Last week my brain and I were not on the best of terms. After negotiations, vague promises ensued that it will be back in reasonable force by Wednesday. For today’s blog, then, I have to resort to brain-less offers: images of a meme that hopped across my inbox for days.
Someone started the trend by designing the packaging for an imaginary adult costume, and let the (content and inscription-free) template of the package loose on the internet. Individuals actors, companies, political mavens picked up the ball and ran with it.
They ranged from silly to funny to trying to be funny to biting. I left out the many truly offensive ones. (THAT much brain was still cooperating…)
HAPPY HALLOWEEN!
Music today haunted me throughout my childhood. A classic of the German imagination, in both words by Goethe and score by Schubert.
Let’s be frivolous and oblivious today and talk about fashion. Except…..wouldn’t you know it, even a little black dress hides larger issues of politics.
“The fashion industry sometimes celebrates the little black dress as an equal-opportunity fashion—versatile, classic, and chic. But this neutral garment was never ideologically neutral—nor was it the democratic creation of a visionary designer. The little black dress marked and mediated social boundaries, a collaboration between cutting-edge technology and age-old class politics.”
As I learned here, the LBD is a blue collar costume that successfully crossed over. Black uniforms were introduced in England in the 1860s, to distinguished the help, now officially called “domestics,” from the ladies of the house. The trend towards these uniforms was soon extended to shop girls, telephone operators and the rest of the labor force. Anything to keep up class distinctions and make them visible!
Eventually, there was a reversal when private sowing machines and mass produced sowing patterns on paper allowed the “plebeians” to look as beautifully varied (after work) as their upper-class sisters:
“Coco Chanel didn’t invent the little black dress, she was astute enough to pick up on the underlying trend that made it popular—la pauvreté de luxe, she called it, or “luxurious poverty.” It was a look reserved exclusively for those who could “afford” to look poor by pretending that they simply couldn’t bebothered with fashion. But while a rich woman might now better blend into the crowd, on closer inspection, there would be some small detail in her seemingly anonymous garment—a certain cut or fabric or label—that acted as a secret handshake for those in the know.”
Next time you swoon over that luxe velvety thing or wonder how you lived for 67 years without a little black dress think about the implications.
All this came up, of course, because I chanced into a fun exhibition of little black dresses, with little of the politics explained. Just an opportunity to photograph some nifty outfits staged by their respective decades and sink into a fantasy land as long as the visit at the Washington State History Museum lasted…….
Here is an amusing clip with NYT fashion on the street photographer Cunningham talking about finding all the women in LBDs.(the photo is from the exhibit.)
Fashion, the armor to survive daily life? No, fashion is capitalism’s favorite child (I wish I had invented that phrase, but it was coined by Werner Sombart, derived from Karl Marx’ Capital where he writes about‘The murderous, meaningless caprices of fashion’ – except they are not meaningless. They fill the need of capitalism for perpetual innovation, variation, and suspension.)
And here is some of the music heard in the ultimate LBD movie Breakfast at Tiffany’s with Audrey Hepburn.
Your’s truly standing in the dress up corner of the exhibition. Costumes and hats provided, my turtleneck an pants coincidentally black….
Today I want to give a shout out to the people in the wings. As you know, I have been following the 18 month- production of The Poet’s Shadow, a rockopera created, produced and implemented by PHAME’s crew of talented folks. For obvious reasons, people in the spotlight have been the singers and movers and musicians, all living with developmental disabilities and thriving on the stage.
Liliane Hunt, costume designer, seamstress extraordinaire and friend to PHAME
Other people who get plenty of exposure are Bruce, the director, Matt, the conductor, Yulia and Erik, the choreographers, Jenny, the executive director, Anya the administrative magician of the organization and so on. But it takes so many more people to make this all work, those who bring the performers and pick them up, months on end. Those who sit for all hours of rehearsal in the lobbies, opening the locked doors of the rehearsal venues. Those who have tirelessly taught and led the courses that involved the writing, painting and drawing, staging, or PR, and those who have found the spaces and organized the structure of the production. They deserve just as much gratitude and recognition.
Liliane and Anne-Marie (The Rose)
And then there is a creative genius back stage who’s products you will see without them ever being in the spotlight. I am thinking of Liliane, who designed the various, intricate costumes and sewed them, for what must be hundreds of volunteer hours, by hand, assisted by Ty who makes much of it possible. And no one realizes what a powerhouse is at work in the wings.
Liliane told me a bit about her life over a sumptuous breakfast at her new domicile in the forests near Lucia Falls in WA. The perfect hostess, she was born in England and loved to play dress-up and take on diverse roles from a young age. She earned a degree in theater and completing additional studies at the prestigious London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA) and Guildhall School of Music and Drama. After some years of working in theatre, teaching history and helping develop curricula for award-winning education programs, she emigrated to the United States.
