Exhibition: Style & Spirit - The Fashion of Chester Weinberg

 As Covid recedes into the past, it becomes possible to visit exhibitions once again.  And as luck would have it, there was a particularly interesting little fashion exhibition at the David Roche Gallery in Adelaide while I was in town.

Left: Dress (Resort 1971).  Right: Evening Dress (Spring/Summer 1968)

Called, "Style & Sprit: the Fashion of Chester Weinberg",  this exhibition followed the career of a once-prominent designer who fell into obscurity after he died of an AIDS related illness in 1985.  However, before his career was cut short he produced glamorous but wearable designs to dress the rich and fashionable of New York.

Two Exhibitions in Canberra

 I didn't go to any exhibitions in 2020—thank you, Covid 19 travel restrictions and lockdowns!  Happily for me a couple of little exhibitions have now landed right on my doorstep.  Firstly, in the foyer of the National Library of Australia Zimmerman + Ellis:

Zimmerman, Spring 2021

Zimmerman, Spring 2021

"8 looks from fashion label Zimmerman's Spring 21 collection, Wild Botanica... on display alongside the Ellis Rowan paintings that inspired their creation."

In the National Museum of Australia we have Piinpi: Contemporary Indigenous Fashion. 

Lyn-Al Young: "Ngoorntook (winter)" 2020

Rosabella Ryder.  "Take me dancing!" Top and skirt, 2019

Originally shown at Bendigo Art Gallery, this exhibition features "the work of indigenous artists and designers from the inner city to remote desert art centres".

"Piinpi, an Indigenous word commonly used across regions of East Coast Cape York Peninsula, refers to Indigenous 'seasonal changes' and the regeneration of Country."

Bendigo Art Gallery

 

Heather Wallace (designer) 2018

Wedding dress made for the film Top End Wedding (2018).  Fabric was designed by Bede Tungatalum, dress by Heather Wallace and the costume was made by Robyn Trott.  It was worn in the film by actress Miranda Tapsell.

Grace Rosendale, "Seedpods" top and pants, 2019

Rodney Clark, "Bap Djandak", 2020

"Carter began making cloaks in the early 2000s, following his research into traditional cloak practices from Museums Victoria collections.  This work is divided into geometrical panels and depicts a topographical view of the landscape and waterways that surrounds the artist's Country."

Tegan Cowlishaw, "Deadly Kween" jumpsuit, 2019

Tegan Cowlishaw's label "AARLI" produces "ethical and sustainable" custom made streetwear from upcycled fabric remnants and recycled materials.  This jumpsuits is maid from the remains of a black and gold sequin cushion and "aqua metallic gold lustre print on PET bottles".

Exhibition: Balenciaga - Shaping Fashion

Bendigo is not one of the places that immediately springs to mind when you think of Haute Couture, but over the last ten years Bendigo Art Gallery has hosted some of the best exhibitions about fashion to appear in Australia.  Its latest is no exception. From the V&A comes Balenciaga: Shaping Fashion: an exhibition studying the work of one of the masters of fashion design.

Flamenco dress, 1961

Cristóbel Balenciaga was a Spanish designer who left his native country and set up shop in Paris during the Spanish Civil War.  Though he spend the rest of his career headquartered in Paris (where all the resources and talents of French couture were available to him) he retained strong ties to his birthplace.  Many of his designs had a strong Spanish influence, whether they drew upon the traditional costumes of bullfighters and flamenco dancers, or borrowed styles from ecclesiastical dress.

This exhibition mainly explores Balenciaga's work from the 1950s and 1960s, when he was at the height of his fame.

Because Balenciaga trained as a tailor he was an expert in cut and fabric.  His designs usually started with the fabric rather than a sketch—"it's the fabric that decides" he declared.  Outwardly simply garments were cleverly cut and put together with great precision.

Toile

Back to Balenciaga: Shaping Fashion.  As well as displaying lots of gorgeous gowns, the curators of this exhibition decided to devote a portion of their exhibition space to the construction of the clothes.  This included an x-ray of one of the evening dresses, showing the inner boning supporting the apparently unstructured garment (as well as a couple of pins the original seamstress had left in the hem!)  One of Balenciaga's toiles was mounted on a dummy, demonstrating some of the techniques of his craft. 

Opposite to the toile was a case containing various dressmaking tools used in the house of Balenciaga.

Cape in white gazar, 1963

There were certain motifs that reoccurred in Balenciaga's designs: for example, the fitted front and the bloused back, bracelet length sleeves and necklines that stood away from the neck.  (The last two of these were to allow his wealthy clients to display their jewels more easily!)  In keeping with the exhibition's emphasis on the technical side of Balenciaga's work the signage on the displays pointed out these and many similar details.  The label on one evening cape (originally worn by Gloria Guinness) not only explained how it was made in two parts, but also pointed out that there were concealed (and very handy!) pockets in the side seams!  

Tunic, 1967

This leads me from the technical side of Balenciaga to the commercial: who bought Balenciaga's clothes?  Firstly, there were the private clients.  Balenciaga made clothes for some of the wealthy and socially prominent women of his day, including Ava Gardner, Gloria Guinness (original owner of the cape, above) and the Baroness Philippe de Rothschild (original owner of the tunic, left).

Harrods fabric book

However, private clients, however wealthy, were not enough to sustain a couture house by the 1950s.  Balenciaga made most of his real profits licensing his designs for reproduction (usually to upmarket department stores).  The exhibition contained promotional material from Harrods spruiking their licensed Balenciaga designs, as well as a book of fabric samples, used to match the licensed copies with their designer originals.  

