The floral embroidered blue silk gown designed in the early 1880s had the design elements of tiered pleats, a bustle, chenille fringe and multiple embellishments which incorporated many different fashions of the time.
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Mary Cassatt’s Boating Party shows important changes in art and culture near the end of the 19th century. The Boating Party depicts evolving cultural norms around women and sport, and the rise of womenswear separates. Through Cassatt’s strong graphic shapes, we can see how Impressionist painting evolved to become more experimental and geometric in the 1890s.
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Paul Cézanne based his painting, The Conversation (1870-71), on a fashion plate from La Mode Illustrée, which confirms that his figures are presented in fashionable dress. He uses this content to comment on the greater social issues of the time period, as well as explore darker notions of the fabric of society.
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This intricate 1855 day dress includes many fashionable elements of the time period, including beautiful silk fringe trimming and stripe designs.
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Rudi Gernreich’s 1970 caftan reflects the designer’s politics and his tireless effort toward creating genderless clothing. The piece features his characteristic loose silhouette as well as his technique of using patterns to de-accentuate the assumed gender of the wearer.
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Young Woman Seated on a Sofa by Berthe Morisot uses a light color palette and whimsical brushstrokes to create an elegant representation of the modern, bourgeois Parisienne. The painter brings elements of the outdoors into an airy apartment setting to emphasize the beauty of her subject. In demonstrating the upper class woman, Morisot takes care to use fashionable elements that would be admired by those in high society who engross themselves in symbols of femininity.
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The Fez and the Ottoman Path to Modernity
1869 – Red Silk Dress
katazome (stencil printing)
1905 – André Derain, Lucien Gilbert
Inès Gâches-Sarraute and the Straight-Front Corset