Found Online: Art - Gôut - Beauté

Art - Gôut - Beauté (Art - Taste - Beauty) was the last and the longest running of the deluxe French fashion magazines illustrated with pochoir prints.  Pochoir is a technique of  hand-coloured stencilling. The resulting prints are brilliant, but are also (by necessity) very expensive and labour intensive to produce—in limited editions only.

As a consequence, copies of AGB became collectors items as soon as they were produced, and are extremely rare and sought-after now.  Luckily for us, the California State Library has a few copies and has scanned them and put them on the Internet Archive for us to enjoy.

Lovers of 1920s fashion and/or Art Deco prints should really enjoy this selection!  The nineteen issues held by the California State Library date from 1922 to 1931 (the magazine ran from 1920 to 1933) and each page has at least one colour illustration.  Dazzling and impossibly glamorous women roam these pages, doing the rounds of high society while dressed in the latest Jazz Age creations from the Paris couturiers.  

Art - Gôut - Beauté was established by the fabrics firm d'Albert, Godde, Bedin & Co. (AGB!) to promote the French fashion industry and associated luxury trades.  It was circulated in 35 countries.  These issues are in English and were originally distributed by the City of Paris department store in San Francisco.  The Depression finally killed AGB, making a magazine full of expensive hand-made plates unviable. 

Sailors Ahoy! (1983)

 I've just noticed that the 1983 Spring/Summer issues of Simplicity Pattern Book and Style Pattern Magazine have suspiciously similar covers:

 

 

 

 

Simplicity Pattern Book

Style Pattern Magazine

... Both show short-sleeved jackets with sailor collars worn over summer dresses.  The Simplicity jacket is fastened with bows, the Style Pattern jacket with toggles.

Now there was a minor fashion trend for sailor-themed jackets and dresses—inspired, like many other early eighties fads, by Princess Diana.  However, Style and Simplicity Patterns were closely affiliated.  Could there have been some editorial overlap—or even some sharing of design ideas?

"Gay striped and plain separates mix 'n match" (David Jones, Spring-Summer 1959)

 From 1959 some bright casuals, made up in imported Italian cotton pique.

"Mix n' Match separates bring endless variety to your wardrobe.  These fun-loving clothes are so versatile, can be teamed with other tops, skirts and pants you already possess.  In fabrics, imported from Italy, that have been carefully colour co-ordinated; are easily washed, minimum iron.  Stripes are in graduating tones of pink to lipstick, aqua to teal, blue to navy, lemon to pumpkin; plain colours are in the palest of these tones."

"Pierre Cardin: The Man Who Became a Label" by Richard Morais

 

First, a couple of disclaimers about what this book is not.

Firstly this isn't a recent book.  Published in 1991, it only covers Cardin's life and career to a certain point.  If you want to find out more about these topics after 1991, you'll have to look elsewhere.

The second thing to note about Pierre Cardin: the man who became a label is that it isn't a conventional fashion biography.  The author was a business journalist, and he barely touches on Cardin's designs.   Instead he is mainly interested in Cardin's business—and, as the title implies, Cardin's "label".  Cardin was an innovator in licensing in the fashion industry.  Traditionally, fashion designers put their name on fashion accessories such as perfumes and stockings, but Cardin moved beyond that to put his label on... well, almost everything!  To give just a few examples, the PC label appeared on furniture, car interiors and and kitchenware.  (Indeed, Morais argues that Cardin's label became so diffuse that he devalued it.)

Interestingly, Pierre Cardin established his own label at a time when the traditional business model of Paris haute couture was struggling—though culturally it was still riding high.  A large part of this book concerns the struggles of the high fashion industry to remain viable in the face of rising costs and the growth of ready-to-wear.

What of the man himself?  Richard Morais obtained a lot of his material from people who knew Cardin or had worked for him in the past.  The impression I got was of a chaotic, difficult individual, a talented designer who was a born publicist, and a tight-fisted micro-manager who nonetheless could be very generous.  Biography or backstairs gossip?  I think only time, and the perspective it brings, will tell.

Pierre Cardin : the man who became a label / Richard Morais
ISBN: 0593018001

• London : Bantam Press, 1991.

"Les Costumes de Bain" in Le Miroir des Modes, July 1922

 Le Miroir des Modes was a French magazine promoting Butterick patterns.  Most of the illustrations were lifted straight out of Butterick's American publications, The Delineator and Butterick Quarterly.

 

 

The 1920s was the decade when women were supposed to have shaken off the shackles of Victorian prudery, but the models in this illustration look almost as covered-up as their nineteenth century predecessors.  Bathing costumes here consist of thigh-length tunics (some daringly bare-armed!) and trunks hovering just above or a little below the knee.  Most of the models are wearing some kind of bathing cap or hat, all wear some kind of footwear, and all but one sport stockings (mostly rolled down below the knees).

These outfits look more decorative than practical.  One could imagine the wearers taking a quick dip in the sea—if they didn't mind wetting their dainty ruffles and ribbons.  Anything more athletic would be out, and I suspect the main function of these costumes was to look pretty on the beach!

Pierre Cardin on the cover of L'Officiel (June 1963)

 In memory of a recently deceased fashion great, I'd like to kick off 2021with this cover of L'Officiel:

It depicts an "ensemble de plage" (beach set) by Pierre Cardin.  At first glance it seems to consist of a tunic over a narrower skirt: on a closer look it is a tunic over a pair of knee-length pants.  Variations on this look by Cardin also appear (in black-and-white) inside the magazine.