Material Mode

Tag: Jean Patou

  • Tennis in the ’20s

    Tennis in the ’20s

                       Three tennis looks, created by an unidentified French designer in 1926, the year women’s professional tennis was established. Material Mode has a quibble. After attending the exhibition The Rise of Sneaker Culture yesterday at the Brooklyn Museum, we left feeling that some of the exhibition labels…

  • Perfume+Publicity+Poiret

    We were recently gifted two very special objects: two paper publicity fans for the French perfume company, Rosine.  Established in 1911, by the avant-garde couturier Paul Poiret following a trip to Vienna where he visited the Weiner Werkstatte, Rosine was part of Poiret’s greater vision to establish himself as not only a fashion designer, but…

  • The Color of Couture

    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 established first and Cahiers Bleu following as, “By definition, we…

  • 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…