During the 1950s, L’Officiel de la Couleur des Industries de la Mode and its associated publication, Cahiers Bleu, served as trend forecasting publications for the fashion industry. As their titles imply, color forecasting was the foremost mission of both publications, L’Officiel de la Couleur being […]
Year: 2013
Vogue in 1893: “Believe…only half of what you see!”
We love the admonition illustrated on the cover of the November 16, 1893 issue of Vogue that cautions the nascent deb in her dealings with potential suitors; the sentiment to “believe nothing of what you hear and only half of what you see,” seems to […]
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 […]
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, […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Books of Etiquette and Beauty
It is often necessary to students and scholars of history to familiarize themselves with anachronistic social customs and practices in order to gain a better understanding of a given period. One of our favorite resources for this is the wealth […]
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 […]