Also displayed were a number of dresses from "Eisa", Balenciaga's smaller (and less expensive) establishment in Madrid.

The last few displays in this exhibition were dedicated to designers who were inspired by Balenciaga, including Courréges, Givenchy, Mary Quant and Yves Saint Laurent.

Balenciaga closed his business in 1968.

From Eisa, 1951-

Suit, Autumn-Winter 1954

Courréges, 1965

Sari dress, 1965

Lastly: what is an exhibition without a catalogue?  I'm pleased to say that this exhibition is accompanied by an excellent book: Balenciaga: Shaping Fashion by Lesley Ellis Miller.   In nearly 200 pages the author explores Balenciaga's background, craft, clients and legacy—in other words, fleshes out the topics of the exhibition.  The book is illustrated by some excellent photographs of dresses in the V&A's collection (much better than my phone camera snaps!) as well as reproductions
of in-house sketches of his dresses and pages from contemporary glossy magazines. 


Balenciaga: Shaping Fashion
London: V&A Publishing, 2017
ISBN 978 1851 177 9031
191 pages

Exhibition: The Krystyna Campbell-Pretty Fashion Gift (National Gallery of Victoria)

Jeanne Paquin, 1912

.... Or perhaps I should title this post "What I Did On My Autumn Holiday".

Krystyna Campbell-Pretty is a Melbourne philanthropist, and her gift to the National Gallery of Victoria is a $1.4 million collection of vintage haute couture acquired from Parisian collector Dominique Sirop.  The collection contains samples of the works of all the "big name" couturiers from Worth to Alexander McQueen.  It's now being exhibited at the NGV—for free!  

I was in Melbourne last week, so—need I say it?—naturally I went to the exhibition.  I went with a friend, who is more interested in craft than fashion, so while I admired the design, she admired the workmanship.  And there was plenty of both to enjoy.


The layout of this exhibition was unusual, in that it wasn't segregated from the rest of the collection in a separate wing or gallery.  Instead the curators decided to spread the displays throughout the 19th and 20th century British and European art collections.  This lead to some amusing and sometimes appropriate juxtapositions: a Dior day dress against a late-Georgian portrait of a lady in a white gown, a cluster of Art Deco evening wraps posed in front of a portrait of Nancy Cunard painted in 1919, and a couple of outfits by Yves Saint Laurent standing amidst a display of art and crafts furniture.  

(Unfortunately the layout of the exhibition, along with the lack of signage, made it a bit hard to navigate.  That's how we wound up starting in the middle of the exhibition, before realising it extended further back, both chronologically and physically!)

But what about the dresses themselves, you ask?

Schiaparelli, 1932-33 (left); Lelong, 1932 (right)

Need I say they were gorgeous?  They were.  The greater part of the collection was created from the 1910s to the 1960s, which is not only my special area of interest, but roughly covers the "Golden Age" of Haute Couture.  One large gallery was dedicated to fashions from around 1910 to 1939, with smaller galleries off either end leading to displays of 19th century costume on one hand, and 1940s and 1950s fashion on the other.

Dior, 1947 (left); Maggie Rouff, 1940 (right)

The clothes chosen for exhibition—especially the ones made before the war—tended to be mostly be either evening fashions, or clothes for gala occasions.  Even a display of  "little black dresses" at the centre of the main hall seemed to consist  mostly of  

little black evening dresses.  This is probably the result of natural selection: special occasion wear is more likely to be lovingly preserved than a skirt or an ordinary day dress (even if the day dress is made by a Parisian couturier!)  

On the other hand, tucked away in a corner there was one of Chanel's earliest designs: a casual jersey jacket, circa 1916!

One of the delights of this exhibition was a handful of works from fashion houses not well remembered these days, and seldom featured in the standard fashion histories.  I thus learned a bit about the houses of Boué Soeurs, Bruyére, Carven and Felix.

At front left: Jacques Heim, 1950

Another delight was a scattering of items from the National Gallery's research collection in glass cases.  These included magazines (including early, rare issues of Vogue, L'Officiel, Harper's Bazar and Gazette du bon ton).  They also included photographs.  Some of these were from the archives of glossy fashion magazines, but others were taken in-house (by Givenchy, for example) in order to prevent design piracy.  There were also sketches: everything from rough drafts of a designer's first ideas, through to annotated worksheets, and to polished drawings used to publicise a house's finished designs.  

Yves Saint Laurent, 1971

So to summarise:  "The Krystyna Campbell-Pretty Fashion Gift" is an exhibition any vintage fashion lover will enjoy.  It's on until July the 14th, so I encourage anyone who can visit it to do so!

For those who can't make it to Melbourne, there's a book!  Running to 307 glossy pages, it's excellent value for money, and can be purchased at the NGV's store.  It covers the history of high fashion from the late 19th century to the early 21st century, with brief essays on specific themes (the Jazz Age, for example, or evening dress in the 1950s) and on individual designers.  It is fill with high quality photographs (much better than my grainy shots taken with a phone camera) and features a brief interview with Krystyna Campbell-Pretty on how she came to donate her "Gift" to the National Gallery of Victoria.

• The Krystyna Campbell-Pretty fashion gift / by Paola Di Trocchio; Danielle Whitfield ; Françoise Tétart-Vittu; Olivier Gabet.
• Melbourne: National Gallery of Victoria, 2019.
• ISBN: 9781925432596