More than a decade was spent in San Francisco where she founded a one of a kind theatre that surrounded her with a family of like-minded actors and set the stage for much performance art, renowned for an extraordinary sense of costuming and creative fantasy. I had the pleasure to see some remnants of those years, stored away in the attic office, items begging for stories to be written about them.
Specially made hats by Mr. Song Millinery (he also designs for Aretha Franklin…)
It is hard to reconcile the larger-than-life character of a Diva with the modest person in the middle of a traditional European, elegant living room filled with bouquets of dahlias and crystal stemware collections in vitrines next to the working Vitriola. Might as well be transported to Lincolnshire, or some such.
It is, of course, the eye for beauty that connects the arc between acting at the forefront of performance art to living in a peaceful retreat in the woods. It is also the harsh reality of Californian economics – skyrocketing rent first and foremost – that broke the former ensemble apart and forced relocation for many who weren’t exactly trust fund babies.
One partnership survived all those changes. Comrade-in-art Ty lives here as well and they continue to collaborate in most productive ways. The man has a day job as a financial crimes investigator at a major financial institution, is also a painter and explores and supports many of the ventures in Liliane’s life. Warm, funny and attentive he makes you feel at ease immediately.
It is always hard to be on target when you look from the outside in but their collaborative relationship strikes me as ideal. Her creative flights of fancy are grounded by his pragmatism; his constriction by rationality are loosened by her vision.
The costumes she created for The Poet’s Shadow are a marvel. This is true not just for their beauty, but also for the ingenuity required to answer some major technical challenges.
The movers in the opera, for example, play the roles of a monster and also of flowers. Quick costume changes were out of the question, so one outfit had to serve both roles, and do so with changes that were within the limits of the physical abilities of the performers. Solution: Have flip up/down collars on capes, which can be shifted easily and promptly, displaying darkness on one side and bright floral colors on the other.
There were sizing challenges, with the unusual range of having to sew for football player-sized figures to tiny ballerinas.
There were the feathers for Mrs. Peacocks cape – lovingly hand-applied one by one, the heap of them.
There was the search for beautiful but reasonable materials given the constraints of the budget of a non-profit organization.
There was the task of making ordinary shoes into something extraordinary, fit for a fairy guide. All tackled with passion and years of experience in design and tailoring.
As someone who has trouble sewing on a button or hemming a skirt, I stand in awe. I very much hope that Portland will recognize the talent that has landed in our fair city and afford more opportunities for Liliane’s and Ty’s craft and/or performance skills – we would all be enriched.
Check the costumes out for yourself, here is the relevant info:
The Poet’s Shadow Seven performances: August 23, 24, 25 (matinee), 28, 29, 30, 31 (matinee) Hampton Opera Center, 211 Southeast Caruthers Street Portland, OR 97214Tickets on sale now at www.phamepdx.org/poet
And here is the most famous seamstress of them all:
On the first night of Hanukkah I found myself surrounded by a gaggle of otherworldly creatures swarming along the sidewalks of Hawthorne Blvd. “We are Krumpus, ” I was told, “we come to whisk away the naughty children, to lick them with our poisonous tongues, to give out pieces of silver to the good ones.” Needless to say, I received a piece of silver, tinfoil wrapping some unknown substance that I’m saving for a rainy day….
The elaborate costumes made me think of a trip to Trinidad in 1975. My lasting memories from that island are a) the acrid smell of the smoke coming from green coils lit across the cheap boarding house to fend off mosquitos – all of whom found refuge and nourishment on every square inch of my body. Also indelible were b) the sightings of whole clouds of birds alighting on trees around a natural bay that we were ferried across at sundown. It looked as if the trees were blooming, the ibises and other creatures all flocking with their same colored brethren, a white tree here, a pink one there. Quite magical. So were c) the large halls, with open doors and windows due to the heat, of costumes being prepared for carnival. Unclear what dominated, the scent of sweat or the stench of glue guns being heated to apply all those glittering paillettes. If only I had had a camera to photograph, back then.
Who needs Trinidad when you have Portland. Downtown yesterday, costumes abounded due to seasonal occupations, and even the dogs sported red and green… (this one named Melanie Jane, no less. Sometimes you wonder.) Santa was making an effort not to look too bored,
and the elves were making
– well, making me see double.
This creature, out for a cigarette break, replied when asked about the costume:” I like to dress up, that’s all.” Down to the perfect accessory, it seemed.
A while later a shop clerk asked me cautiously, “Ma’am, do you know you have a nosebleed?” I turned and looked in the mirror to see my face in war paint…. and of course no tissues to be found within the chaos of my backpack. The visibly uncomfortable woman handed me some napkins from her lunchbox before I fled. A familiar face greeted me outside of Nordstroms, the blue man who hangs on that corner in his costume week in week out. He whipped out what looked like a checkbook to pay for his coffee at the coffee bar, defying my stereotypes of what I expected from a street performer.
