Hello there! come on in. Right – news of
the week (bear in mind it’s lockdown so
it won’t be big news) - I’ve had a haircut.
Well, truth is Debbie, who does all things,
got fed up with me looking like one of those
busts of Beethoven they used to keep in the
school music room and took the scissors to
me. I like it. I think I’m on the verge
of looking fashionable although I am hardly
someone to even mention the word ‘fashion’.
I’ve never really been interested. Given
the choice I wear a plaid shirt in the winter,
something brightly coloured in the summer
and jeans all year long. Lots of women like
to dress up but I’m not one of them. The
nearest I ever got to being a ‘femme fatale’
is I was once in a very serious car accident.
That doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate the
importance clothes can play. For many women
what they look like in the mirror at home
helps give them the confidence to stride out
into the world and I get that. It was the
introduction of bloomers and then trousers
to women’s wardrobes which enabled them
to get on a bicycle and ride out in search
of greater fulfilment than just sewing, cleaning
and childcare.
It’s hard to believe the struggle women
had to be released from the corset and other
confining garments. Trousers have been around
in the Western world since ancient times.
Get on a horse in a robe and you soon find
yourself thinking there must be something
you could wear to stop the chaffing. Persian
and Asian horse riders knew this but at first
the Greeks and the Romans thought they were
ridiculous. It didn’t take them long though
to realise that no one can win a battle while
their nether parts are being rubbed raw on
a saddle. In ancient times they were worn
by both sexes. There is a marvellous two and
a half thousand year old urn in the British
Museum of an Amazon wearing fashionable looking
trousers and carrying a shield. Yet by the
18th and 19th century there was a misconception
that it was a male garment, had always been
a male garment and the world would come to
an end if women showed the shape of their
legs. Laws were passed making it illegal for
women to dare to wear such a thing.
In the 1850s when the great French artist
Rosa Bonheur wanted to wear trousers so that
she might comfortably sketch outdoors, she
had to get a police permit. In fact an old
Parisian bylaw requiring women to ask permission
from city authorities before "dressing as
men", including wearing trousers (with pleasing
exceptions for those "holding a bicycle handlebar
or the reins of a horse") wasn’t officially
revoked until 2013. The world still moves
slowly for it wasn’t until March 2019 that
a federal judge in North Carolina declared
that a school's requirement that girls wear
skirts was unconstitutional. How had it come
to a court case?
In so far as I am interested in clothes at
all then it is as something which makes us
feel better. June 26 marks the loss to the
fashion world of the American fashion designer
and businesswoman, Liz Claiborne. Even a deadbeat
like me can recognize how significant she
was in helping working women in the 1970’s
to access stylish but affordable clothing.
In 1976 she took her personal savings and
launched her own company creating what I have
learnt are known as ‘Separates’ which
could be mixed and matched to make a wardrobe
on a budget seem bigger than it was. She helped
make career women feel confident and on the
way she changed shopping forever.
From the beginning Liz was determined to do
things differently. She insisted that department
stores display her line of clothes in a section
by themselves. It was the first time customers
had been encouraged to select garments by
brand name only in one place in the shop.
Now you see it all the time. It was a huge
success. Within ten years she had become the
first woman to found a company that joined
the Fortune 500 list of America’s largest
corporations. I love the sound of her. She
wanted to stop what she saw as male hierarchies
in the world of fashion so all employees in
her corporate directory were listed, not in
order of importance, but alphabetically. She
controlled meetings by ringing a glass bell
and she loved to pose as a saleswoman to see
what average women thought of her clothes.
When she retired she established a foundation
that distributed millions to environmental
causes and nature conservancy projects around
the world.
Of course let’s not knock those who love
the fairy tale of fashion. It was on June
26th, 1953 that the style icon Jacqueline
Bouvier, woke up engaged to John F Kennedy.
She was a high society gal marrying into one
of the most distinguished families in America.
When they married in September of that year
it was considered the social event of the
season. Jackie, as I feel relaxed enough to
call her, wore a fabulous ‘you shall go
to the ball’ white wedding dress made of
ivory silk taffeta. I say that like I know
what I’m talking about. All I know is it
was a gorgeous dress which any fairy godmother
would have been thrilled to have conjured
up. In fact it was made by Ann Lowe, the first
African American to become a noted fashion
designer. Ann was born in 1898 in Clayton,
Alabama at a time when the oppressive Jim
Crow laws were still in operation. She learned
to sew from her mother and grandmother. She
got married in 1912 but when her husband demanded
that she give up her work as a seamstress
she packed up her needles and left. She took
their son and moved to New York City, where
she enrolled at S.T. Taylor Design School
but this was 1917, the school was segregated,
and she had to attend classes in a room by
herself. Nevertheless she graduated and in
1919 opened her first dress salon in Tampa,
Florida. It was a triumph and within ten years
she was back in New York City designed for
the top stores. In 1946, she designed the
dress that Olivia de Havilland wore to accept
the Academy Award for Best Actress for To
Each His Own, but the gown was credited to
someone else.
Ann knew she needed to work for herself so
she and her son opened Ann Lowe's Gowns on
Lexington Avenue in 1950. It was an instant
success and high society flocked to her. The
dress she made for Jacqueline Bouvier to float
down the aisle was stunning. It remains one
of the most iconic wedding-day looks of all
time. The story behind it though makes anyone
who has ever made anything shudder. For two
months, Lowe and her team worked on the 50
yards of silk taffeta creating the elaborate
folds which make the gown so unique. They
were ten days away from the wedding when there
was a flood in their studio and everything
– the wedding dress and those of the bridesmaids
– was ruined.
Ann rolled her sleeves up. Bought more fabric,
hired more staff and worked night and day
to recreate the wonder she had already made
once. She never told anyone and she ended
the commission $2,000 in debt. You can imagine
her exhaustion as she arrived to deliver the
dresses. An exhaustion which must also have
been mixed with pride. She had delivered on
time except when she got to the house
a member of staff told her to use the service
entrance in the back. Ann looked him in the
eye and she replied that she would rather
take the dress back. Carrying her creations
she walked in the front door.
Every newspaper in the country wrote about
the frock in exquisite detail. No one credited
Ann. Most painful of all – when the bride
herself was asked who designed the dress,
she reportedly responded, "a colored dressmaker
did it." I think there is a nice end to this
story. Years later when Ann was losing her
sight and had fallen into debt, an anonymous
benefactor stepped in to help financially.
She always felt it was Jackie Kennedy.
There’s lots about the fashion world today
which needs addressing – the imagery used
to sell unnatural and unhealthy body shapes
as desirable, the environmental cost, forced
and trafficked labour and so on. At its best
though it is great to feel good about yourself
however you choose to express that and we
should remember those in the past who have
helped women and men be themselves.
I found an old bowler hat and I’m thinking
of wearing it. What does it say about me?
Just that I once saw Mary Poppins and liked
Mr Banks best. Wear what you like. Be comfortable.
A quick note to the regular viewer – next
week in the UK lockdown begins to come to
an end. Alex Bell and I set out to do these
talks to help people in isolation. Now we
all need to go out again into the hideously
named ‘new normal’ so next week will be
the last of these – well, for the moment.
Who knows what the future holds? In the meantime
– take care, be kind.
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