PICTURES: National Gallery of Victoria
WORDS: Janice Breen Burns, editor Voxfrock
There are dresses, in the National Gallery of Victoria’s Edward Steichen & Art Deco Fashion exhibition, so evocative you can almost feel how they might move on your own body. Sheer drops of slippery silk, sometimes heavy with sequins, touching at breasts and hips, falling like water to calves or ankle bones. They glow in the exhibition’s low lights, glint and flash in its brighter angles. Their heyday is long gone; 80-90-odd years ago in the Art Deco 1920s and 30s. But there is something about them likely to resonate with women now. “This is about the birth of modern fashion,” suggests Todd Brandow, executive director of Minneapolis’s Foundation for the Exhibition of Photography MFEP, which contributed heavily to the show. “It’s about the birth of the modern woman.”
FRANCE
Evening dress (c. 1927) silk, gelatin sequins, glass beads102.0 cm (centre back), 45.0 (waist, flat)National Gallery of Victoria, MelbourneThe Schofield Collection. Purchased with the assistance of a special grant from the Government of Victoria, 1974
Mr. Brandow is in Melbourne for the exhibition’s launch. Its mesmerizing collection of photographer Edward Steichen‘s ground-breaking fashion images for Vogue and Vanity Fair, are on loan from his MFEP. They are graphic backdrops for the exhibition’s elegant mannequins, and striking revelations of feminine beauty and womanly strength in the joyous context of fashion.
Edward Steichen, American 1879–1973, emigrated to United States 1881, worked in France 1906–23. Marion Morehouse and unidentified model wearing dresses by Vionnet. 1930 gelatin silver photograph. Courtesy Condé Nast Archive © 1930 Condé Nast Publications
Mr. Steichen’s photographs differ from much fashion imagery now. They are not sexualised or posed to titillate. They don’t trivialise or demean fashion as frivolous. Instead, Mr. Steichen has melded fashion into an holistic picture of feminine strength, character and physical and intellectual activity. You can feel his respect for this salad of feminine ingredients. You can also sense the joy women must have felt. Wander along the exhibition’s flowing, curved plinths, between gowns cut looser and more comfortable than they had ever been cut, swimsuits that actually encouraged swimming, opera coats designed for connoisseurs equally enamoured of the arts and fashion.
Edward Steichen. American 1879–1973, emigrated to United States 1881, worked in France 1906–23. Model wearing a black tulle headdress by Suzanne Talbot and a brocade coat with black fox collar. 1925 gelatin silver photograph. Courtesy Condé Nast Archive© 1925 Condé Nast Publications
The 1920s and 30s were radical years worth thinking about, say the exhibition’s joint curators, Paola Di Trocchio, the NGV’s assistant curator, International Fashion and Textiles and Susan van Wyk, senior curator, Photography. At this week’s launch, they presented a ping-pong history of the art deco period. It was a time of unfettering, when women were freed culturally, politically, physically and fashionably. They were more mobile than they’d ever been, enjoyed rights broader than at any other time in history.
Edward Steichen
On George Baher’s yacht. June Cox wearing unidentified fashion; E. Vogt wearing fashion by Chanel and a hat by Reboux; Lee Miller wearing a dress by Mae and Hattie Green and a scarf by Chanel; Hanna-Lee Sherman wearing unidentified fashion 1928 gelatin silver photograph Courtesy Condé Nast Archive © 1928 Condé Nast Publications
“(Coco) Chanel embodied the modern woman,” Ms. Di Trocchio explained, “Successful, strong, and never defined by marriage or any man.” Miss Chanel’s loose jersey designs were radically comfortable and synchronised with the revolutionary waistless flapper dress.
CHANEL, Paris (fashion house) 1914–39, 1954– Gabrielle CHANEL (designer) France 1883–1971 Dress 1924 National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Purchased NGV Foundation, 2013
Suddenly, women could move. They could dance. Madly, if they liked. The jerky, knee-crossing, side-kicking Charleston, a cracker dance that defined the period, just would not be the same in whalebone corset, petticoats and bloomers. Now, the most fashionable girls were jumping about, sweating, joyous, their future prospects limitless.
Edward Steichen.
Actress Gloria Swanson 1924. Gelatin silver photograph Courtesy Condé Nast Archive © 1924 Condé Nast
Miss Di Trocchio says even the surface of fashion seemed to reflect girls’ sparkling new future. “Electricity!” she said, gesturing around at gowns glinting with sequins and metallic embroidery. “Fashion designers started to design for electric lighting – for sparkle!” Oriental, Egyptian and Ballets Russes influences also converged with the glitter and flash of light-jagging surfaces, making the art deco period one of the most thrilling in fashion history and this exhibition, not surprisingly, one of the most hungrily awaited by the fashion community in Melbourne.
PUTTING ON THE RITZ
This weekend, and for the next month or so, the NGV will host tours, talks, and even Charleston lessons to enhance the many marvellous layers of this gorgeous exhibition. Highlights below; or cruise the full programme here.
Saturday, October 19
• 10.15am
Film: Bugsy Malone (1976, 93 mins, G)
Introduction by Paola Di Trocchio, co-curator and Assistant Curator, Fashion and Textiles, NGV
A musical gangster film set in 1920s New York with an all child cast creates a slap-stick world of would-be hoodlums, showgirls and dreamers.
Venue : Clemenger BBDO Auditorium, NGV International
• 12pm
Kids On Tour: Hip Cats and Glamour Girls
A tour with exhibition co-curators Paola Di Trocchio and Susan van Wyk to explore the Edward Steichen & Art Deco Fashion exhibition and what it was like to live in the 1920s and 30s.
Meet Exhibition entrance, Temporary Exhibitions, Ground Level, NGV International (admission fees apply)
• 1pm
Roaring 20s: Charleston Dance Demonstration & Workshop
Learn to dance like a genuine 1920s flapper with Swing Patrol. A short Charleston demonstration will be followed by a drop-in workshop. All welcome.
Venue Great Hall, NGV International
• 2–4pm
Forum: Edward Steichen – the image maker
Explore the innovative and glamorous fashion photography of Edward Steichen, as well as art deco fashion from the 1920s and 1930s.
Introduction: Dr Isobel Crombie, Assistant Director, Curatorial and Collection Management, NGV
Keynote: Make Vogue a Louvre: Edward Steichen and the Origins of Modern Fashion Photography. Speaker, William A Ewing, independent curator, formerly director of the Musée de l’Elysée, Lausanne, Switzerland, and specialist in the history of fashion photography
Q&A: Steichen: what does the name mean today? Speakers Todd Brandow, Executive Director, Foundation for the Exhibition of Photography and exhibition co-curator, Art Deco Fashion
and Nicole Jenkins, fashion historian, retailer & author of Love Vintage: A Passion for Collecting Fashion (2009). Host: Susan van Wyk, exhibition co-curator and Senior Curator, Photography, NGV
Venue Clemenger BBDO Auditorium, NGV International
Janice Breen Burns, jbb@voxfrock.com.au
(Main picture,top:Edward Steichen. Model Dorothy Smart wearing a black velvet hat by Madame Agnès. 1926 gelatin silver photograph. Courtesy Condé Nast Archive © 1926 Condé Nast Publications)
