A ReVival? What's Old..New Again?

Bob Mackie and Marc Jacobs! 

Costumer turned ready to wear designer Bob Mackie is responsible for several of history’s most unforgettable gowns. Remembered for his cheeky curtain rod gown made famous by Carol Burnett in her Gone with the Wind spoof and Cher’s 1986 Oscar ensemble, Mackie’s designs are not for the faint of heart. With an abundance of sequins, beads, feathers, and skin, the designer would outfit several leading ladies in entertainment including Diana Ross, Liza Minnelli and Tina Turner. Unbeknownst to the designer himself, Marc Jacobs would show his last collection for Vuitton during Paris Fashion Week SS 14. In his finale of a collection, Jacobs’ cited the musical Chicago and showgirls amongst his sources of inspiration. Unsurprisingly, a look from Vuitton’s SS 2014 collection bore great resemblance to a design by the costumer extraordinaire Bob Mackie.

Schiaperrelli and Miu Miu!

McQueen and Victoria's Secret!

To fête the release the Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette in 2006, Vogue enlisted Annie Leibovitz for an 18th-century-themed editorial starring Kirsten Dunst as the Dauphine. Photographed nowhere else but Versailles, Dunst is resplendent in designer interpretations of rococo fashions, descending the stairs of a gilded carriage and poised amongst members of her court all similarly done up in the confectious, pastel colors typical of 18th-century dress. Having built a reputation for reappropriating just about anything into their runway concoctions, the 2012 Victoria’s Secret fashion show presented a dress which resembled a McQueen gown worn by Dunst in the 2006 Vogue editorial.

In 2001, Icelandic artist Björk wore what has now become one of the most infamous red carpet dresses. Designed by Macedonian Marjan Pejoski, the frock referred to as the “swan dress,” was meant to symbolize fertility, a notion further reinforced by Björk as she left a trail of eggs down the red carpet. While most viewed the dress as outlandish, perhaps it was not so unfamiliar to our eyes. A few years earlier in 1997, Annie Leibovtiz photographed then-budding actor Leonardo DiCaprio seemingly cuddling a swan that has looped its neck around that of the handsome film star for Vanity Fair.

A contemporary of Salvador Dalí and Jean Cocteau, Elsa Schiaparelli’s transgressive designs were often the result of a direct collaboration with the surrealists. Schiaparelli’s August 1936 collection, designed alongside  Salvador Dalí, featured suits with pockets that resembled miniature bureau drawers, paired with black suede gloves adorned with red patches of snakeskin to suggest the red colored nails underneath the gloves. In 2009, Commes des Garçon released a selection of loafers, that seemingly revealed the contents underneath the shoe, also showcasing red-painted nails.

Iconoclast designer Elsa Schiaparelli is most remembered for infusing a sense of wit and irony into her designs. The House of Schiaparelli did not cease to exist during the occupation of Paris, however, during this period Schiaparelli herself was in New York and left the designing to her associates who remained in Paris. In 1944, Schiaparelli made her return to Paris to much acclaim and would continue to design until 1954. A photo from 1949 depicts the Schiaparelli eyebrow hat, a red satin cap with a brim that droops, obstructing the face save for an eye-hole. For Vogue Italia’s February 2012 cover, photographer Steven Meisel photographed model Laura Kampmann wearing a similar hat by Ellen Christine Millinery. 

The House of Worth is considered the most influential and widely-recognized house of the nineteenth century.  Founded in 1858 by English designer Charles Frederic Worth, it is often suggested that the couture house produced its best work under the helm of Gaston-Lucien and Jean-Philippe, Worth’s sons. An exquisite dress designed by Charles Frederic’s successors and dated at 1898-1900, showcases Art Nouveau’s influence on fashionable dress of the period. The S-curved gown features swirling curls of black velvet woven onto a ground of white satin; the black tendrils emulating the vogue for decorative ironwork popularized in Art Nouveau design. For Valentino’s Spring 2013 couture show, designers Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pierpaolo Piccioli cited secret gardens and wrought irons gates among their sources of inspiration, showing a diaphanous white gown paired with a floor-length tulle cloak with embroidered black “ironwork.”

One of the three founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, John Everett Millais, would create some of the most well-known imagery of the Pre-Raphaelite movement which looked to Quattrocento or 15th-century Italian art. Shakespeare often served as inspiration to the Pre-Raphaelites, famously depicted in Millais’ 1851-52 painting Ophelia which portrays Shakespeare’s tragic figure of Ophelia from Hamlet Act IV, Scene vii. In this scene, Ophelia is driven out of her mind after learning her father was murdered by her lover Hamlet and she is found dead in a stream. For Jean-Charles De Castelbajac’s FW 2013 collection, the designer reappropriated several  paintings in his collection, including Millais’ Ophelia.

