SPARC is excited to bring you a guest post from fashion scholar Cora Harrington. Cora has a Bachelor of Arts degree in Sociology and Anthropology from Agnes Scott College. In her former career, she was an intimate apparel expert and author of In Intimate Detail: How […]
Category: Fashion
Miss 1966: Dobbie Coleman and Marc Bohan for Dior
In 2016, we received a phone call from a not-for-profit foundation with an offer almost too good to be true. They were looking to fund the donation of a set of sketches from the house of Christian Dior to a deserving institution; ‘might FIT Special […]
The Tissue of Dreams: Paper Patterns in the Tailoring Trade
In the opening chapter of her book A History of the Paper Pattern Industry: The Home Dressmaking Fashion Revolution, curator and scholar Joy Spanabel Emery cites the October 1916 issue of Designer magazine: “There is nothing so cheap & yet so valuable; so common & […]
Shoes to ‘Chutes: The Wartime Story of I. Miller & Sons
On January 12, 1945, the Grand Ballroom of the luxurious Waldorf-Astoria hotel in New York City was packed full as a thousand pair of curious eyes looked on as shoe industry executive George Miller and Lieut. Col. Harold L. Lister of the US Army posed […]
Emergency Mode: The Wartime Hats of Sally Victor
Promptly at 3pm on December 18, 1941, members of the American fashion press gathered at the legendary Rainbow Room in New York City and patiently awaited their introduction to emergency mode. A fundraiser to benefit the British Ambulance Corps, the event showcased the latest wartime […]
Egyptian Elegance: Youssef Rizkallah
One of the great pleasures of working with our collection is rediscovering the myriad of designers represented who—while well-known during their own time—have now faded into annals of history. The name Youssef Rizkallah will ring a bell with few, yet […]
In memoriam: Hubert de Givenchy
Hubert Taffin de Givenchy, 1927 – 2018 Born in Beauvais, France in 1927, the creative talents of Hubert de Givenchy were perhaps not unexpected. He descended from a long line of creative minds; his father was an architect and both of his grandfathers worked as […]
Fancy Dress à Paris!
While reorganizing a selection of miscellaneous engravings recently, we came across a set of plates depicting wonderfully whimsical fancy dress ensembles. The adoption of masks or other elements of disguise for festivals and celebrations is believed to date back to 1710 in London, when theaters […]
Hot New Accession: La Femme dans la Décoration Moderne
Created in 1902, Julius Klinger’s book of design and ornament, La Femme dans la Décoration Moderne, is a graphic celebration of the feminine. The 30 pages of motifs contained within—which all feature women—were intended to be sources of inspiration for practitioners of the industrial arts: decorative painters […]
Couture Copies in America: A Case-Study
Over the last few years, Material Mode has frequently referenced the symbiotic relationship between Parisian couture and American fashion during the first half of the 20th century. US-based ready-to-wear manufacturers looked to Paris to set the mode, which they subsequently mimicked, with riffs and […]