My downtown jaunt ended with a visit to a convenience store where the teenage clerk could have been – numerically – my grandson. Handing me my purchase, he winked at me and whispered,”Don’t have too much fun without me!” I had bought a bag of Fritos, an appropriately oily snack for this second night of Hanukkah, as a reward for being brave and cheerful…. the fun of junk food to be shared?
Maybe I’ll abscond to the Caribbean again. This time it wouldn’t be Trinidad, but Curaçao, to photograph the oldest surviving synagogue in the Americas, and sit in that quiet space with floors covers in white sand. Maybe it will be costume- and comment free.
Mikvé Israel-Emanuel was built in 1732 by the descendants of Portuguese-speaking Dutch Jews who, in 1651, crossed the Atlantic as the Dutch empire grew, establishing the New World’s first Jewish communities far from the anti-Semitism of Europe. At the intersection of the Caribbean environment and Jewish identity, these settlers covered the floors of their synagogues with white sand, both to remind congregants of the 40 years the Jews spent wandering the desert in biblical times and also to pay homage to their Portuguese ancestors who, before finding refuge from the Inquisition in Holland, used sand to muffle the sounds of sacred prayers and songs.
Read more: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/Caribbean-synagogue-sand-floor-180963581/#kzcEcXu3cGVfpK7T.99
I might not be a minor god, but I’m a miniature Imelda, with a conscience. Remember her, the Philipine’s Marcos/monster’s wife, she of the 1060 pairs of shoes? I share the affinity to footwork, but not the urge to consume or collect in her dimensions.
Nor do I share the style – I have never in my life owned or worn a pair of heels,
not even kitten heels. They’re in the way if you have places to explore….
This is more my style:
or this: not exactly hand made, though.
Reading up a bit on the history of shoemaking, I learned that ancient hunters wrapped their cold feet in skin, and it was an accidental discovery that ashes tanned the skins to leather. It is also claimed (below) that when the lady of the cave asked for yellow, fashion was born…. medieval cottage industries required some extra skills from those involved in cobbling: they needed literacy to keep the books for ordered work and precise measurements so that the shoes fit. War brought an end to that: starting with the napoleonic wars so many boots were needed that shoemaking became mass production. Soon the skill of sewing top to insole was replaced by cheaper gluing methods.
I think shoe designers are creative bordering on artists. Sadly, much of the more visible creativity is now expanded towards poor little rich girls. Since these only have two wrists, two ears, one neck to display their wealth of jewelry, shoes have to be the next platform. For a mere $1675 a Chanel boot provides extra glitter. (The folks at Nordstrom looked at me suspiciously when I photographed them – they seem to have a nose for who would never buy….)
And slippers with a hint of mink guarantee that no PETA eyes will ever fall on them:
Here is a short video that shows the process of boots being handmade, with the assurance that if you use elephant leather they will last 100 years. Reassuring for a woman getting on in age, don’t you agree? It’s fun to watch, though, if only for the alligator skins displayed on racks.
Work needs to get done! (These boots, by the way, are worn by Rena, the owner of the funkiest shoe store in town: Switch Shoes in Multnomah Village. They have a fabulous comfort/look/price ratio. Hold on to your wallets….)
Whether you see someone doing a little jig on the street or you watch the most amazing ballet performance, the appreciation of people’s movements is often enhanced by the costumes they are wearing. In addition to providing warmth and protection, fabrics have been used throughout centuries to augment certain aspects of human performance, be it on stage, or in the boudoir, on the sports- or the battle-field, in uniform, tribal colors or under one’s flag.
The dance aspect was driven home to me last summer at the Philadelphia Art Museum which presented a nifty little exhibit on Dance – Movement/Rhythm/Spectacle. Paintings, lithographs and photographs about dance from the museum’s collection depicted costumes and dresses that caught my attention. The cross section below ranges from Toulouse-Lautrec from the portfolio Le Café Concert, Carlos Mérida Dance of the Quetzals, Leon Bakst The Pilgrim for the Ballet Russe’s performance of Le Dieu Bleu; one of the represented photographers was Barbara Morgan who photographed Martha Graham’s company at length.
And then there was Loîe Fuller, who knew how to make fabric fly – I just learned about her from indispensable dance critic Martha Ullman West who keeps me on my toes. The short clip below is a marvel.
Fuller was partly responsible for the creation of one of the great treasures of WA, the Maryhill Museum. I will devote another essay to that jewel eventually. For now, here is a clip of the fabulous 1946 exhibit that is now in their permanent collection, of French fashion on small mannequins, all the fashion I am willing to mention in the context of fabrics. I cannot recommend a visit of the museum strongly enough. Eclectic only begins to describe it. http://www.maryhillmuseum.org/visit/exhibitions/ongoing-exhibitions/theatre-de-la-mode
not exactly hand made, though.
