary is a delightful book but it lacks the subjective characteristics that I hope to see in a Davenport award winner. There are simply too few illustrations in this book that aims to be an exposition of a rare surviving scrapbook documenting a mid-nineteenth century woman’s wardrobe. Kate Strasdin’s creative transcription of Anne Syke’s dress diary is a worthy and prodigious undertaking but, as we all know, a picture is worth a thousand words, and so a few more facsimiles of the 2,134 swatches contained in the actual diary would certainly complement Strasdin’s beautifully crafted text. Admittedly, as Strasdin writes “individually the swatches give little away, but by piecing together clues, we can weave together the strands of Anne's life into a colorful patchwork of family and friends.” Strasdin’s unraveling and reconstitution of those strands is a wonderful achievement but an opportunity to actually see the material evidence was lost in this publication (Strasdin cites a very similar album reproduced in its entirety and published in facsimile in 1987, A Lady of Fashion, Barbara Johnson's Album of Styles and Fabrics).
Black Hair in a White World
by Tameka N. Ellington
Tameka N. Ellington introduces Black Hair in a White World by declaring that “as a Black woman, I have taken it as my mission for the last 15 years to research Black beauty to understand why it is hated.” She presents some good evidence for this sweeping statement, but there is as much evidence that she leaves out, of fashion’s love affair with Black beauty over the last 50 years. This book is not, by any means, a history of black hair but is, as Ellington writes “a true picture of the black community's distress.” As such, it is really a work of sociology, just slightly outside of the parameters of the Davenport Award. Nevertheless any serious book on (or critiquing) beauty standards should be of interest to the Davenport award judges. Black Hair in a White World is of great interest to me as it is my first exposure to Critical Race Theory (part 2 is titled “Critical Race Theory and a Sociocognitive Approach to Perceptions of Black Hair.”). I found the direction of the inquiry to be legitimate and at times persuasive but often moralistic in a way that is not relevant to studies of fashion. African Americans, like all Americans (Black, White and Other) are subject to the capricious decrees of fashion. Ellington and the other authors whose work is included show us evidence of fashion’s power over the African American populace but they do so with a mission of liberation which, although worthy, seems inappropriate to fashion scholarship: no degree or decree of morality has ever changed the power of fashion over humanity. Humanity always bends to fashion’s whims, no matter the race, creed or culture. Illustrations are sparse and a bibliography would have been helpful.
Dressing a la Turque
by Kendra Van Cleave
The publication of Dressing a la Turque may require the rethinking of much French fashion history however I am not entirely convinced of the degree of Ottoman influence on French fashion. Van Cleave does present a vast amount of evidence, in text, illustrations and a very lengthy bibliography. In the chapter on Western and Eastern approaches to dress the author explains the divergent paths that dress took after the 16th century, which was preceded by a long period in which the dress of the entire Eurasian land mass was based on the loose tunic or caftan styles, which treat fabric two-dimensionally. After the medieval period Western dress was increasingly three-dimensional, based on tailoring techniques that took advantage of newly introduced fabrics of greater width, allowing curved and bias cuts. The author attributes a plethora of 17th and 18th century fashion trends to Ottoman influence after explaining that East and West share a common sartorial heritage. Her conclusions have many paradoxical elements that need unraveling. Many of the styles cited as evidence of Eastern influence came into fashion with the (Western) Enlightenment and consciously try to suggest the dress of the ancient classical (aka Western) world and prehistoric period: Laugier’s primitive hut was to architecture as the primitive chemise was to fashion. The evidence presented does not support the conclusion. The audience for this publication, part of the Costume Society of America book series, is the professional dress historian but the subject would be well adapted to a publication for a broader audience.
Jane Austen's Wardrobe
by Hilary Davidson
Jane Austen's Wardrobe is a perfect time capsule of dress, from the late 18th century to the early 19th century. It is beautifully illustrated and lovingly designed, perfectly and logically organized and will appeal to multiple audiences. My only complaint is that Davidson did not include the full text of any of Jane Austen's letters, which are at the heart of all of her research. At least a few of her surviving letters transcribed in full would have truly rounded out this otherwise marvelous book. Each chapter examines the contents of a different part of an actual wardrobe: clothes press; band box; dressing table; jewelry box; drawers; etc. The writing exhibits a fine balance between scholarly and accessible: the audience, commendably, is the educated lay person. A wide variety of illustrations are included: surviving gowns, close-ups of fabric and details and period illustrations and artworks. Jane Austen's Wardrobe should be found in many museum and historic site bookstores.
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For more information about the Millia Davenport Award of the Costume Society, including past award -winners visit the Society.