January 30th, 2017 by admin under
evening wear
Harriet and Vetta Goldstein, sisters who taught at the University of Minnesota, wrote that even the store clerk who helps a woman to choose what to wear is creating a kind of art.
Whenever during World War I booklets taught American women how to cut down a man’s suit to make a woman’s suit, when a lot fabric was needed for the war effort.
American farm women with little money invented the feedsack dress made out of the fabric saved from large sacks filled with chicken feed. Necessity is the mother of invention, as the old saying goes. Basically, manufacturers of chicken feed realized what the women were doing and started putting out sacks in printed fabrics to compete for their business. Eventually, the art of dress requires both beauty and utility to come into play, as the decorative arts. Sounds familiar? I also see the blessing of limitations in the creativity in design forced by circumstances. Then again, so it is what the Goldstein sisters meant when they wrote of the blessings of limitations when we put gether an outfit, we must both apply the art concepts and allow the human body to move freely and gracefully.
That’s the reason why they said knowledge, not expense is the key to beauty in dress. Their innovation came in finding ways to apply the concepts of art to clothing, The dress writers drew upon the art of composition from the fine arts. Did the nurses at the hospital, other doctors treated her with more respect, and people who had never bothered to consult her before now did. Know what, I know I look awful, could you diagnose my case and prescribe me I don’t understand clothing. Picken examined her and came up with a really new wardrobe, and the results were remarkable. She was cured. Furthermore, other Dress Doctors were in the federal Bureau of Home Economics which had a division devoted to textiles and clothing; there were the instructors at ‘landgrant’ universities across the country who taught home economics and ran public outreach efforts called extension programs, Picken was one Dress kind Doctor, these were independent business women who wrote books and ran their own sewing academies.
I came up with the name the Dress Doctors after reading a story ld in 1918 by Mary Brooks Picken, who became the leading American authority on sewing and dress, helped found the Costume Institute, that is now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and was the first female trustee of the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City.
I started looking for more such books, I had never seen anything like it even if I am both a historian and a dressmaker.
Years ago I was in an used bookstore and I spotted an old college textbook from the 1950s called Clothes for You. It turned out to be 500 pages on the craft of sewing and the art of dress. America’s dress writers had offered a way of creating beauty in dress that holds true therefore the youth culture of the 1960s dismissed it as retrograde and its lessons were forgotten, the art of dress was once a standard part of a woman’s education.
They have been America’s first and best fashion stylists and I wanted to bring their ideas to a brand new generation.
Millions of American girls and women had read them in 4H clothing clubs, and in junior high, high school and college classes. It turned out that dozens of textbooks had been written on the art of dress in the 20th Century and literally hundreds of pamphlets by home economists who specialized in textile and costume. I carried on with I am amazed at exactly how many ways American women found to manipulate cloth into something wonderful. On p of that, even the housedresses of the 1930s featured clever details and graceful lines.
My dress writers witnessed remarkable innovations from the early 20th century from the hour glass figure to the loose silhouette of the 1920s to the martial look of the 1940s and the romantic, ‘full skirted’ look of the 1950s to the simple Aline of the 1960s.
It sounds simple, yet much invention happens while doing just that.
Dress design is the art of taking two dimensional cloth and turning it into ‘three dimensional’ clothing that will fit on a living human body. Then again, the Women Who Once Made America Stylish, I was introduced to the idea that dressing used to be and still can be! Notice, in The Lost Art of Dress. Anyway, the inventive spirit lives in the way we dress Whether the choices that go into an unique outfit,, or it be picking an unique fabric to sew your favourite clothes. Linda Przybyszewski, the author, very kindly answered a few questions to add her perspective as well. Dr. Fashion, style, and getting dressed everyday is a similar place for people to express their own inventive creativity, like we explore in other disciplines. Of course the Dress Doctors identified five art basics to apply to dress, and I’ll explain just one emphasis being that it’s the easiest to follow.