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g wrap coat which belonged to the same ordinary working woman as the pearl encrusted dress it was beaded using a tambour a frame across which the fabric is tightly stretched and a small hook used to thread the beads through worked from the underside of the fabric this technique ensures the inside of the finished garment looks as neat as the outside a post shared by mel campbell incrediblemelk on feb 18 2017 at 12 48am pst this screen printed 1930s evening dress is ciré silk rather than the sheen coming from the weave as in satin the silk is wax coated to produce volume stiffness and a wet shiny finish which here is reminiscent of lacquered japanese ware ciré fell out of fashion after wwii when synthetic fabrics could produce the same effect but interestingly ciré cottons were popular from the 1950s 1970s known as polished cotton the fabric s stiffness made it perfect for full skirted 1950s cocktail frocks a post shared by mel campbell incrediblemelk on feb 18 2017 at 1 05am pst upstairs was a lovely display of 1930s floral evening gowns i m often struck by how timeless these 1930s screen printed floral fabrics are i own several dresses whose prints are not too dissimilar and i have lots of clothing in semi synthetic fabrics these gowns are rayon which was marketed as modern easy care art silk today i own a lot of viscose clothing and my friend paulina has a glamorous shakuhachi evening frock that looks and feels like silk but is made of tencel rayon is made from plant cellulose tencel a brand name for lyocell is from wood pulp and viscose is made from wood pulp or cotton lint a post shared by mel campbell incrediblemelk on feb 18 2017 at 1 42am pst the final room of the exhibition was set up as a workroom displaying gowns from the trust s collection that were unfinished or substantially altered there was also a video explaining how the conservators had worked to restore the beading and a tambour set up so you could give it a try this 1940 self spotted evening frock is a transitional gown it was displayed alongside a 1919 gown that showed the transition from the corseted empire and princess lines of the 1910s to the boyish tabard the later gown shows the next transition from the sylph like bodycon gowns of the 1930s to the weirdly modest and structured 1940s gowns whose emphasis shifted to the shoulders and hips i hate 1940s evening wear those big shoulders in dowdy black crepe with high necklines i m super glad fashion has never compelled me to wear this stuff barbara stanwyck hating sequins 1941 anyway you can t see it in this pic but this gown has a ruched polonaise bustle which is a retro look it was first given to bunchy gathered overdresses in the polish style in the 1770s but the polonaise made a comeback a century later as part of the early 1870s dolly varden fad this polonaise style dress is american from 1780 85 from the collection of the new york metropolitan museum of art however the 1940s bustle is more like a peplum extra decorative drapery in the back shifting the dress s volume to the rear this is a mccall s dressmaking pattern from the period night life is at barwon park mansion until 26 march 2017 open wednesday to sunday from 11am to 4pm posted by mel at 8 46 pm no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest tuesday march 08 2016 a closer look at fash speak fashion writing is popularly understood to be a vapid genre most people see it as remote from their daily concerns referring instead to a fantasy world of runway collections and red carpets and it s written in a gormless burbling dialect that i will call fash speak fashion by the way is not a synonym for clothes it s an industrial cycle of design media and retail which constantly renews itself to drive demand for new garments fashion is a dynamic wealthy business sector that engages with politics ethics and social ideologies and writing about this is not stupid to intelligent discerning people fashion offers plenty of food for thought and some fashion writers are impressively knowledgeable and analytical however the majority of fashion writing from glossy magazines to weekend newspapers and the increasingly crowded blogosphere is explicitly framed as lifestyle that is it s all about the role clothing plays in an individual s consumerist fantasies and because lifestyle is still consumed as part of a broad media diet readers who aren t interested in fashion are likely to encounter fash speak and find it meaningless in the style of star trek s leonard bones mccoy let me point out that i m a cultural critic not a fashion writer i don t go to runway shows and industry launches or follow designers and trends i ve gone to fashion events before and felt completely unwelcome to be frank sometimes i see fashion journalists at media screenings of fashion adjacent films most recently the dressmaker and experience a mean yearning to make them feel as unwelcome on my turf as i feel on theirs so it would be easy for me to massage my professional self respect by hanging shit on fash speak but inevitably i want to defend fash speak as a legitimate linguistic practice and to explore what it might do like all industry jargon it s a set of shibboleths that reflects shared concerns and polices insiders and outsiders industry aspirants learn to use it because mastering fash speak establishes professional authority and credibility fashion writers have been playing with language for ages diana vreeland was an especially inventive wordsmith stephen fried coined the term fashionista in his 1993 biography of model gia carangi as an umbrella term for all the industry people in her orbit it was a playful riff on the nicaraguan sandinistas who were prominent in the media at the height of carangi s career in the late 1970s and early 1980s fashionista was irresistible because it connoted both exoticism and political militancy it s since birthed glamazon and frock star but while fried now regrets opening pandora s portmanteau fashion blogging has supercharged fash speak a brand building exercise for individual bloggers is to create terms that go on to be adopted more widely self declared man repeller leandra medine is an avid neologist but she s best known for inventing the arm party a term for a collection of watches bracelets and bangles worn all at once fash speak can operate in two registers when it s talking down it s euphemistic and twee aiming to generate solidarity with the reader hair is a mane or tresses a mouth is a pout eyes are peepers fingernails are talons toes are tootsies when it s talking up it s constructing an air of mystique and exclusivity around industry practices but it does this in a vague nebulous way that fudges the distinctions between different price points and market positions the word couture just means sewing but haute couture is a trade appellation granted by the parisian chambre syndicale now the fédération française de la couture that entitles a designer to show at paris fashion week nonetheless fash speak uses haute couture and high fashion as adjectives that all mean labels that show at fashion weeks other brands are described variously as luxe boutique cult and niche all of which imply that they are still expensive and exclusive but have a small discerning market bespoke strictly speaking is clothing tailored to one person s specific measurements yet fash speak uses it much more loosely to connote things that are hand made