At first glance, the cage crinoline appears constricting and oppressive to its wearer, however, the understructure was widely adopted and met with praise in the middle of the 19th century. Previously, women achieved a great expanse in their skirts by layering petticoat upon petticoat, ultimately weighing down the wearer. The cage crinoline, however, was light, flexible and engineered to allow a greater freedom of movement for the wearer. The crinoline could be mass-produced, allowing for a greater number of women to achieve the fashionable silhouette of the period. For Alexander McQueen’s SS 2013 bee-themed collection, Sarah Burton appropriated the cage crinoline on top of, rather than underneath, the skirt. The collection featured hyper-feminized silhouettes reminiscent of the 19th century and explored ideas of protection, veiling and constraint.

The gigot sleeve, also called the leg-of-mutton sleeve, experienced two waves of popularity in the 19th century, much like the bustle. The voluminous sleeves first came into popularity in the late 1820s-early 1830s, placed directly below a sloped shoulder. The resurgence of Le Gigot occurred in the 1890s with the expanse of the sleeve placed directly at the shoulder, a sharper and perkier sleeve than the sleeve worn in the beginning of the century. In 1988, Christian Lacroix, a designer whose design philosophy is rooted in historical dressmaking, created a bodice with one sleeve resembling the gigot of the 1890s, perhaps a comment on the trend of the exaggerated shoulder of the 1980s.

As one of the three founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, John Everett Millais, would create some of the most well known imagery of the Pre-Raphaelites, including Christ In The House Of His Parents and Ophelia. The reform movement looked to Quattrocento or 15th-century Italian art, producing narrative historical painting which typically featured a female protagonist, referred to as a “Stunner.” Often reappropriating historic painting or photography into his clothing, designer Jean-Charles De Castelbajac printed Millais’ 1851 painting, The Bridesmaid, obscured by a large, black cross, directly onto a flowing caftan-style gown in his FW 2013 Inspiration.

For Dolce and Gabbana’s FW 2013 collection, the design duo continued to draw inspiration from the island of Sicily. In the Sicilian province of Palermo, the Cathedral in the town of Monreale is considered one of the greatest extant examples of Norman architecture in the world; the interior of the cathedral is renowned for the exquisite mosaics lining the walls. Dolce and Gabbana payed homage to the cathedral, incorporating imagery found in the mosaics directly into their collection. The collection featured a clean, straight-cut top void of any embellishment apart from the printed mosaic depicting the Sicilian King William II offering the cathedral to the Virgin Mary.

The representation of the dragon in Chinese dress was historically reserved for the emperor and his circle since the beginning of the Song Dynasty. More recently, the motif has become a pervasive element in traditional Chinese dress styles. For the 1934 film Limehouse Blues, costume designer Travis Banton dressed Anna May Wong, one of Hollywood’s first Chinese film stars, in a black cheongsam-style gown embellished with gold and silver sequins forming a dragon motif. For the SS 2013 Emilio Pucci show, Peter Dundas reapproriated historical elements of Asian dress into his collection; utilizing woodblock prints, kimono-style sleeves and the depiction of a gold dragon motif on a similar straight, black long-sleeved gown.

Robert Campin is often acknowledged as the first of the great Flemish painters, praised for his most-well known work of art, The Mérode Altarpiece, which is housed at The Cloisters at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Alexander McQueen looked to Campin’s The Thief to the Left of Christ, in his FW 1997 collection entitled It’s a Jungle Out There. Often finding inspiration in the grand and historic, McQueen printed Campin’s painting of the crucifixion onto a jacket, dismantling and then re-piecing the image to achieve a patch-work style garment.

This peculiar scarf and muff set, housed at The Costume Institute at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, represents the fashionable use of birds in 19th-century dress, which often featured bird components of feather plumes or a bird used in its entirety as seen here. The accessory set is also thought to draw attention to the wearer’s own swan-like neck; a strong feature of the period’s beauty ideal. In 2001, Icelandic artist Björk wore what has now become one of the most infamous red carpet dresses. Designed by Macedonian Marjan Pejoski, the frock referred to as the swan dress, was meant to symbolize fertility, a notion further reinforced by Björk as she left a trail of eggs down the red carpet. 

What is 0ld is New Again!