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Shooting for Ladies
Anyone who’s ever seen a James Bond movie knows that a lady in an evening gown is always sexier when wielding a gun—the same, it seems, was also true more than a century ago if we are to believe Walter Winans’ 1911 title Shooting for Ladies. Created with the intention of tutoring ladies in the…
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Seymour Moss jewelry designs
These exquisitely rendered sketches depict the designs of American jeweler Seymour Moss (1919-2011), who began his career under the tutelage of his father, owner of the American Charm Company. After serving in the Army in WWII, Moss returned to New York City and founded MOBA, which produced gold and gemstone “high-fashion” jewelry that retailed in…
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How’d she get that hair?
Out of the thousands of fashion plates held by the department, the ones from the 1870s and 1880s never fail to astonish with their depictions of lustrous and abundant hairstyles. We’ve often marveled at their complexity and more than once wondered, ‘how’d she get that hair?!’ Shedding some light on the mystery is the trade…
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Galerie des Modes et Costumes Français: 1778-1787
First issued during the reign of Marie Antoinette, the fashion and costume plate series Galerie des Modes et Costumes Français has been called “the most beautiful collection in existence on the fashions of the eighteenth century.” Beginning around 1778, the Parisian print merchants Esnault & Rapilly began issuing this series of engravings at irregular…
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The Automaton of Marie Antoinette
Material Mode isn’t quite sure how we missed seeing this at The Metropolitan Museum of Art earlier this year, but we’re kicking ourselves. This 18th century automaton was presented to Marie Antoinette in 1784, created by master furniture maker David Roentgen. Roentgen enjoyed considerable favor with the Queen, not only did she patronize him to…
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Meetings, Meanings & Mainbocher
This invitation to a fashion show at the Mainbocher couture house in Paris measures a mere 5 1/2 x 7 inches, but the story this simple piece of paper tells is much grander than cursory inspection belies. Issued to Michel Weill of San Francisco, the carte d’invitation has been stamped GARANTIE D’ACHAT—’guaranteed to purchase’—a stipulation…
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Hattie Carnegie: The Big Business of High Fashion
Born in 1886 in Vienna, Austria, the petite (4″ 10′) dynamo, Henrietta Kanengeiser would grow up to become one of the leading figures in American fashion for more than four decades. After a fire destroyed their Vienna home in 1892, Henrietta’s family relocated to the Lower East Side of New York City—Henrietta the second of…
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The Nina Hyde Collection: an interview with Vionnet, age 98
Madeleine Vionnet and fashion journalist Nina Hyde with the miniature mannequin used by the designer to drape her toiles in the round, 1974. Culling through the collection a few weeks ago in preparation for a patron researching Madeleine Vionnet, I was delighted to find Nina Hyde’s original notes from a 1974 interview with the renowned…
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Capturing Cool: the Jamel Shabazz photographs
Only recently was I lamenting the dearth of street fashion photography in our collection to a colleague, when we were put in touch with the visionary street and fashion photographer, Jamel Shabazz. It took us about a millisecond to ponder his query: ‘Would we be interested in receiving a donation of some of his photographs?’ …