and customised much of fash speak reflects the palimpsestic nature of fashion s trend cycle the treadmill of seasonal collections moves so fast that writers are flat out just describing how outfits look on models it s impressionistic rather than contextual aiming to capture evanescent moments moods and gestures some words and phrases seem to be deployed primarily for literary effect va va voom originally a 1950s term for the sound of a car engine revving now connotes a buxom old fashioned kind of sex appeal outfits that are presumably not sentient are nonetheless whimsical and flirty they re also floaty and flippy and filmy and froufrou and mute objects have something metaphorical to say they become statement pieces because of the pace of the trend cycle fash speak valorises an ability to anticipate and lead trends rather than to follow or lag behind we hear of a fashion forward or directional person or garment things are on trend or even bang on trend they re edgy cutting edge or even bleeding edge x is the new y however you ll often be allowed a sneak peak always misspelled at what s coming up next other elements of fash speak refuse to view fashion as an industrial process of producing and marketing clothing but instead see it as a rarefied aesthetic practice i don t think it s accidental that what alix rule and david levine have dubbed international art english is an industry jargon almost as universally maligned when fash speak is forced to consider the everyday practicalities of wearing clothes it sounds almost grudging it assures you that sober yet very costly garments constitute investment dressing and that sometimes a garment must take you from day to night perhaps the most arch word in fash speak s vocabulary is wearable which faintly damns a garment as bland and unimaginative but also contains a note of admiration that a designer has been so bold as to invite non fashionistas to wear their garments by contrast fash speak is at its most free wheeling and grammatically elastic when it ponders aesthetic choices one of fash speak s most commonly ridiculed quirks is the fashion singular this is the tendency to depluralise things that come in pairs a pant a lip an eye a shoe could this refer to the fashion writer s own eye which has to travel so quickly that paired objects merge conceptually into one the fashion writer s gaze displaces itself onto the things gazed upon which synecdochically become looks and because this gaze has a velocity and a direction fash speak doesn t have contemplative colour schemes it has colourways obviously you would never wear only one shoe or make up only one smoky eye but the fashion singular refers not to the actual object or body part but more to the act of making a single aesthetic choice or to the effect of any one element in a successful look you can make the fashion singular buddy up by teaming x with y but if you want one element to quickly draw the eye you make it pop colourful items in drab contexts so reliably do this that they become nouns a pop of colour the fashion writer s knowing expert gaze is also implied in the fash speak terms for choosing clothes the prepositionless to shop never to shop for or to shop at or the connoisseurship implied by to source that is to track down items to the place where they originate even the fashion editor s job of choosing garments for an editorial is displaced onto the designer whose runway collections are an edit especially a tight edit because the fashion world deals in exorbitantly priced luxury goods it encourages mercilessly commercial writing that hypes the merch in grammatical terms this is the fashion imperative fash speak deals heavily in hyperbole journalists announce their current obsessions what s hot and not dos and don ts the essential clothes they re really feeling which you need right now the it bags and other must haves they re currently all about this garment is everything it s killer i die here it s important to acknowledge that a lot of fash speak is appropriated from the language of people of colour especially queer people of colour and that this political redolence is neutralised in its use within mainstream white fashion journalism in fash speak as in us hip hop people look fresh to death in what they re rocking their kicks are totally on point on lock their brow game is on fleek the underground queer ballroom scene is deeply entwined with fashion voguing is named after vogue magazine its moves are inspired by the poses of models and the performance space of the runway ballroom collectives are also called houses like fashion labels and many have even been named after fashion houses competitors walk for their house much as fash speak refers to models appearing in a given designer s show the ballroom use of language to commentate on performance emerges in fash speak when someone is slaying it worked it did that or went there yaaaaas queen and fash speak expresses enthusiasm by declaring the writer is living for or is here for expensive designer merchandise popularised by designer christian siriano during his time as a project runway contestant in 2007 the term fierce is older it appears in drag artist rupaul s 1992 single supermodel you better work to call black women fierce is to reappropriate racist myths that they were savage and primitive less feminine and deserving of less respect than white women fierce became a term of pride in and admiration for a racialised trans femininity but fash speak s attachment to fierce has had the unfortunate effect of dehumanising black women while granting white women access to feelings of playful power the terrible irony is that fash speak is not a very good idiom for citing or paying homage to aesthetic influences it will freely admit that something is iconic and that certain people are style icons and will even dabble in spiritualism to suggest that a garment or person is channelling someone or something else but its ideas of classic vintage and retro are vague unmoored from specific periods in fashion history and relying much more on the reader s emotional stake in the past like any other industry jargon fash speak only becomes meaningful in the encounter between fashion writer and fashion savvy reader it s a connotative rather than a denotative argot surprisingly poetic in its use of allusion and onomatopoeia and intended to create moods of urgency of pleasure of possibility as much as to actually describe things but fash speak s innate elitism means it s troubling that it s so happily adopted the language that disempowered people use to assert their own dignity and sense of style posted by mel at 6 18 pm no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels footpath cracks saturday september 26 2015 does fancy dress have to be sexy it s such a cliché that there are regular fancy dress costumes and then there are sexy ones for women which focus on revealing cleavage midriff silhouette and legs at the complete expense of fidelity to the idea of the costume in out of shape i argue that the vocabulary of sexiness we draw on when we dress up for costume parties comes from what i call exploitation culture so called because it exploits viewers crudest impulses this genre discards such piffling irrelevancies as plot and character instead it visually represents sexiness to excite its male heterosexual audiences flimsy form fitting and tantalisingly unbuttoned and unzipped women s exploitation costumes represent the...